Magic Bands Info [include room key + ADRs + FPs, anything else? When to customize?] - Page 2 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Reading these responses, I'm a little confused. I definitely had more than one E type attraction on my fp each day with my magic band. Almost everu day at Epcot, we were able to pick Soarin, Test Track and usually mission space. I know at DHS, we had a day with RNRC, TOT and TSM. One of the days at DHS we did not have TSM (we could not get it ), but we had RNRC, TOT and Fantasmic the other day, which we thought was nice too. At AK, we had Dinosaur, Expedition Everest and Festival of the Lion King. Maybe that has changed since October?
__________________
Dina
Last edited by Happymommy; 11-27-2013 at 06:17 AM..
We found photopass was already linked to our magic bands. They used my magic band when we had our picture taken, but the absolute craziest thing was, some of our ride pictures came up on our photopass site, a few days after we got home-. The thing that sort of freaked us out, was we did not use our magic band to have the pic put on our account--- one of the pics had not been even seen by anyone in our group as we were running out of the ride to meet up with my 13 year old who does not enjoy RNRC, who was waiting for us on one of the benches outside-- we never even looked at the picture. We thought it was crazy that somehow they knew the exact car we were in. The only thing I can think of was we did use our bands to fastpass--- but still to pinpoint the exact car. The same thing happened on Splash.
This is a really fascinating development, and one I was not expecting.
Okay, tinfoil hat time:
One of the functions of Magic Bands is that they enable GPS tracking of Guests' location while in the parks; they know where your bands are, not just when they are scanned at a FP kiosk or the turnstiles or when making a purchase, but all the time. Disney has said they will allow Guests who don't like this sort of tracking to opt out of it.
It is possible that this tracking was turned on for you, and that in some cases it automatically pinpointed which ride vehicles you were on and matched that up to the time-stamped ride photo. Given the location information and time, it's not that difficult to match them up.
Another possibility is that there are RFID readers in the rides themselves, automatically matching up the Magic Band info of the riders with the appropriate ride photo, as they go through. I like this option, because it would still allow ride photos to automatically associate with the proper Photopass account, even if the GPS tracking feature is disabled on your MBs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Happymommy
Reading these responses, I'm a little confused. I definitely had more than one E type attraction on my fp each day with my magic band. Almost everu day at Epcot, we were able to pick Soarin, Test Track and usually mission space. I know at DHS, we had a day with RNRC, TOT and TSM. One of the days at DHS we did not have TSM (we could not get it ), but we had RNRC, TOT and Fantasmic the other day, which we thought was nice too. At AK, we had Dinosaur, Expedition Everest and Festival of the Lion King. Maybe that has changed since October?
Yes, the change was just made a few weeks ago, I think around the beginning of November.
Reading these responses, I'm a little confused. I definitely had more than one E type attraction on my fp each day with my magic band. Almost everu day at Epcot, we were able to pick Soarin, Test Track and usually mission space. I know at DHS, we had a day with RNRC, TOT and TSM. One of the days at DHS we did not have TSM (we could not get it ), but we had RNRC, TOT and Fantasmic the other day, which we thought was nice too. At AK, we had Dinosaur, Expedition Everest and Festival of the Lion King. Maybe that has changed since October?
My experience in November was similar to yours -- but one of the next "tests" is to limit choices to "one from column A" and "one from column B," with column A being rides like RNRC, TOT, TSMM, Soarin, TestTrack, and MissionSpace. The idea is they don't want one family hogging all the best Fast Pass attractions. So you may get Soarin next time, but then you'll have to wait in the regular line for TestTrack and MissionSpace.
It is my understanding that if you do Online Checkin you STILL have to checkin in person at your resort. When you do, you will have to cough up a government-issued photo ID like a driver's licence, and you will have to produce the credit card that you want to use for charges to the room and to pay off any balance still owing for the room (can be the same card for both). At least, that was my experience in September; we did online checking but still had to do all those things when we checked in at the "online checkin" counter at the resort when we arrived. IIRC, we even had to sign some paperwork.
