Photopass experience

[McGoofy]

I often see Photopass questions in this section, and I wanted to share my experience from this past May. Our family got one Photopass the very first day that we were in the park. We used it everywhere and just kept adding the photos at all of the parks on to the one pass. We got great family pictures in front of all the park icons, in front of rides, with characters, etc. At EPCOT, photographers were always available at the different countries. We nabbed one photographer to get candid shots of our son participating in the ladybug release during the Flower Festival at EPCOT. Needless to say, we got several excellent professional photos, and we were able to get our entire family in many of them (since nobody had to sit out to take the picture!). When we got home, we could type in the one Photopass number and look at all of the great Photopass pictures online for 30 days. This is completely free. You can even e-mail them for others to view. But here is the best part of my story. I thought about ordering the photo CD that allows you to have access to all of your photos for $125. However, I decided to try the new Photopass album instead. Basically, it is digital scrapbooking. I could upload my own photos that we had taken on our camera plus had access to all of the Photopass photos. I arranged them in an album with the layouts and Disney backgrounds that I chose. I was able to add my own captions. On the Photopass photos I could even add park icons, character autographs, dates, etc... I ran over the page limit, so I did have to buy additional pages. However, with all of the extra pages, tax, and shipping my total was $87, much cheaper than the CD. (I just can't print the photos or e-mail the photos.) So anyhow, last Saturday I finished my album and hit the "order" button. Yesterday, only 6 days later, it arrived at my house. It is absolutely beautiful. It is in an engraved leather bound cover. In fact, it is printed by Josten's--the famous yearbook printers. The pages turned out wonderful, and I have some of the best photos ever from any of our Disney trips. It is in my opinion, the best souvenier that I could ever have. So all that to say, take advantage of the Photopass photographers. You can find them all over the parks, and they will take pictures of whatever you would like them to (within reason!).:mickey:

[mickey-mouse35]

What a wonderful remembrance of your trip--can't wait to that in October. A few questions, as we've never done PhotoPass before:
* what does the photopass look like that they give you--is it something you attach to your keychain or ID?
* how does it work--is it like a memory card that you hand to castmember before taking photo and then they hand back to you?
* how do you find the CM photographers--do they have certain uniforms or way to identify themselves?

We don't own a digital camera--just the old-fashioned kind and a camcorder. I think we'll need to invest in one, though! :D

[McGoofy]

What a wonderful remembrance of your trip--can't wait to that in October. A few questions, as we've never done PhotoPass before:
* what does the photopass look like that they give you--is it something you attach to your keychain or ID?
* how does it work--is it like a memory card that you hand to castmember before taking photo and then they hand back to you?
* how do you find the CM photographers--do they have certain uniforms or way to identify themselves?

We don't own a digital camera--just the old-fashioned kind and a camcorder. I think we'll need to invest in one, though! :D

The actual photopass is just a thin card--stronger than paper, yet not quite plastic--not sure what this material is. It is almost the same size as your tickets, so you can keep your photopass wherever you keep your tickets. It has numbers on the back that identify your card, and the photographer scans it before taking photos so that your photos are linked to that card. After they take your photos, they hand it back to you. You can use more than one card, but it just makes sense to keep everything all together on one card. When you get home, all you do is type in the card number, and you can type in as many cards as you want. Disney photographers are easy to find. You will see them all over the place. When I was there, they had on blue shorts, ivory shirts, and tan vests that said "Disney photographer" on them. Oh, and let's not forget the big camera that was hanging around their necks! :mickey:

[KAJUNKING]

this is the first ive heard of the scrap book and it sounds like a good idea, we did take advantage of photopass on our last trip and got the cd, even for $100 it was still worth it imho

[tinksmom02]

I'm so glad you enjoyed your scrapbook! I saw that when I got home, but I'd already purchased a photo album for my pics. So good to hear that your experience was a positive one!

Might have to look into the scrapbook for next time...

[Disney Debra]

We just came back from Disney World last Sat. I think that the photopass is a wonderful idea! My DH & I had about 40 pics taken (also with some of my husband's co-workers) and they turned out great! One of the neatest pics we had taken was one involving Tinkerbell that a lady told me about. There were 3 of us in front of the castle and this lady said ask the photographer about getting your pic made with Tink. We all three put one of our hands on top of the other person's hand (palm turned upwards like we were holding something). The photographer told us to look at our hand and look surprised. When the pic is being developed they manually add Tinker Bell in the palm of the top person's hand. It was great! My favorite pic. I would definitely advise anyone, especially with children, to have this picture done! There's always something "MAGICAL" going on at Disney World!!!

