MagicBand Upgrades Now Available (Back in Stock: Star Wars Land, Figment & More!)
Premium MagicBand upgrades are now available for pre-arrival Walt Disney World resort hotel guests and Annual Passholders. In this post, we’ll walk you through the process via the My Disney Experience app and DisneyWorld.com with screenshots–and show you all of the 40+ themed designs that are available when the inventory is restocked. (Last updated August 7, 2019.)
The new upgrade process just appeared in My Disney Experience, and gives guests the option to upgrade from a complimentary solid-color MagicBand to one of more than 30 new choices featuring favorite Disney characters and designs at a discounted price.
Walt Disney World started with a total of 43 paid options, but new options have been added to the inventory since then, while others have seemingly vanished. Most of these cost $10, while others are $15 or more. We’ve now updated this post a few times with screenshots of the new MagicBands, plus info, and troubleshooting tips for what has proven to be a frustrating process…
August 7, 2019 Update: After every single upgrade option sold out within a day of this upgrade option going live, many options are starting to return to the inventory, with a range of new choices also being added on a regular basis.
Recent additions include a couple of new Halloween designs, Toy Story Land, Figment, Spaceship Earth, and various movies. There’s also Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, which originally debuted with a non-discounted price of $29.99, but has since been corrected to reflect the $15 price. Not bad, given that you’re likely to pay double that and deal with a line in the gift shops for a Star Wars Land MagicBand on opening day.
In addition to these designs, we’ve seen a variety of other options coming in and out of stock the last couple weeks. These include it’s a small world, Disney Vacation Club, Haunted Mansion, and a variety of other movie and attraction designs. Here’s a look at everything that’s currently available, as of August 7, 2019 at 9:20 am:
TROUBLESHOOTING: We cannot stress enough that this system is still having a tremendous amount of problems, as you’ll see if you read the comments to this post. If you’re having trouble completing the selection process, or getting this to work, we’d recommend using the desktop site instead of the My Disney Experience app or mobile site.
Additionally, if the desktop version of DisneyWorld.com won’t work for you, try private browsing, incognito mode, or a different browser entirely. We’ve found that this process gets hung up on several different pages (including the selection and checkout process) and having a ‘clean’ browser will often resolve these issues. It’s not foolproof, but if you’re finding that things become unavailable right after you select them, that’s one explanation as to why.
If you’re having issues with inventory…there’s no great solution to that. We’d recommend watching the site, checking each morning for the day’s restocks, and ordering your MagicBands when you see a ‘good enough’ selection of MagicBands that appeal to you. Additionally, people are reporting issues with their orders actually shipping, but this seems to be a sporadic problem.
Judging by the response on all corners of the internet, the MagicBand update offer was incredibly popular, and likely exceeded Disney’s internal projections for demand. (And obviously, the inventory on hand.)
If your Walt Disney World vacation is not in the near future, we’d recommend being patient and waiting for a design you actually want. Now that Disney has a more accurate understanding of demand, they are (hopefully) more likely to increase the inventory to an adequate level to satisfy the incredible demand.
This could take some time, but anyone traveling in Fall 2019 or later should be fine to wait and save yourself the headache. We’ll keep you posted as more options come back in stock.
While we aren’t huge into Magic Bands, this will undoubtedly have collectors and character fans excited, as it means acquiring a new design for what amounts to $15 off. If you liked unique designs and already have a drawer full of the ‘standard’ colors from past Walt Disney World trips, jumping at the up-charge certainly makes sense.
Personally, I’ll probably just stick to the single, solid blue MagicBand that I’ve been using for the past several years…which itself replaced a different blue one that had to be “retired” because it was too dirty.
Not that you care about that. Anyway, here’s how the process works…
After clicking the “My MagicBands and Cards” link below the My Disney Experience drop-down on DisneyWorld.com or the “Choose MagicBands” button on your resort reservation, you’ll see the above screen.
