Do you need to get wristbands?

Staying at the boardwalk for an upcoming trip with kids. Normally, wristbands came with the reservation, but no more. Should we buy wristbands? Or is it easy to scan everything with your phone?

I cannot comment on whether they will be needed or not. I have purchased bands for our upcoming trip just due to ease of use but I also added my tickets to my wallet on my phone just in case. I am always fearful of the app going down or being unable to access it. Hopefully someone can give you a more solid answer:)

A bit of clarification. You have this posted under “Disneyland”, but you are staying at the “Boardwalk”. The Boardwalk is at Walt Disney World, not Disneyland.

And by wristbands…are you referring to MagicBands?

MagicBands are useful if you have them, but not necessary. You can also use your phone or your room key, etc. When the MB comes in handy is if you have on-ride photos you want to get that are automatically detected, versus tapping for.

In most cases, if you have older Magic Bands, you can use those for tapping, just not for things like ride photos that you don’t tap in for.

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Sorry…it was difficult to tell which section I was posting under using the mobile site on my phone.
If I have old magic bands from an older trip in 2019, would they still work? Or do they deteriorate with time?

You will definitely be able to use them to tap in with them. However, if the battery is dead, your ride photos won’t show up automagically.

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Can anyone confirm that old (2017-2019) magic bands will still work for taps, room key, and charging to room? Not interested in photos.

Yes the tech that the tap function uses is pretty much infinite. RFID works by proximity. When a tag comes within range of a reader, the reader’s radio signal passes through the antenna, generating a voltage that activates the tag. No battery required.
The ride photo tech is different and needs a battery. The RFID in your band still works.

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I will second @ninjasherrie’s response. You can use a MagicBand for tapping indefinitely. (That is, tapstyles for the parks, entering LLs, room key, etc.)

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Approximately how long do MagicBand batteries last? And is there a way to tell if it’s dead?

It is estimated they last 2 years…but that can vary quite a bit. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to tell if the battery is dead. There are technological ways it could be done, but nothing that is easy for the average user. Mostly, you find out when your automatic photos don’t show up your PhotoPass photos! :slight_smile:

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You can also get the automatically linked ride photos if you enable the MDE app to use Bluetooth. That way you can see all the ride photos and still use an old magic band for everything else.

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My husband just used his magic band from 2015 on our trip 3 weeks ago and it worked just fine. I had added Chewie decals to it back then and he didn’t want to replace it.

We also got all of our ride photos but he was always with one of us who have newer bands so it’s likely those are what detected and linked them.

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My vocabulary just expanded!!!

I can. We used bands last week from our 2018 trip and they worked just fine for anything we had to tap. My kids used Magic Mobile on their phones.

Yes. This is most definitely. It would otherwise be impressive if the battery lasted all the way from 2015!

On this past week’s Disney Dish, Len and Jim both stated that it looks like the new Magicband+ release is near. They also believe that it will cost more than the most recent ones, currently $19.99 for a basic band (that can’t be found anywhere) and $29.99 and up for the fancy ones (that don’t do anything extra but have characters and designs on them).

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Are these supposed to interact with the statues for the 50th (that’s well underway)? Maybe this means that the statues will be here for quite a while! Hoping so.

That is what I have read, albeit it was in articles from several months ago.

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Would love to know what “soon” means! Debating whether to order them now (not many choices left) or wait for the new ones for an early May trip!

I remember doing the photo pass last trip and having photos from all the magic bands in my group show up not working well at all.
It seemed like multiple accounts linked together didn’t work well at all with photopass. Photos from certain magic bands wouldn’t show up.
Is it possible to get 2 magic bands, one for me and one for the other adult in my group and have them both tied to the exact same login? I just don’t want to lose photos from the photo pass