[January-2007]

Wow, it sounds like you really did get an amazing product there! So glad your experience was well, thanks for sharing!

[Lizzie]

Wow! I didn't know about the digital scrapbooking. It sounds like yours turned out great. I am going to have to look into that for our next trip.

[Lizzie]

Can I ask you how many pictures you fit into your album?

[dolphinmickey9170]

The scrapbook is 20 pages and you can choose 1 to 5 pix per page. So you could have 20 pix or 100 pix. The book is 69.95 for unlimited use of your uploaded pix from your own camera and unlimited use of photopass pix they take in the park and unlimited use of several special photos that are on the website of some characters and attractions. They are all awesome!! If you need to add more than the 20 pages included, it is 1.49 per page. The front cover is embossed in silver with whatever you choose, your name, the date, whatever. I am currently working on mine. You can save it and continue working on it as you wish. Just remember to do so within the 30 days. There are other options as well. You can purchase cards to send, like christmas cards with a pic, the cd, the scrapbook or another type of photo book. Just go to photopass.com You can check out the store even if you don't have a photopass card now. Then you can plan ahead at what you want to do. They have so many different backgrounds and layouts. It's a blast!!

Also, one word of advice. Take a digital pix of the back of your card. If you lose it....they can look it up for you in the photoshop and get you another card. If you don't have a pix of it, they will not be able to find it and you will have lost everything.

To answer a previous question, you will see the CM dressed in shorts and a white shirt with a khaki colored vest on that says "Photopass" on it. You will also see a "HUGE" camera around their neck and a laser card reader on their hip. This is how they scan your card after they take your pix. Then they hand the card back and you go about your merry way. Another suggestion is do NOT keep this card with your tix. You will be in and out of that space where you keep your cards dozens of times a day and this opens up the chance of you losing your tix. Don't let that happen. Keep the photopass in a separate place.

You can check out your pix at the photoshop in the parks and it does NOT count against your 30 days. So you can view your pix before you go home. The 30 days starts when you enter the digits from the back into the website.

Hope this helps everyone!!

54 more days til the next trip and
181 days til our christmas trip!!

[mickey-mouse35]

Just visited www.disneyphotopass.com, and this is AWESOME!!! Love the scrapbook idea as well as the photo cards--will be great for Christmas!! Can't wait to check it out. Thanks for the info! :mickey:

[Lizzie]

Okay so I think I am going to have to do this after our next trip. If not just for us for the parents for Christmas.

[auntfrannie]

Thanks SO MUCH for sharing the info about the digital scrapbooks! I've used the park photopass in the past but the digital scrapbook is new to me. It looks great!

[McGoofy]

Can I ask you how many pictures you fit into your album?

Dolphin Mickey already posted the info that is listed on the website, but I thought I would add a little info.

Personally, my book has 32 pages, so I went over the included number by 12 pages. However, I didn't want to cram pictures together. What I mean is the more pics that you put on a page, the smaller the pics are. So, I had a quite a few of the Photopass pics that were really good that deserved to be on the page by themself. That comes out to be a 5x7 photo when you do that. Most of my pics are either 3x5 or 4x6, but I do have some that are only 2x3. In total, on my 32 pages I have a total of 85 pictures. I added a lot of captions as well.

I totally wish I could take a picture of this and a page or 2 of the inside of the album to post here!!

[dolphinmickey9170]

Dolphin Mickey already posted the info that is listed on the website, but I thought I would add a little info.

Personally, my book has 32 pages, so I went over the included number by 12 pages. However, I didn't want to cram pictures together. What I mean is the more pics that you put on a page, the smaller the pics are. So, I had a quite a few of the Photopass pics that were really good that deserved to be on the page by themself. That comes out to be a 5x7 photo when you do that. Most of my pics are either 3x5 or 4x6, but I do have some that are only 2x3. In total, on my 32 pages I have a total of 85 pictures. I added a lot of captions as well.

