Recently Guru Clients Brad and Jodi experienced Disney’s brand new Magic Bands. Jodi was so generous as to share her thoughts about the bands with us.
Here is their adventure….
We received our email inviting us to test the bands. Yay us! I logged in and ordered our bands. I got a pink one Brad got the red. They arrived in a super cute box and had our names on the inside. They were comfortable enough so we decided this was going to be great.. Being excited to get to the planning part, I logged in and started making our fast pass plans. First issue. They had 5 of us listed. 2 Jodis and 3 Brads. Well, that wasn’t going to work. I called the support number and was assured that they would correct the issue. I would get a call in a couple days. After a week I had not received a call, so I called back. This time she said they would be fixed and I would receive an email. I received an email and they said they were able to eliminate the extra names and could duplicate all the fast passes except Illuminations for the night we arrived. That was ok since we figured it would be busy due to Food & Wine opening that day. We had only scheduled Friday and Saturday anyway. We decided we would go day to day and see how it worked.
Friday we arrived at the airport and Brad went on ahead to get us ready for the Magical Express. I could tell when I walked up there was an issue. My band was scanning as Brad and his band wasn’t registered to anyone. They asked us if we would like to try to fix them then, but we decided to wait until we got to Pop Century to deal with it. We used our paper tickets and got on the bus. When we got to Pop we discovered that they had shipped new bands directly to the resort due to timing and they had our bands (with correct colors and names) already there. Bonus. Our bands worked great to get us into our room. We dropped off our carry ons and headed to the Magic Kingdom. When we attempted to enter the park we were denied. The message they were receiving was “wrong day”. Next stop, guest services. The guest service cast member issued us 7 day park hoppers on plastic just in case we had further issues and said to use them to get in and by the time we were done with dinner they should be good to go. We had dinner at Magic Kingdom and headed over to Epcot. Brad was able to get through the gate at Epcot using his band, but I was still not able to. I used the plastic card and moved on. My band finally kicked in on Monday with one exception getting into the Animal Kingdom on Thursday. They think it was because we had loaded the passes for our MNSSHP and those were listed above our 7 day park hoppers so they wouldn’t read until after our party Sunday night. (interesting considering Brad was able to get in).
Now for the rest of the bands. They worked wonderful for everything else. We never had a problem paying for our free dining, using our fast passes. We were able to schedule a ride one day for 10 minutes after we decided to ride. We were also able to cancel a full day and reschedule for a new park. The only down side I seen was that if you are park hoppers like us it will only allow you during testing to schedule experiences for one park a day and only 3 fast passes. We did use them to watch Wishes one night and they put us on the grass in the Rose Garden off to the right side of the castle. It was a great view and Tinkerbell went right over our heads.
All in all I think the bands will be amazing once they get the kinks out. But that is what testing is for.
We had a great time and can’t wait to go back.
Thanks
Jodi and Brad.
Check out some of the Magic Band swag you can purchase!