Jeff and Denise of the excellent Mousesteps Disney fan site were invited by a cast member friend to be their guest during a test of the new Next-Gen system at EPCOT. During the test of the neww MagicBands and MyMagic+, they put the device through the paces a typical guest might encounter on their vacation. This includes opening a resort room door, accessing attractions at Epcot via Fastpass+, changing the time of a Fastpass+ reservation via their mobile phone, and even used their MagicBand to pay for lunch.
Fascinating to see how it works and how the cast members are still learning how to interact with these guests now that they get some extra information, such as the guest’s name and if they’re celebrating a special event. Anything from this video excite you?
Everything excites me… I’m the kind of guy that hates carrying lots of stuff to the parks… theoretically with this I could take nothing but the clothes on my back!
My kids will LOVE that the cast members can address them by name! My husband – a privacy fanatic – will probably worry about security. Like what happens if you lose your band? I think the pin number is great and will free up valuable wallet space (we have 4 kids – we do NOT travel light…). So this would replace the room key for everything? We’ve never used our room keys for “buying” things inside the parks but the idea that we would have our park tickets on our arms is a great idea (because we HAVE lost those once or twice). Are they easily removable if, say, you’re a 3-year-old?
Thanks for sharing this! I have to say this does get me more excited (if that’s even possible) for my next trip. Until then, I will just live vicariously through your website!
Everyone calling me by name would bug me far too much. I hate it when they do it at Safeway (for using my card), and I wouldn’t like it much better at Disney. It feels artificial and intrusive. If you are going to use my name, I have to give it to you first. Then it’s an introduction, and personal, and genuine. Reading my name off my wristband is fake and does not feel magical.
Also, they are going to run into problems with pronunciation.
If this system is complicated enough that cast members need training in order to be able to understand it, then it’s far too complicated to implement for tens of thousands of visitors every day.
I hate going places where all the employees do is spend every minute of their time helping people do things. You lose things like friendly banter, general niceness and a relaxed atmosphere, because the employees are so occupied explaining things to people that they can’t do anything else.
Take the self-service lane at the grocery store. You don’t get to chat with a cashier; they’re spending all their time trying to make something work or fix something that went wrong. Everyone is frustrated, customer and employee alike. Eventually, you get used to it, but try to remember the first time you used such a system and then extrapolate that to tens of thousands of first-time visitors at WDW every single day…
I noticed the the band was snug on the man’s wrist. If I were obese I would find this uncomfortable on a hot, humid Florida day. I hope WDW is offering these bands in a variety of adult sizes.
Also, the name greeting novelty will fade as 1) more visitors use the bands and there are too many guests to address and 2) crowd control takes priority on high census days. And it does give me the creeps, too!
I think that the cast members addressing each guest will not last long as more and more people begin to use this, but I think they designed this feature more for kids when they meet characters so their favorite character will already know their name and if its their birthday
We just got back from a week of Magicband bliss!! It was amazing! We planned each day with the “high demand” attractions on our Disney app synced with the band. We didn’t have one glitch! Opened doors, paid for Mickey ears ice cream, cast members knew our name…it was the best Disney vacation we have ever had! No more running from fast pass to fast pass station – our mind was blown!
It’s the no more running from Fastpass station to Fastpass station I’m looking forward to the most. But it won’t matter if all the E-ticket fastpasses are gone as soon as the 60 day booking window opens.
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