I totally wish I could take a picture of this and a page or 2 of the inside of the album to post here!!

Thanks Tara for the info on the sizes of pix. That I did not know. I guess I will be changing mine around a bit before I purchase!!

[shan-ash]

The scrapebooks sound great. We got the CD last year, but I have a question about the add-on captions. Can you do the captions both at the parks and the website? Thanks!

[wilshade]

I was there when they first brought Photopass out for testing. They were still finding their way with then. Even still, I found it to be a great experience.

The photographers were great CMs as were the folks in the camera centers of the various parks.

It is good to see then continue to make good and sound improvments to an excellent concept.

[McGoofy]

The scrapebooks sound great. We got the CD last year, but I have a question about the add-on captions. Can you do the captions both at the parks and the website? Thanks!


At the parks and on the website, if you just purchase the photo, you can add various icons, characters, characters autographs, the year, etc... on to the actual photo. However, you cannot add captions. The captions that I referred to are the words that you can type by the pictures in the scrapbook. Then when the album is printed, it is personalized with your journaling. You also can choose not to journal with the photos. I varied mine. Some pages had journaling and some did not. The amount of journaling that you do is based on the layout of your photos. For example, if you have a layout of 5 pictures, you may be limited to only being allowed to journal up to 100 characters. I think the maximum characters on any given page was 350-400, but don't quote me on that one!:mickey: Sometimes I had to get really creative on my sentence wording because I would run past the character limit. I would just have to think of way to rephrase it that involved fewer letters.

[eLPack]

Thanks to all of you that posted about this! I go by myself and it is often hard for me to take pictures that include myself (imagine that!) though a few times I tried to use my camera's timer... very bad idea when the camera falls over while walking away.... anyway.. I was thinking of taking advantage of the photographers to get shots of me.. and myself.. and I always end up with hundreds of shots of things that sit on my computer...
PLUS.. this is a great thing to work on post vacation..
I'm psyched!:thumbsup::mickey:

[TBY2225]

Thanks for all the detailed info on the scrapbook. I think it is a great idea and I really like the idea that you can add your own photos as well. Thanks for the great post! I can't wait to try it out after our trip in September!

[johnO]

We went last February and before we went I really wanted to make better use of the photopass. I ended up getting a new camera, Cannon Dig Reb XTI, which is amazing. I was taking so many pictures it seemed like stopping and taking photopass photos would have been over the top.

I captured some amazing pictures. I'm a tech nerd and made a DVD slideshow with the photos I took and set it to Disney music. I'm know i'm tooting my own horn but it is awesome.

However, I do feel that in Sept. we willl try to make the extra effort to use the photopass.

[BigDisneyDad]

Does it cost anything to get a photopass or do you just pay for the photos and stuff after your vacation?

[dolphinmickey9170]

Does it cost anything to get a photopass or do you just pay for the photos and stuff after your vacation?
You pay at the end of your vacation, once you are home you take the card, go to disneyphotopass.com and enter the numbers on the back of the card to set up an account. You then have 30 days to buy and look or you will lose them forever.

[BashfulMom]

Thank you so much for the information. I was going to skip the PhotoPass until I read this post. I am so excited about the Scrapbook option.

Thanks again.

:thumbsup:

[DizNee143]

thank you soo much for sharing your story..i went and took a look at the website..i cant wait to go to disney so i can come back and make my our photo album book thing!! lol...its looks really nice...i cant wait now!!! :mickey:

[MouseManiac]

Thanks for sharing about the Scrapbook! I'll definitely do one for our upcoming trip! Last year we did the PhotoPass Movie, which cost just under $50, and I'll do that again too!

It sounds like the movie is arraigned similarly to the Photo Album, where you drag your Photopass and uploaded shots into boxes that orchestrate the flow of the video, then run a sample play to see how it looks.

