Hey, just so you know ... this post is now about 9 years old. Please keep that in mind as it very well may contain broken links and/or outdated information.

It’s been over a year since we were last Disney passholders (we spent the last 12 months as LegoLand passholders). Back then, the new FastPass+ and MagicBand systems were still being beta tested (and we were never chosen for the test). Our first (and only) experience with FastPass+ didn’t go very well back in late 2013 but nontheless now that the MagicBands were in wide use we were looking forward to trying them out.

As annual passholders, we didn’t get our MagicBands right away. On our first park visit (at Epcot for the Flower & Garden Festival) we turned in the vouchers we had purchased for the regular plastic credit-card like passholder tickets. We were then able to link those tickets to my My Disney Experience account via the app on my iPhone and “plan” our day.

There are pros and cons to the FastPass+ system, as we quickly learned. First, you can only choose/schedule (ahead of time) three FastPasses a day for a single park. After those “expire” you can choose additional FastPasses if they are available from in-park kiosks or the app. The scheduling seems a bit restrictive to me. You can choose your “must-do” activities and see what times are assigned to you. You get a few options, but some times may not necessarily include the rides/attractions you originally selected. I can imagine this gets more complicated with large parties.  Passholders can schedule FastPasses up to 30 days in advance, and hotel guests can schedule up to 60 days in advance. We’ve only used the system this one time so we’ll have to see how it works on future trips to the parks.

After we got home we were able to go online and customize our MagicBand order. You can pick your color and what name you want printed on the back. A few days later, a nice little box arrived with our customized bands. Like the plastic tickets, the MagicBands are linked to your Disney account and can be used for park admission, FastPass+ admission, even in-park purchases when linked to your credit card (but currently only if you’re staying in a Disney hotel). The bands contain a long-range RFID chip, which some people say can be used to track your movements in the park. There’s no personal information stored on the band, though. You can read more about the technology in the MagicBands here and here.

If you’re not a passholder and not staying at a Disney resort, you can purchase your own MagicBands for $13 and, of course, there are all sorts of ways to spend more money to customize your MagicBand even further. Here’s something a little crazy: every time you make a hotel reservation, you can ship yourself more MagicBands. If you don’t log on to customize them before your trip, you can just pick them up uncustomized (color selection, name) at the front desk when you check in. You can have up to 7 MagicBands linked to your account and you can activate/inactivate them as needed. This seems a little wasteful, but shows how “all-in” with this technology Disney is going.