As you can see, there’s a message on the screen indicating that the new upgrade options can be shipped to guests’ homes (U.S. addresses only) if ordered 11 or more days ahead of arrival. They can be personalized if done so at least 6 or more days ahead of arrival.
Once you click the “Choose My MagicBands” button, the above screen appears…once. I started this on my phone and continued via desktop (where I didn’t see it again), which is why it’s the only mobile screenshot here.
This is what appears next, and once you hit “Select” the screen scrolls down on the same page, revealing all of this:
Through the magic of Photoshop, I combined every single page into a single view, so you could see each character and attraction-themed MagicBand.
Above is closer look at a single page, along with what you see when you hover over the MagicBand you want to select.
No Figment or Country Bear Jamboree, but ya can’t win ’em all. Hopefully, over time new designs will be added as part of special promotions, seasonal events, and that sort of thing. (I presume the ‘best’ designs that Walt Disney World believes will sell to collectors and enthusiasts will remain exclusive to stores, where they can be sold at full price.)
If I were going to order anything, it’d be this Spaceship Earth design. It goes nicely with my collection of ~372 grey Magic Bands.
Once selected, you arrive at this complete purchase screen where you can change your name. I didn’t buy this as I don’t really want it, but that’s the process!
It’s hard to believe that the MagicBand has been around for five years, and even the MagicBand 2.0 version has now been around for a few years. I still remember years ago, hearing rumors about the devices being tested and debating on forums whether the whole thing was a good idea.
Now, they feel like a normal, established part of the Walt Disney World experience. (It’s also interesting to see how Disneyland has iterated on the whole concept of My Disney Experience and its technology, but that’s another topic for another post!)
As a heads up, this process was not without its share of hiccups. Walt Disney World’s app and site both crashed several times on me at various stages, and it ended up taking about 15 minutes to get through to the final screen. As with any discount release day or other times when there’s high demand on Disney’s servers, errors are to be expected.
We assume there’s a ton of pent-up demand for these Magic Band upgrades, and people are racing to order them all at once. None of these are going to “sell out” anytime soon (they’re all open editions), so if your Walt Disney World trip is not coming up in the immediate future, you might want to hold off on ordering for a few days.
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YOUR THOUGHTS
What do you think of the new MagicBand upgrade options? Will you be paying the $10 premium for one of these themed designs? Any specific design catch your eye? Do you cynically think this is just a lame cash-grab? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback—even when you disagree with us—is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
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Well, I’m not sure who noticed, but there are no customized bands on the site today. I’m wondering if Disney pulled them until they could fix this mess!
Yes i have been checking multiple times per day for the past week and got on this morning and nothing shows up except for the standard free colors.
I was on this morning about 8am ET, and there were some premiums, not a ton though.
Just checked the site showed 30 bands to choose from to tried my top 5 and all sold out of course. Problem not Solved
Thought I’d look on my mobile and found the same thing; verified on laptop. Hmm, maybe Disney magic will make this better … Can dream!
“Poor unfortunate souls” is how I feel! Still trying and will continue. Sept will be off property but free band with Annual Pass activation, so I can hold out for awhile looking toward on-property Feb visit. Really want a Premium for my hubby – disabled after our last visit and may be for life. Sept is a test trip – can he do WDW disabled and enjoy it?
I do feel for everyone close to their trips and without better options! After a frustrating week on MDE, I found this site by googling “magicband premium upgrade a scam” – that’s how I was feeling!! Was Disney (unmagically) using premium upgrade simply as a marketing ploy? Show us these bands for $10, we fall in love and finally give up and pay full price? Glad to hear some of you have been successful! I’ll keep trying and trying until I’m pushed to make that decision.
A wonderful lady called Donna has helped me out at Disney so I have 5 upgraded bands hooray (3 with our names and 2 without but no one sees them) so I am happy! Taken all day but be worth it when we get to the reception desk! Phew
Actually my order was placed on July 30th and 2 emails confirmations including 1 on 2nd August to confirm my magic bands will be at my hotel – then today no magic bands! for when we arrive on 21st of August (waste of time so disappointed) trying to sort but only got until tomorrow to re-order online for them to be there with our names on them!
