Official Ticket Center question

[disneymom15]

Anyone know, if I buy my tickets from OTC, will I get the new Magic Bands. Do they have the optional colors available!

[Goofy4TheWorld]

Who knows!!

Just kidding.

If your are staying ONSITE with a reservation at a Disney resort linked to your MDE online account, you will get to pick your band colors online and Disney will ship them two you about 2 weeks before your trip (even IF you do not purchase your tickets from Disney).

If you are staying OFFSITE, you will not get bands from Disney, and as of right now you will not get bands at all.

At some point Disney will almost certainly offer bands to offsite visitors, but you will probably have to buy them yourself. But the way it stands right now, you get bands ONLY if you have a resort reservation at a participating Disney resort (and "participating" will include all Disney resorts by the end of the month).

So to answer your question, buying tickets from the OTC has no bearing on whether you get to have MagicBands, nor does it allow or disallow your use of pre-arrival FP+ reservation, it all depends on whether or not you are staying onsite. The OTC will ship your plastic cards for park passes, and those cards can later be linked to a MagicBand, should you receive one.

[disneymom15]

So, if I undertand this (yes we are staying onsite)
once I link my newly purchased tickets, Disney will send me magic bands? Will I get a notification on the My Disney Experience App or in an email?

[Goofy4TheWorld]

Having tickets does not affect you in getting bands, having a resort reservation gets you bands.

When exactly are you going?

You should see the option to customize your bands 60 days prior to your arrival, and they will ship them to you around 2-3 weeks prior to your arrival.

[Goofy4TheWorld]

I am not sure if you get any notification or not, my experience was that the MagicBands option on the MDE website suddenly became active and allowed me to make my customizations.

[faline]

I am not sure if you get any notification or not, my experience was that the MagicBands option on the MDE website suddenly became active and allowed me to make my customizations.

Yes. I logged in to the site and got a pop-up asking me to customize bands - there was no other notification.

[disneymom15]

Having tickets does not affect you in getting bands, having a resort reservation gets you bands.

When exactly are you going?

You should see the option to customize your bands 60 days prior to your arrival, and they will ship them to you around 2-3 weeks prior to your arrival.

Staying at Bay Lake, January 19 2014. We have our reservation (dining & room) linked to MDE. Some of our party (12 in all) will have AP's, the rest will have hoppers. As far as the AP's, 2 are already activated (have to link them to MDE yet). Need to purchase 4 AP's. Am I correct, need to place them on "will call" so we can link them to MDE.

[1DisneyNut]

I am pretty sure the AP's will have to be activated before you can actually link them to MDE and the Magic Bands. When you take the AP's over to guest services to activate them, they will be able to link them for you at the same time.

Just an FYI, you don't have to have the tickets prior to selecting/ordering your magic bands. None of this is actually held on the Magic Band itself, it is all in the system database. The Magic Band is really nothing more than an ID number. The way the system works is your magic bands have a radio frequency identification number which is received by the scanners. The system then querys the database for information on your ID number. It checks the ticket field, sees what type ticket you have and takes the appropriate action (subtract a day and mark the park you visted for regular tickets or mark the day and park for AP's) and then allows you to enter the park (green light).

[Goofy4TheWorld]

Staying at Bay Lake, January 19 2014. We have our reservation (dining & room) linked to MDE. Some of our party (12 in all) will have AP's, the rest will have hoppers. As far as the AP's, 2 are already activated (have to link them to MDE yet). Need to purchase 4 AP's. Am I correct, need to place them on "will call" so we can link them to MDE.

Well, Strmchsr has posted that people have experienced an inability to link AP confirmation numbers purchased buy receiving a voucher, but for some reason people who purchased an AP and had them held at Will Call got a different kind of confirmation number that could in fact be linked in MDE.

However, a very safe way to take care of this problem and guarantee FP+ availability 60 days out instead of day-of is for the 4 people needing to purchase APs once they arrive at WDW to go ahead and buy a 10-day hopper pass from Disney NOW (I assume that you can just add them to your resort reservation for these 4 people) and those tickets will open up FP+ for those 4 people at the 60-day mark. Then once they arrive at WDW they can upgrade those 10-day passes and pay only the difference between 10-days and an AP, and their final cost will be exactly the same.

You should be able to select FP+ experiences, as well as customize your MagicBands, somewhere around 11/20/2013.

If you are bored you might read my post here (http://www.intercot.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=202029)that talks about the mechanics of all of this technology ad nauseum :D.

[disneymom15]

However, a very safe way to take care of this problem and guarantee FP+ availability 60 days out instead of day-of is for the 4 people needing to purchase APs once they arrive at WDW to go ahead and buy a 10-day hopper pass from Disney NOW (I assume that you can just add them to your resort reservation for these 4 people) and those tickets will open up FP+ for those 4 people at the 60-day mark. Then once they arrive at WDW they can upgrade those 10-day passes and pay only the difference between 10-days and an AP, and their final cost will be exactly the same.

You should be able to select FP+ experiences, as well as customize your MagicBands, somewhere around 11/20/2013.
:D.

That's a good idea. Thanks so much.

[Goofy4TheWorld]

That's a good idea. Thanks so much.

Your welcome. :mickey:

I should have added that I assumed you did not need more than 10 days worth of FP+ reservations, because if you do need more than 10 days this idea will limit you to only 10 days worth. Just FYI.

[justice11]

I am in the dark on this. is this our tickets, credit card, room key?? do we have to make our fp ressies before we leave, and what if we dont know what world we are going to each day?:confused:

[Strmchsr]

I am in the dark on this. is this our tickets, credit card, room key?? do we have to make our fp ressies before we leave, and what if we dont know what world we are going to each day?:confused:

I suggest you do a quick search of the threads on Magic Bands and I'm trying to put together an FAQ for folks. But, quickly, your Magic Band will serve as everything. It will hold your room key, tickets, charging ability and Fastpass. It cannot be accessed for charging without the use of a pin code so if you lose it, no worries. Someone else can't pick it up and start using it.

For best results, you'll want to make FP choices ahead of time, but you don't have to. You can make them in the park day of via smart phone or kiosks that will centrally located in each park.

[1DisneyNut]

I am in the dark on this. is this our tickets, credit card, room key?? do we have to make our fp ressies before we leave, and what if we dont know what world we are going to each day?:confused:

To effectively use this new system, you will have to plan an itinerary months in advance and select your fastpasses for each day. Otherwise, you can select fastpasses once in the park using either the kiosks or the MDE smartphone app but since it hasn't been fully implemented yet, we have no idea how many or if any fastpass slots will be available the day you are actually in the park. If you look at dining reservations for an example to base off of, the popular rides will be booked within hours of the reservation system opening up for a particular day. Only time will tell at this point.

I can tell you this though, I have always had a full itinerary for our visits, even years ago; and could tell you 6 months or more ahead of time what park we would be in each day and could within fair certainty tell you what time we would be in each section of the park. Once this system goes live, I will be one of those that will have all my fastpasses booked as soon as the system allows because it looks like that is the only way you will be able to actually get anything done.