Final clarification!

[Iwannabeindisney89]

Someone please tell me if I'm crazy. My uncle is claiming that magic bands are not interchangeable. He goes every year (multiple times)so everyone in the fam is taking his word for our upcoming trip, meanwhile I have read otherwise on here. Because we all have 3 bands from different stays, we plan on changing it up each day, wearing a different color when we want. He claims that while at dinner you have to wear your magic band associated with your current resort stay. He's saying our dining plan credits won't go through on bands that have been from previous stays/annual passes. We have all of our bands linked correctly on the site. Please help in my hope to say "told ya so!" If I'm wrong it's important I'm set straight as well lol

 

[Tom]

By design, ALL of your personal Magic Bands - issued in the past and for a current reservation - should work for room access, park entry, charging, and dining plans.

They need to remain active in your MDE account (since you can deactivate them in case of loss or theft), but yes, all of your old ones should work for you.

 

[Rob562]

There may have been glitches *very* early on in the Band testing, but those issues were ironed out long ago.

As long as all Bands are linked to the same MDE profile, then they will work interchangeably. Problems do start to arise when people *aren't* consistent with linking reservations to the proper profiles. Or if they don't create profiles at all, they made the reservation over the phone or through a travel agent and didn't link the reservation to a MDE profile, then the default Bands they get at check-in are assigned to "dummy" Guest profiles and won't work again.

Here's a rather lengthy example:
Let's say last year Mom made the reservation for the family (Mom, Dad, two kids) by going to a travel agent. That agent wasn't keeping up on the news about MDE and didn't have them create a MDE account to link the profiles to. Since the Bands weren't customized, the family got gray Bands at check-in.

Then this past spring, the family decides to go again. Dad makes the reservation online himself and creates an MDE profile for himself and "managed by him" profiles for the rest of the family. They customize their Bands and get them in the mail.

Now for a special treat, the grandparents are taking just the kids to WDW. Maybe Grampa is tech savvy and books it online. When asked to create profiles for each person on the reservation he does. The problem is that he creates the kids under *his* profile.

So now some people in the family physically have two Bands, some (the kids) have three. But because all of them are seen by the MDE system as separate "people", none of the Bands would be interchangeable.

And now for the take-away lesson: Consistency is key in the MDE era. Create *one* login on the MDE site and use that login consistently. If your party has multiple adults, have them each create their own MDE account login and then connect to them via the "Invite to Plan" button. If there are kids, choose one parent to oversee them.
In the grandparent scenario above, Grampa *should* have added the grandkids to his Friends & Family list by sending a friend request to the Dad, who is overseeing the "master" set of profiles. That way their reservations are linked to the long-term profiles for the kids and the Bands associated with the reservation will always work for them. When the kids get older and can manage their own account, they can "take over" ownership of their profile by Dad sending them an invite to their own email address.

But getting back to the actual question at hand, @Tom is correct. As long as all of the Bands in question are listed in your profile as being Active, then they can be used interchangeably.

Word of the day: Consistency!

-Rob

 

[FrostyNaples]

Someone please tell me if I'm crazy. My uncle is claiming that magic bands are not interchangeable. He goes every year (multiple times)so everyone in the fam is taking his word for our upcoming trip, meanwhile I have read otherwise on here. Because we all have 3 bands from different stays, we plan on changing it up each day, wearing a different color when we want. He claims that while at dinner you have to wear your magic band associated with your current resort stay. He's saying our dining plan credits won't go through on bands that have been from previous stays/annual passes. We have all of our bands linked correctly on the site. Please help in my hope to say "told ya so!" If I'm wrong it's important I'm set straight as well lol

Yup, he's wrong.

If the band is in your MDE, under your profile, you can use any of the 'active' ones available shown.

Now interchangeable between different ppl, that won't work, at least for gate entry when band + finger print is required.

I find newbies tend to 'think' the band is specific to reservations or tickets, when in fact the band is only 'Magic' linking everything together.