Stupid Guest Tricks

...in 309 days. We already have our vacation packages booked and we'll be staying at Port Orleans Riverside. We'll be down there for about 2 weeks, and while we expect to spend most of our time at Disney, we also plan to hit Sea World, Kennedy Space Center, Busch Gardens, and both Universal Studios parks.

Doing some of the early stage planning has been interesting because I've been looking into the character MagicBands and I found people complaining that the battery only lasts 2 years and isn't replaceable without giving a warning about it. I can understand the frustration with that, but they made it sound like it wouldn't work at all once the battery died which is simply not accurate.

In any case, there is still plenty of time for that kind of planning, for me anyway, the World might want to start getting ready for a dragon right away.

Planning a trip is always a fun part of the whole experience! Hope you have a great time.

It's interesting about the magic bands. As someone who always stays at a Disney resort, I get the bands included at no additional charge. It used to be that they sent new bands every single trip, then they started giving the option to use a band from a previous trip. When they made that change, they made the statement that it could only be done with bands that were a year or less older. I'm not sure why people would be saying there was no warning unless the purchased bands are marketed differently. I guess, though, if you're buying your band you might want to have the battery be replaceable.

For the most part we're done planning for now, it's so far out that there isn't much more we can do at the moment since the package is booked. At this point we're mostly considering what places we'd like to eat at and anything else we might want to do, but things are pretty well set. The only thing still in the air is if 1 person will be able to make it for part of the trip. We currently don't have them included into the packages because we know they're not likely to be able to come the full time. We've already discussed it though and decided that if they can make it we'll get a third package for their time and spread out across 3 rooms once they arrive.

I think people were complaining that they bought a special MagicBand in store and weren't told about the battery life. Ultimately the battery isn't that important to me, it just enables a secondary set of functions that wasn't even aware of until I started looking in to those complaints. Some of them are pretty cool, but not all that important to me. If I get a specialty band it will just be for the sake of having a cool band to wear and be a reminder of the trip. I would probably get another one each time too so it's not a huge issue for me.

Lasolimu wrote:...in 309 days. We already have our vacation packages booked and we'll be staying at Port Orleans Riverside. We'll be down there for about 2 weeks, and while we expect to spend most of our time at Disney, we also plan to hit Sea World, Kennedy Space Center, Busch Gardens, and both Universal Studios parks.

If you'll have a rental car, be aware that I-4 is prone to randomly congealing. Talk to a local about alternate routes.

If you won't have a car, the least expensive (practical) way to get to Sea World and Universal is by Meares bus. You need to contact them a day in advance to book. *However*, if there are four or more of you, it will be cheaper to take a taxi to those destinations.

Kennedy is over an hour away, and Busch Gardens two hours. Best approach is bunch those visits into consecutive days and rent a car for the time you'll be visiting them.

Use Magical Express, it's free, and it handles your baggage for you even if your room isn't ready on arrival. Car rentals from WDW are markedly less expensive than from the airport, plus it's generally easy to get to the location using Disney transportation.

And if you have time left to visit with your fellow SGTers, this is the place to post the invite.

Cheers,
/ Zazu /

We haven't been since magicbands were introduced, but I think I would fall into the camp of buying a new one every time. Not quite the same, but my kids love to pin trade. They get a new lanyard every time, so that they have a little souvenir of each trip. Magicbands would be the same for me.

That should be a fun trip. Wish we were going.

Zazu wrote:Kennedy is over an hour away, and Busch Gardens two hours. Best approach is bunch those visits into consecutive days and rent a car for the time you'll be visiting them.

Use Magical Express, it's free, and it handles your baggage for you even if your room isn't ready on arrival. Car rentals from WDW are markedly less expensive than from the airport, plus it's generally easy to get to the location using Disney transportation.

And if you have time left to visit with your fellow SGTers, this is the place to post the invite.

Cheers,
/ Zazu /

This is pretty much what we plan to do, use the Magical Express to get to the resort, and then rent a car from there for the time we need it.

At this point we don't have specific plans for each day, except for where we're having dinner on one of the Sundays, mostly we're just making a list of places we'd like to eat at and things like that. We opted to get park hopper tickets so we have some extra flexibility and we're not locked to a single park each day. That way we can go to whichever park we want when that day arrives without worrying about any dinner plans being somewhere else. We are getting the mid level dining plan, and we figure that since we'll be away for several days it's convenient to combine some of the table service credits to go to some of the higher end places. Still a lot of time to figure it out.

So, I happened to be in Orlando this past weekend for a non-Disney related event. Well, on my way home I had some time to kill around the airport and one of the places I looked around was the small Disney store in the central terminal. After looking around and not seeing much that interested me I looked at the small shelf of magicbands available and had a thought. If I'm coming in on a Disney vacation and want a special magicband, I'll have already ordered it online and so there wouldn't be anything exciting for me in the airport in that regard, however, if they had a Magicband on Demand station, that would be exciting! You land and start making your way to your transportation and stop into the Disney store and find that you can design your own personal magicband! Now, I realize that not everyone will know about the specialty magicbands when they come to visit, but what an exciting treat that would be for them. It could also work on the way out, tourists have some time to kill in the airport and step into the store and find 1 last chance to get a custom magicband! What a great way to commemorate their vacation!

I don't know how feasible putting one in the airport would be, but it would be pretty cool to see it there.

Plans are evolving, that's for sure. This trip is currently unaffected, but I may be upgrading my park ticket to an annual pass so my BF and I can take a trip down together around early May 2018 and it will be cheaper to upgrade than buying new tickets for me. Plus any promotions for the AP might make the trip cheaper, and therefore a little easier. This is still in preliminary planning stages, but he definitely wants to go and that would be a big help in cost.

Lasolimu wrote:... if they had a Magicband on Demand station, that would be exciting! You land and start making your way to your transportation and stop into the Disney store and find that you can design your own personal magicband!

That would require a fat chunk of infrastructure and training all of the store staff, which I don't think is likely. It would also require more staff for almost no increase in gross revenue.

Remember the backstage motto: "Two hundred departments in search of a corporation."

Best bet is to buy the special MagicBand at the airport, then have it activated at your resort (or Guest Relations).

I leave in just over 3 weeks, this is now coming up really fast! All of our dining reservations are set and fastpasses have all been selected. Magic bands should be delivered really soon too.