My magicband experience this past week.

cowanfamily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
I understood going into my trip that the magicbands were still in the testing mode. I expected some hiccups from them. The hiccups started at check in. The ones I received in the mail were no good. I stood at the counter for an hour trying to check in. 5 managers and an hour later I was finally off to my room. They did however compensate me for my waiting at check in. They credited my account $150.00. Little did I know I would log about 5 more hours during my trip at these same counters trying to figure out the problems I was having. The problem was being caused by My Disney Experience". It wasn't linking up with my bands. So everything from park tickets to fastpass + to dining reservations were screwed up. The more people that got involved, the more screwed up it became. I wanted to just open a new MDE account and be done with it. Well Disney wanted to find out how the problem originated and how were they going to fix it. Needless to say on my last day there I opened a new MDE account. When the Bands worked I loved it. The problem though is that they only worked one day. I have been told that I would be contacted by someone from Disney. I don't really see that happening.
 

copcarguyp71

Well-Known Member
After investing so much of their resources on these I would sincerely hope they will get in touch with you. During our trip 9/18-9/25 I saw a lot of people trying to use their magic bands at cash registers where they were not working.
 

HollyAD

Well-Known Member
Honestly I really don't know if I will be a Magic band fan. It seems like WDW spent too much money on this project. To me it is just one more thing to worry about when I am on vacation. Honestly I don't want to worry about ANYTHING when on vacation. Hopefully they contact you! I have been contacted before about something completely different they probably will call you. Wouldn't it be nice if they gave you more money back!?!
 

Weather_Lady

Well-Known Member
OP, I'm so sorry that your vacation was marred by Disney's newest "improvement." I hope they will do right by you and compensate you justly for the amount of your vacation time that they wasted.

We all expect a few hiccups and hassles on a vacation, but we have a right to expect that they don't come from the resort's own infrastructure!
 

jkl2000

Well-Known Member
Very sorry to hear your vacation was affected negatively. That's disappointing.

What I don't get is when problems come up, like bands not working, can't people just put their KTTW card up to the scanner instead? Or however the KTTW cards work, aren't they a fallback for if the bands fail? Can the KTTW cards be used to access your FP+ reservations when you're at the attraction?
 

PhilharMagician

Well-Known Member
Wow, I hope they get these problems fixed fast. I cannot imagine having to deal with your reservations not working for your entire trip.

Did your Magic Band work to at least open you room door?
 

cowanfamily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
The KTTW card is a backup if the bands don't work. The problem I was having was "My Disney Experience" that everything runs through wasn't transferring my info over. So it didn't matter if I used the card or the band I had the same results. The bands did open the door to my room at AOA. Until the last day that is. With all the hands that were involved a lot got screwed up. On the last day/night of our trip, only my daughters band would work. They had accidently shortened everyones trip by one day in the process. Everyone except my daughter.
 

cowanfamily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
Very sorry to hear your vacation was affected negatively. That's disappointing.

What I don't get is when problems come up, like bands not working, can't people just put their KTTW card up to the scanner instead? Or however the KTTW cards work, aren't they a fallback for if the bands fail? Can the KTTW cards be used to access your FP+ reservations when you're at the attraction?

The KTTW card can be used anywhere the band is used.
 

jkl2000

Well-Known Member
An interesting thing is that some people, like me, weren't really given a chance to opt out of the testing. I didn't receive a letter informing me of the testing until after I'd already received my magic bands. I just did what MDE told me to do about verifying the shipping address for the MBs, and entering the names and selecting colors. I could easily not have known this was something optional - if I'd done nothing, they would have given me the bands at the resort on arrival. I wonder if THEN they would have said it was optional.
The KTTW card can be used anywhere the band is used.

And was it more reliable (especially with your FP+)? Wouldn't you just resort to that immediately every time your MBs didn't work? Or did the CMs not let you?
 

cowanfamily

Well-Known Member
Original Poster
An interesting thing is that some people, like me, weren't really given a chance to opt out of the testing. I didn't receive a letter informing me of the testing until after I'd already received my magic bands. I just did what MDE told me to do about verifying the shipping address for the MBs, and entering the names and selecting colors. I could easily not have known this was something optional - if I'd done nothing, they would have given me the bands at the resort on arrival. I wonder if THEN they would have said it was optional.