Give me strength!! So on this site I indicated that I had managed to secure bands for a family of 5 (none of our 1st or 2nd choices but happy to have any) on 5th August and tipped everyone off as to the best time of day to try – tonight I received 3 emails telling me they cannot fulfill my order a week before we arrive (as a UK resident mine get sent directly to the hotel!) no indication of which 3 it is full of Disney fluffy info before they got to the point – to say I am hugely gutted is putting it mildly I lived and breathed trying to get the 5 I did but to be informed 10 days later and a week before we travel they are a no go I am disappointed that the Disney magic has left me so sad! Currently trying to get through to Disney to discuss but gutted what’s the betting it’s the 3 people who most wanted a magic band that hasn’t got a personalised one – so moral of the story an order confirmation is NOT a confirmation!
I’ve been trying to get a specific Magic Band upgrade. I reloaded the page constantly between 11:40 and 11:45 AM, with five seconds elapsing between each reload. (I’d heard that’s the time when they restock.) The band I wanted hadn’t been there for the past hour. Then, somewhere around 11:44, it showed up and I chose it … and it said “sold out”!!! How can it sell out within five seconds??? This is so ridiculous.
I’ve had the same issue numerous times. I have written and phoned Disney Guest services and others. Now, we have bands that were not our choices waiting for us at our hotel. We were told that if we ordered the plain coloured bands we could upgrade to a themed one that we want, should one become available. Not so. Everytime we log on it says that our order is being finalized and does not allow us to look at any options. This despite being told bands were already enroute to the hotel for our stay next week. And…..we have had no response to the emails we sent asking for a solution. I love Disney and have never had any issues….until now. If they know there is an issue, they need to place a statement online and respond to guest’s questions.
I agree. They should let us know SOMETHING. We have been WDW passholders for many years and already have multiple bands in each (free) color, both in the old and new design. It would have been nice to get a printed band for a change without having to pay the outrageous full price. We still have plenty of time before we have to make a final choice, so I guess I’ll just wait and see what happens. But at this rate, it looks like it will be a boring generic band again. Not a very nice way to treat guests who are paying a lot of money to be there. I hope you wind up getting the bands you want! 🙂
Don’t give up! Last week I was finally able to snag two Haunted Mansion bands after weeks of attempts to upgrade. I got through right before 9:40 am on a Saturday so I don’t think the reload at 45 minutes past the hour is accurate. The bands arrived today and were correct. Good luck everyone!
Just to give everyone an update; after sending two emails regarding this situation to WDW guest services, I received a call. The young lady acknowledged it was a mess and said they were working on it. But, she also gave me two good options; one was to call Merchandise Guest Services and they would work with you to get some bands from ShopDisney at the discounted price (this is mostly for people within a month of leaving). Second, she said she could give me a folio credit and I could buy them when I got to Disney with that credit. That’s not exactly the same thing; but I appreciated them helping.
She also indicated that many recommendations and suggestions have been pushed to the team regarding making this more like a Fastpass window to try to fix the demand/supply issues.
You must be lucky or blessed because I just spoke with the internet help desk and guest services. Both told me that they are not doing this, that they were offering the voucher option in the very beginning when the promotion first started and there were inventory issues, but they are no longer offering this to anyone at this time. My response was, so the people who patiently waited and kept trying instead of calling right away lose out…of course there was no response to this other than the voucher is no longer an option.
Rachel, This is where I sent my complaints–two of them: wdw.guest.communications@disneyworld.com. After I sent the email, they called ME. So, maybe you’ll have better luck this way. The internet help desk is the opposite of their name. I still don’t have mine by the way though; my trip is a several months away. So, I’m going to wait and see if it works at some point.
Hope they fix the ordering issue AND get some stock in before the end of 2019.
