We were fortunate to be part of one of the first roll outs of Magic Bands last September during our stay at Disney’s Pop Century resort. Overall I am very pleased with them. We never used cash or our credit cards once. We did have to use our key to the world card at one table service restaurant, I’m not sure why though.
Things I love about Magic Bands:
- Don’t really need to carry a wallet.
- The server using our Magic Bands to locate us in Be Our Guest restaurant was so cool.
- They control everything.
- They’re always accessible. (This will be much more important on our next trip as trying to juggle money, Harry and a stroller at the same time will be challenging.)
I have two minor annoyances with the Magic Band system.
- Typing in a PIN each time is a pain. I see why it’s necessary for security but why can’t it be like some MasterCard/Visa payments that do not require a PIN for low cost items? Maybe it is because Disney doesn’t have any low cost items? 🙂
- Sometimes “getting the Mickeys to touch” is difficult. A few instances I had trouble getting the Mickey to turn green. Worse case it took me 2-3 attempts (a couple extra seconds) but maybe increasing the range of the RFID scanner a bit would help? Not really a big deal. The more I used the Magic Band the easier it was to get it to work on the first try.
Other than that, I have no other complaints about the new Magic Bands. I can’t wait to get our new ones during our fall Disney World excursion. Little Harry gets one too. We even let him pick his own colour.