Sorry if this question has been asked before, we have MagicBand+ that will be 3.5 years old when we go in April. Will these still be able to pick up the ride photos as long as they are charged or will we need to purchase new ones?
This. At least they better!
^^This. They need to be charged. That’s the beauty of the MB+ in that they will keep working for long-range things like ride photos and ride effects (e.g. seeing your name at IASW) because that battery can be recharged. We simply charged them every night.
Things that you tap do not use that battery and will keep working if it’s dead, much like regular MB.
I would’ve never guessed I’d have to charge them every nigh. Glad I stumbled on this!
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Like cellphones, how long your charged battery lasts will depend on how heavy your use is during the day. I think they could last a couple days if all you used them for was ride photos. If you used them to play games at Galaxy’s Edge, they’d drain down faster. These MB+ have an on/off switch on their back, to help make sure you have it turned off at night for instance, so it’s not trickling down in battery life before you want to use it!
If you have multiple devices to charge via USB (like these), you might want to bring along a charger with multiple USB ports, or a USB multiplier device.
I’m sure you can search online for all kinds of MB+ how-to’s. This is one site I used when I first set mine up. I’m sure you can find newer info.
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Thank you! I can see I have more research to do! I appreciate it!
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Thanks everyone! I was able to charge the ones for DH and DD but having trouble charging mine. At least I know I can still use mine to tap in and can use theirs to get ride photos.
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Come join us in the April thread in La Cava if you’d like! 
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A few things
- Make sure they are not just charge,d, but turned on!
- Make sure you charge them fully. It can take an especially long time to charge them if they drained fully. But this doesn’t mean they won’t hold a charge going forward.
- Make sure you perform a software update on the Magic Bands once you have them fully charged because there have been software updates to them relatively recently which greatly improves battery life.
As far as the software update process, you may need to try restarting your phone and/or make several attempts for the update to go through. In our case, one updated no issues. But the other one I had to make four separate attempts to update it.
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This is crazy. Whatever happened to buying a band, putting it on, and being ready to go 
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People complained that they didn’t like the fact that after two years or so, they would have to buy a new band because the battery was dead (for photos)…so Disney came out with MB+ to be rechargeable. Now people hate that they have to be recharged!
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I have honestly never charged my MB+ and it works fine for acting as park pass, paying for things, ride photos, photo pass.
I find the blinking and buzzing annoying because it’s never clear why it’s blinking or buzzing. So I just don’t t charge them. In fact I don’t even take the charger with me anymore
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There are very few rides that use the “remote” feature. Tron is one. But you can use your phone for that instead if you want! So you are right…no need to charge them at all for almost every other reason.
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This is all I do even with MB+
I can’t be bothered with the rest honestly
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Good to know that you can, in fact, just do that!
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I wish Disney would share what type of batteries are in the MB+. If they’re lithium ion batteries, like phones, they shouldn’t be stored long term at 0%.