My First Impressions of MyMagic+

This week in the mail received a letter from Walt Disney World inviting my group to try out MyMagic+ for an upcoming trip. My first impressions are mixed of the new program so far.

Sending a large envelope with a piece heavy stock piece of paper about the program was an interesting choice, considering it is a technology driven, online program. No email? Especially since I am already registered on the myDisneyExperience.com website. The quality of the paper and extra cost they spent to mail it unbent (it is 8.5×11 inches) was noticeable and did make it stand out in the mail, but then again anything that says Disney on it I open first of course. Below is a quick picture of the front and back.

The instructions sound easy enough, go to the website, link your reservation, ticket, customize the bands, and select FastPass+ experiences. So I went to the website and I had completed step 1 for a previous trip and already had step 2 done too. Step three was done for two of us, but one of the group needs to upgrade their annual pass still so 2/3rds of us were sort of ready. I say sort of because I renewed my Premiere Pass at Disneyland and they re-issued me a non-RFID pass, which means I need to trade it in again when I go back to Orlando. It seems almost every trip I end up at guest relations for some reason with this pass and usually once I return to Disneyland I need to do the same.. maybe some year the kinks will get worked out.

I found the myDisneyExperience website to be fairly slow responding, as usual, and I could not get it to take me to the customization page for the MagicBands. I kept going in circles verifying my addresses. After several attempts I gave up and figured I would try later. Later in the day I tried again, this time from my phone vs laptop and it worked no problem. So customized the bands, which really means choosing a color and the name you want printed on the band.

Then I moved on to the FastPass+ section. Here I hit a roadblock. Only one member of our group could reserve Fastpass+ slots. I could not since my pass is the “old” style, non RFID and our third person could not since his pass had not been purchased yet. So I cannot try out the part I was most interested in until after I visit guest relations at WDW.

I know I am an odd case with Premiere Passholders and a room only reservation but I would have thought after all the testing and years of development these cases would be handled better in the system.

A side note about myDisneyExperience. I have used the site to track reservations for my trip last spring as well as Aulani. It had all my hotel reservations listed, including a note that I will be using Magical Express, and the dining reservations I made for the upcoming trip. I thought it was fun back in March to see my April trip to WDW, August to Aulani, then December to WDW in there. I did not see the option to view previous trips. It would be interesting to see what you did on previous trips and be able to do some of your own data mining.. for example remind yourself when you last ate somewhere or experienced something. The data is there and Disney will use it, wonder if we will have access to at some point.

Overall I am looking forward to trying out the new My Magic+ system but my first impression is one of reserving judgement. I am guessing for most guests the “easy” steps work but of course I did not fall into that category and thus am not able to take full advantage of the system yet.