Question regarding Magicbands for off site guests and My Disney Experience

[das1022]

Hello everyone,

My apologies if this question is contained in another thread. My question is regarding purchasing magic bands for off site guests and how they need to interact with My Disney Experience. I will be traveling in June with a large party of roughly 10 people. I have created profiles for each of them under my account in MDE so that I can take care of FP+ reservations for the group (they won't be going to the parks enough in the future to warrant their own accounts and I wanted to ensure that we can all get the same time slots). If individuals in my party want to purchase and use a Magic Band will they have to have their own MDE account or can the band simply be added to their profile I created under my account? Thanks for the help!

 

[Rob562]

Before dealing with FP+ and Magic Bands, you'll have to link the park tickets to each person's profile.

Once that's done, each person can then buy their own Band, if they want. They'll just have to have their park ticket handy. When the CM scans the ticket, it will recognize that it's linked to the MDE profile and then link the Band to that profile. From that point on, the person can use the RFID ticket and the Band interchangeably.

For those who don't want to get a Band, they can use their park ticket to access their FP+ reservations.

As a side note, if someone that you've created a profile for eventually wants to take control of their profile at some point in the future (for a future trip, for example), you just have to click the "Invite to plan and share" button next to their name in your Friends & Family list. Once they accept and set up their profile, all of the Bands, tickets, etc are moved over and are controlled by them.

Not directly pertinent to your question, but taking an educated guess, I'd guess that every ticket Disney sells is actually linked to a "ghost" profile. Since FP+ reservations are an aspect of the profile and now specifically the ticket, any FP+ reservations made in-park with an unlinked ticket would live on that ghost profile. That's also how day guests could link up various tickets using the kiosks and make FP+ reservations as a group.
Then once you try and link that ticket to an existing MDE profile, it'll take any information on the "ghost" profile (FP+ reservations you may have already made in-park) and move it into the newly-created profile.

-Rob

 

[NutsForFlorida]

We received our Magic Bands for our trip coming up. After our trip is over, could we use those same bands for future trips or will Disney send us new ones?

 

[got2lovedisney]

Yes you can reuse your bands and yes Disney is sending out new ones. So far the system isn't smart enough to know that I already have 3 bands and it's getting ready to send me a 4th.

 

[Rob562]

Most of the functions of the Bands will continue to work indefinitely. Any application where you specifically have to touch the Band to a reader (park entrance, FP+, kiosks, tap-to-pay, etc) will work for a long time.

The only aspect of the Band that has a shelf-life is the battery that powers only one of the internal antennas. That antenna is the one that broadcasts the Band's serial number for long-distance readers to "see" it. That's how Space Mountain knows who is in a rocket and links the on-ride photo to that Band. And it's how there will eventually be some type of personalization in the "goodbye" room of Small World.

But 90% of the functions you'd currently use the Band for will work for quite a long time.

-Rob