Hello, Kelly,
I'm happy to share how my family manages our MagicBands+ when switching between coasts as well as go over the gotchas too.
First, it's helpful to note that the Disneyland Resort doesn't have
Family & Friends Lists like you see in Disney World's
My Disney Experience. So MagicBands+ are handled somewhat differently. In either case, a MagicBand+ is linked to a given account. But for Disney World, a linked band is then assigned to a particular Guest. That could be the Guest profile of the account owner. Or it could be a profile managed by that account, such as a child or other Guest who doesn't have an account of their own. But since Disneyland doesn't use Family & Friends Lists, a MagicBand+ linked to a Disneyland account is assigned to a ticket or pass instead of to a Guest.
To link a MagicBand+ to your Disneyland account, open the MagicBand+ screen of the
Disneyland mobile app, use the '+' button in the upper right corner, make sure you're on the "Tap" tab, then tap the "Open Scanner to Link" button. Or you may choose to manually type in the ID printed on the back side of your band on the "Type ID" tab of the "Link to Account" screen.
If you see the message "This MagicBand+ has already been claimed," the account that already has that band linked to it must first unlink it before it can be linked to your Disneyland account. For example, if your husband has his own Disney World My Disney Experience account and his MagicBand+ is linked to his account and assigned to his own Guest profile from there, he would need to unlink his band from his account first before you could link it to your account. To do that, he would need to install and open the Disneyland app, find his band on the MagicBand+ screen, tap the image of the band, then use the "Unlink" button. When doing this step, I sometimes accidentally tap the assigned ticket/pass line or the "Assign to a Ticket or Magic Key pass" line instead of the picture of the band. And after tapping the picture, there may still be a carousel to scroll through if there are multiple bands linked to that account.
After linking a MagicBand+ to your account, it's time to assign it to a given ticket or pass. In the Disneyland app, you may change these assignments as much as you'd like. For example, if two members of your party would like to swap bands to better accessorize with their unique
Disney bounding attire, you could quickly make that change in the app. A MagicBand+ can only be assigned to one ticket or pass at a time. That means if a Guest has both a regular
theme park ticket and a
special event ticket, they would need to have their MagicBand+ reassigned to the right ticket when switching between day use of the regular park ticket and evening use of the special event ticket.
Tony's Tip: After you are done with your trip to The Happiest Place on Earth, don't forget to set things back the way they were before if you plan to use your bands at The Most Magical Place on Earth again later. When my wife and I go to the Disneyland Resort, our Magic Key passes are both linked to my Disneyland account. So that's where we link both of our bands too. But we have our Disney World Annual Passes linked to our separate My Disney Experience accounts. So we need to remember to re-link my wife's MagicBand+ to her Disney World account when we go back to Florida.
I hope that helps with your MagicBand+ situation, Kelly. We are happy to help if you have any more Disney parks and experience questions.
See ya real soon!
~Tony