The end result is wonderful! Now we can pop in the movie anytime the kids want a "trip" and relive the whole thing all over again. Plus, the PhotoPass shots are the only ones with me, the family photographer, in them!!:cool:

[McGoofy]

Mouse Manic mentioned something about previewing the project, and that reminded me of something else. When you click "preview" to see what you have in your saved album so far, it will show you your pictures and how you have them arranged. One thing that worried me is that on the preview it only showed part of my journaling. I was worried that not all of my captions were going to show up on the page even though I had not gone over the character number limit yet. As it turned out, it was not based on what showed up in the preview. As long as you have not gone over the allowed number of characters, everything you type for a caption will be printed in your album. I am not sure why it does not show up in the previews. Also, when you type captions, there is no spell check. One recomendation is to type your captions in another program that has spellcheck and then cut and paste your captions into your album. You don't want to pay that much for something and regret finding a spelling error after it has been printed and sent to your house! :mickey:

[bshandsauby]

Stupid question here! Will the CM's still take pics for you with your own camera??

Also how much to the pictures cost??

[battle beast]

That is really good to know, and I am intrigued by it... thanks for sharing!

[Magic Smiles]

I just received my Photo pass CD - actually 2 CD as after adding the borders I had 485 photos. We also had received a PIN number for a free movie CD. That arrived today. I am not to sure whether or not I would have paid the $75 for it, but I do have to say it is GREAT. I was able to upload my own photos and use photos from the photo pass. On the movie DVD there is both the movie and a slide show of all my photos in the movie. I think that the maximum number of photos allowed was something like 112. Whatever the number I maxed out. The movie is approx 18 minutes long and there are many special effects that are not shown on the preview when creating your movie.
I also have a question about the memory book. My photopass pictures have expired online, but now that I own the CD with the pictures can I now upload the photopass pictures along with my own photos to create a book. I just didn't have time to do it in the 30 day window. After all I took 6500 pictures on this last visit.

[crltkcagle]

That is awesome! Thanks for the tip. I love pictures and took advantage of photo p ass last time. I did purchase the cd but the scrap book sounds so much better. I will definetly do this on our next trip! Now i just have to make dh, and ds's enjoy getting their picture taken!:tink:

[WDW1985]

Thanks for sharing this story about a better way to go regarding Photopass. We used the photopass on our last trip and I really found it very useful for the character meet-n-greets, however, some of the photographers were obviously better than others. They're human. This photopass system is a real money maker for WDW, but I'm glad to hear that your product was well made as it should be for that kind of money. There are other online services that do the same thing, but it's awesome to have everything from the photo right down to the binder under the same roof.

Thanks again. Maybe we'll try it on our next trip!

wdw1985
:mickey:

[Kairi_7378]

Stupid question here! Will the CM's still take pics for you with your own camera??

Also how much to the pictures cost??

Yes, the CM's are really nice about taking pictures with your own camera. Some of the ones that they took with our camera were better than those that they took with their big fancy ones.
5 by 7 pictures cost $12.95 last year. Some vacation packages come with a free 5 by 7 print.

[RoosMomKanga]

:thumbsup: Thanks!

There's just the two of us for 2 1/2 days this trip, so I ruled out the CD (even with the pre-order discount, you still have to pay to print them, and then the album cost...don't get me started on scrapbooking costs!). For our short trip without our kids it didn't seem worth it. Well, if I can add my own photos...hmmm a finished album...I don't know about any of you...but I still have photos in shoe boxes and a finished albumn sounds great!:blush:

Anyone know if they do this at DL Paris?

:idea: ...Hmmm.... Maybe you AP people will know this....Did someone say that your 30 days doesn't start until you log in your numbers? Do you think if they do this at DL Paris also that I could take my photopass there and combine the trips into one album (since we're only one day at DLP combining would be great!)? Have any of you AP people brought back a photopass and used it on another trip? Our trips are about 3 months apart...I wonder if they delete them even if you don't login?

[BelleLovesTheBeast]

Thanks for telling us about the scrapbook I was wondering about it. When my husband and I took our trip in Sept we preordered the photopass cd for $99. We loved it.

When we got home we cropped, added autographs, borders and logos. We went from 287 pictures to 506. They arrived on 2 discs. I think it is worth the money. I'll either get the CD again or try the scrapbook.

[RocknBev]

I am very interested in the Photopass. My neighbor just got back from Disney and her pictures are fabulous! I definitely like the scrapbook idea! Although it is just DH and I, what a great memory we could have and both of us could be in all of the pictures!

[MickeyChick]

Pre-order by going to the photopass web page... dunno if I'm allowed to put the URL in here or not...

anyway... after the dot com part add previsitcdplan.aspx

[TrishaTrish]

Lots of great info in this thread! Thanks so much!