Hi Claudia! Welcome to planDisney. I'm happy to answer your question today about my favorite place, the
Walt Disney World Resort!
MagicBands can be a convenient and fashionable way to enter the parks, open your
Disney Resorts Collection Hotel room, and charge items back to your room. You simply put on your band each morning and go! Who knew magic was that easy?!
MagicBands and tickets get linked to individuals in your
My Disney Experience account. Once a MagicBand has been
linked to a person, all
theme park tickets assigned to that person are linked to the MagicBand. So you will not have to link tickets each day. Simply purchase your tickets, link them to the appropriate Guests, and as long as the MagicBand is also linked to those people, you should be all set! That being said, the typical lifespan of a MagicBand is 2-3 years so it may be time to replace your current MagicBands, even if they say "Active" on the site.
Many people have used MagicBands after 2-3 years and had no problems so yours may still work. However, the last thing you'd want is to try to tap into the parks and have them not work. So you have a few options:
- When you get to the parks, go to Guest Relations and ask for a card for each of the members of your travel party. These cards can be used just like a MagicBand. Try to tap into the park with your current MagicBands, and if they don't work, switch to the cards and now you know! You can always purchase new MagicBands at many of the merchandise locations around the resort.
- Purchase new MagicBands for each member of your travel party through your My Disney Experience account. Select the "My MagicBands and Cards" option under the My Disney Experience menu. At this time, if you do this 11 or more days before your arrival date, you'll not only get a discount on your purchase but it will be mailed to your home ahead of time!
- Purchase new MagicBands on shopDisney before your trip, link them to each person, and use them if your old ones don't work.
My recommendation would be to go with Option 2. One of the biggest reasons I say this is that since you last purchased your MagicBands, there has been a wonderful new version that has been released called
MagicBand+. These new bands do everything the previous iterations did, but they also interact with the parks! You can use them to interact with the
statues around the parks and they will light up and vibrate with certain attractions and
nighttime spectaculars too. They are definitely an upgrade!
Claudia, I hope you have a wonderful visit to the resort. Be sure to
reach out to me again in the future should you have any other questions.
You are the magic,
Matt