If you’re on the fence, see if you can get in one of the shares that get organized here. When you divide the cost 6 ways, it’s a whole lot more reasonable.
first…can someone point me to where the shares are??? looking for december…
2nd, my understanding is they just upload all shots, correct?
generally when a photographer is hired, you don’t ever see all the photos and they present you with the best and that have been highly post processed. it’s amazing how much you can do in post process.
and while I know Disney is a billion dollar machine, we highly undervalue things like photography and cake making… having dabbled in both… happily pay for the service… at $169; unless they are all blurry or black, I think it is a steal to have documentation of my family trip. but probably wouldn’t pay for just hubs and me.
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Someone just starts a topic usually called “Memory Maker Share [month] [year]” and then people coordinate in there. I see existing threads through Thanksgiving, but I don’t see a December one yet. You could start one or just wait until it gets a little closer and I’m sure someone else will.
Yes, they just upload all the shots. You can edit them a bit with their tools or just download them as is and do whatever with them.
Do a share! I went with my husband in June and was eompletely unwilling to pay full price for it. I got a share going on a whim figuring it was $35…not a lot in the grand scheme of Disney, we had so much fun, and I absolutely love our pictures. I also loved actually having pictures of us that are not selfies!
I love the pictures - of course not all of them will be gems, but a decent number are. But I love meeting characters, so I guess I would see less value if that weren’t a priority. I also have some great memories interacting with the photography cast members stationed around the park (not with characters)… some of them are super funny and clearly love their job.
I think the free memory maker for UK guests is great
We found the photographers to be very good
Being able to get free ride photos also a great bonus
The photographers tend to position themselves at great photo opportunity locations as well so they do the thinking for you
Ie with the best view of Eiffel tower in the background at Epcot or the best view of the haunted tower hotel at HS etc
We have always loved MM! We have not gotten it on shorter trips because the pricetag is just too much to justify. But on longer trips we have gotten so many fantastic shots that we just could not have gotten ourselves. I just got an AP so I will have MM for the next year, so no issue. But in the future I would purchase even for shorter trips if they would come up with a pricing scheme that fit short trips.
We paid $20 or something for a share last year, and for that price it was worth it. Although WHAT a hassle to get your pictures onto a computer even if you didn’t do a share. I would never pay full price. We got some pretty good shots, but I’ll be honest that there certainly wasn’t even one AMAZING picture of my whole family. The pictures taken on our camera by the same photographer have been pretty much just as good, but we do have a DLSR.
I do fully, FULLY agree with the sentiment of “why aren’t the pictures better??” For example, many of our indoor meet & greet pictures have poor color. The photographer is in the same windowless room, with the same lighting all.day.long. I don’t understand how the white balance can be so terribly off. Same with the face shadows on the outdoor pictures. I think that Disney probably hires a little more for the personality of the photographers than the talent. As well as the fact that there seem to be plenty of people who are willing to pay full price regardless of the quality. Plus you’ve already paid by the time you see the pictures. It is frustrating for sure.
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Thanks, CJandres. I have a few questions.
- What was your strategy for starting a share?
- Did you put up a post with your dates asking if someone wanted to share it with you?
- Does one person in the group pay for it, then the others send them their share of the $$?
- Were you creeped out at all with strangers having access to your pics?
Okay, so basically, I posted a thread looking for a memory maker share in June. My trip dates were June 15-21.
Between people responding to that thread and looking around at other threads, we were able to put together a group of 5 families. One person volunteered to be in charge of the share. So he set up the “dummy” MDE account and purchased memory maker. We used paypal to pay him our part (with a little extra to cover the paypal fee).
After we paid, he gave all of us the login and pword for the dummy account so we were able to go in and “Friend” our actual MDE accounts so that we were all linked.
From there, we were ready to go.
The memory maker will capture images for 30 days. So you just have to make sure that the travel dates for all the families are within a 30 day window (ex: ours actually went from May 24-June 24, if I remember correctly). You have 45 days after your images are taken to download them.
So basically, as we each came home from our trip, we downloaded our images.
The images are sorted by park and by day in memory maker - so pretty easy to find your images, especially if you are all traveling to different parks on different days.
As for privacy, it didn’t really bother me.
- They’re Disney images and taken in a super public space; so there’s nothing really private.
- Disney owns the copywright (because they’re smart like that) anyway. So technically they could take them and do whatever they want with them.
- I never had any reason to be “weirded” out by anyone in our group. Everyone seemed lovely and just out for a bargain
One tiny tip: I set up our MDE account and my husband’s magic band was through my MDE account (he doesn’t have his own). All of the images I scanned my band for, automatically showed up they way they should. I had to email Disney to make sure that the images he scanned his band for also got shared to the dummy MDE Account.
Also, you’ll still be able to see your images in your own MDE account while you are in the parks (fun to look at them while in line on the app). You’ll just see the watermark on them there.
Hope that helps, feel free to ask anymore questions!
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I agree that the quality isn’t always brilliant, but it’s hard to get great professional pictures in under 4 minutes. We got wonderful ones at the Princess Breakfast, and I was so glad for them. Even though the quality is spotty, they’re great because you can get everyone in them, instead of awkwardly figuring out which of your family members you’re most willing to forget…
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I have memory maker for two weeks in December. I can do a 50/50 split with you if you need a group. I only like to host 2-3 per trip. $80 instead of $169
Great detail - thanks for sharing!
@Disney.Denise just messaged you!
We are getting a share together Nov 24 thru Dec 9 which can be expanded into Dec farther. You can see our info if you search Thanksgiving 2017 Memory Maker share here in touring plans.
I wasn’t overly enamored with the quality of some of the photos, yet there are pictures in there I would have paid the price tag for just to have.
The main reason we got this is, due to me being a large hater of Facebook and most other forms of social media, this was a nice easy way for My wife’s family and my family to easily see pictures of us and DD4 while we were away for nearly 3 weeks.
That being said, when you see the crowds and how quickly you are going to be pushed through the line, you honestly want them to get through the lines quickly. I was happy with the ability to snap and go and not have to worry about carrying a camera around the whole time.
We paid full price and I didn’t have time to organize a share, although it was expensive the pictures on my daughter and our family together are worth it to me (it’s also worth me being able to watch my daughter interact with the characters and the look of pure joy rather than me watch it through a 2" LED screen)
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