We normally use online check-in and find it to be a timesaver. Just show my driver's license to receive my room assignment and welcome packet, and I'm good to go, unless I need to make changes. You alway have to show a photo ID when picking up documents. They don't want someone walzing up and giving your name (because they read it off a luggage tag) and making off with your stuff. It would be very annoying to have to straighten that out. Also, if you have a balance due on a room, online check-in won't erase that; you'll still have to hand over the plastic (or cash) to pay it off when you arrive.
Count me as another person annoyed with having to preselect FPs for our trip. I hate have having to commit to a park day when I don't know what my son will want to do (that's why we get parkhoppers). And I really wasn't thrilled to be given the manadatory "bonus" of FPs for rides like Everest in which we have zero interest. Why make us take those when there are doubtless people who would love them?
One of the functions of Magic Bands is that they enable GPS tracking of Guests' location while in the parks; they know where your bands are, not just when they are scanned at a FP kiosk or the turnstiles or when making a purchase, but all the time. Disney has said they will allow Guests who don't like this sort of tracking to opt out of it.
Um there is no GPS in the magic bands just two types of RFID. One type the signal come from a device like the ones at the turnstile and fastpass entrance. The other type sends a signal. The one that sends the signal is likely the one that they are reading for photos on rides and thats the one that needs a battery in the band hence the shelf life of the band.
__________________
You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney
Concierge at WL told me (last week) that any pix taken during a ride will be automatically added to your magicband, whether or not you get pix added to photopass accouint. And on my Disney account, I do see pix that were taken on rides (like Buzz and TestTrack). Cool (but a little strange.) The technology behind these magicbands really seems to be taking us to an entire new world in WDW.
On another note, before leaving on our trip, I also had concerns about feeling too scheduled because of pre-made FP+ plans. Because the parks were crowded during our trip, I ended up being glad that we had the FP+. It was really nice to know that we would be able to get on some rides w/o long waits. True, I wish we could have completely open choices/no limitations as to what we choose. Maybe, on-site guests will end up having more choices/freedom (another perk for staying on the property?) That would be an awesome perk!
And we were able to make last-minute changes to our FP+, almost every day. While it wasn't perfect, there were not as many limitations as I had anticipated.
Actually, the only real "problem" we had was when a concierge accidentally deleted our FP+ for the current day. She was (finally) able to fix everything, but because it took so long, and because she had to change our plans quite significanty (in terms of times), she gave us a bonus FP+ (we got Soarin' and TestTrack!). So, apparently, with the right connections, four FP+ can be put on a magicband. So who knows what the future holds!
I have a question regarding the only being able to Fastpass+ one major attraction daily. If I go to Epcot on two different days, can I get FP for TT one day and one for Soarin on the other?
Is there any flexibility on using it in multiple parks if you have a hopper?
Sorry if this was covered. I tried to read through most of the posts but my lunch hour is over in two minutes, LOL.
[QUOTE=bcuinohio;4260146]I have a question regarding the only being able to Fastpass+ one major attraction daily. If I go to Epcot on two different days, can I get FP for TT one day and one for Soarin on the other?/QUOTE]
Yes it is just one headliner per day, on multiple days you can pick different ones. Just something to keep in mind that may only be temporary until they get rid of paper fastpasses.
Quote:
Originally Posted by bcuinohio
Is there any flexibility on using it in multiple parks if you have a hopper?
Sorry if this was covered. I tried to read through most of the posts but my lunch hour is over in two minutes, LOL.
you can only get fastpass + in one park per day right now.
__________________
You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make the dream a reality.
- Walt Disney
I have a question regarding the only being able to Fastpass+ one major attraction daily. If I go to Epcot on two different days, can I get FP for TT one day and one for Soarin on the other?/QUOTE]
Yes it is just one headliner per day, on multiple days you can pick different ones. Just something to keep in mind that may only be temporary until they get rid of paper fastpasses.
you can only get fastpass + in one park per day right now.
Registered Message Board Members save 30% off PassPorter guidebooks! When you register you'll have access to a discount coupon good for 30% off the list price of PassPorter books in our online store.
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Linear Mode