And was it more reliable (especially with your FP+)? Wouldn't you just resort to that immediately every time your MBs didn't work? Or did the CMs not let you?

it had the same result. The problem was with "My Disney Experience". MDE is used to run all the info through that is sent to your band. If MDE is screwed up, everything will be screwed up. The only problem I ran into that could be solved using the card had to do with the dining plan. At check in you set up a pin number. Sometimes the pin number wouldn't work with the bands. If you used your card instead, they never asked for the pin number.
 

jkl2000

Well-Known Member
Interesting - I would think there are a lot of people who book trips without ever visiting the web site and thus have no MDE account at all. I wonder how that works. And you might have had the same problems even if you weren't testing the Magic Bands.
 

PhilharMagician

Well-Known Member
The KTTW card is a backup if the bands don't work. The problem I was having was "My Disney Experience" that everything runs through wasn't transferring my info over. So it didn't matter if I used the card or the band I had the same results. The bands did open the door to my room at AOA. Until the last day that is. With all the hands that were involved a lot got screwed up. On the last day/night of our trip, only my daughters band would work. They had accidently shortened everyones trip by one day in the process. Everyone except my daughter.

At least you can say that was your worst trip ever and the next can only be better!

I think I would have completely lost it at some point during the trip. With the cost and planning of a Disney Parks family vacation and to have them literally blow it up. :arghh: It would get ugly!:mad:
 

mweier

Well-Known Member
it had the same result. The problem was with "My Disney Experience". MDE is used to run all the info through that is sent to your band. If MDE is screwed up, everything will be screwed up.

Bummer it's still being a pain. I've heard that the magic bands are nothing more than a new way to contain the same passive RFID that's in the KTTW cards, so this makes sense if the issue is more on the MDE database side of things. I've seen some odd synch things (and haven't even gone on our trip yet) where the website MDE and the mobile app are seemingly a bit off from each other some time (ADR dates etc). Hoping they work it all out by February!
 

75disney

Well-Known Member
I had a problem with MDE over the weekend. I was on it everyday last week, setting up my FP+ and magic bands with no problems. On Sat. I tried to log in and it told me that I did not have an account. So I called tech support. A very nice men named Chevy spent 45 minutes with me on the phone working out the problem. Apparently, the computer moved my account to a different account name. No one knows why. My info was still showing up in Disney's computer. Everything finally got fixed (hopefully). If you had problems too, I wonder if it did the same thing to you. I am sorry to hear about your vacation issues.
 

mweier

Well-Known Member
@75disney: this sounds like a scaling issue that they're trying to address from a server-capacity side of things. migrating users from one server to another (or having multiple load-balanced servers) could cause some of the consistency glitches to creep in.
 

PhilharMagician

Well-Known Member
Sandy and I are APs - we will be getting Magic bands for our upcoming Nov trip.

Now - having said that? I will be carrying our AP cards, WDW printouts of ALL our dining Reservations, AND the printout of our official Disney room confirmation. I don't care about Disney's Computer System problems - I'll have hardcopy receipts for everything.

That is the only way I traveled even before the Magic Band-. I had printed copies of every reservation and each day I would carry that days ressie information and a few times I needed it. Disney's reservation system has never been what I would call bullet proof. :rolleyes:
 

G8rchamps

Well-Known Member
Sandy and I are APs - we will be getting Magic bands for our upcoming Nov trip.

Now - having said that? I will be carrying our AP cards, WDW printouts of ALL our dining Reservations, AND the printout of our official Disney room confirmation. I don't care about Disney's Computer System problems - I'll have hardcopy receipts for everything.

You and I would do just fine traveling together. Our bands worked fine last month, but I had everything with me just in case...
 

Figaro928

Well-Known Member
Sorry you had so many problem.. We had our MB's for our Sept 17-23 trip and they worked flawless. I was intially reluctant and nervous about using them but they were awesome. 5 adults 2 kids and not one hiccup. Go figure, i guess right now it's the luck of the draw.

All that being said, we did have our reservation info logged into my phone's calendar just incase which was helpful because the wifi in the parks was so slow.
 

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