“We’re Working on It”… yeah thanks.
So now instead of getting the message that the magicband I picked is sold out, it allows me to enter all ofvmy credit card info then just gives me a generic error message saying to try again later. Is this a website problem or is the magic band still sold out?
I’m in New Zealand so I have the benefit of being able to check when it’s the middle of the night in the US but I’ve been checking night and day with no luck. Tonight, despite it all looking exactly the same as usual, it just happened to work on the bands I wanted. I think it’s just a highly aggravating case of continuing to try until it works. It was 8 mins past the hour so seemingly not connected to a restock. Hopefully I don’t now get an email to say it didn’t work 😉 Good luck everyone!
Just adding my two cents in! With all the super brainiacs at Disney, no one can solve this problem?? I’m persistent, but I’m starting to believe that I’ll never get all 6 Magic Bands (and 2 are the original plains!). This time the system teased me by letting me get all the way through check-out. Grrr!
Disney runs a successful online store.
Disney also does hotel, dining and ticket reservations online.
You can’t tell me that no one knows how to fix this MB problem.
Agreed with posters. Tried this morning with all sorts of bands for hours, adding them and then checking out only for them to be out of stock. Then they disappear, then reappear back hours later, then glitch at checkout again. Honestly at this point I would have expected them to procure stock or come up with a better system but I expect too much of Disney. Continue to flood them with complaints if you can, this is ridiculous. If anyone has any new tricks other than incognito browsing, let us know.
It’s hard to understand how this system can be so messed up. They should be able to show stock in real time. Every time I select a band it glitches at checkout. What’s the best way to complain to them? Will it even matter?
I called and the woman says people call and complain all the time but she cant do anything. She suggested emailing them with the website email and if they get enough emails, the problem might finally be escalated to their IT/website team. She was just as frustrated that they hadn’t fixed it yet. Categorize it as a website type problem. We figured out every hour around 45 after, the stock reloads. It sells out in a matter of minutes, but it doesnt reflect that until essentially the new stock is reloaded an hour later. So 99% of the time you are looking at sold out bands and have no shot.
I was just able to get two Haunted Mansion wallpaper ones at about 9:38 this morning. Finally!
Thought I’d finally got four bands we could all be happy with after successfully checking out and receiving an email receipt with the correctly order bands. Box arrived yesterday only to hold 4 grey bands. They reactivated the option to choose and then noticed around 10:05 am today that a bunch of bands were back in stock. One hour later and nothing to show for it! Our trip is in a month and I’m about to order us all the plain color ones. The kids have no idea so they’ll be none the wiser just very disappointed in the system and amount of time spent to come up empty handed even with several back ups per person. There has to be a better way to do this.
So today, they had 49 premium bands! I had never seen that many. With that many to choose from, all 5 members of our family had at least 3 different options we were good with. 10 times. 10 times! I got all 5 added to our “cart” that really doesn’t exist. When I went to check out, all 10 times it told me the bands were not in stock. I tried with different options added, and all 10 times it was unsuccessful. Wasted time. And beyond frustrated that Disney has such a poor infrastructure.
Ever bought tickets to an even through Ticketmaster? You select row M, seats 1-5, and it says you have 15 min until those seats will be released if you don’t finish the checkout process. That would be a novel idea for Disney. Doesn’t seem to be that cutting edge of technology, but for Disney inventory, I guess it is.
I tried it today too–at about 8:46–same exact experience. Put 4 in the cart, then it said 1 was out of stock, then I added another–another was out of stock. After about 10 minutes there were really no options for 4. I think everyone should be peppering Disney with complaints. I’m embarrassed to say how much time I’ve wasted on this!
Literally, hours of my life have been spent. The mistake I made early on…showing my kids the bands and asking which ones they liked because we would get them this trip! They’re pumped. I had no idea 60 days ago that I would never be successful, and I’m not paying $25/ea at Disney. Terrible experience every way you look at it.
Been trying for about 2 weeks now since we made our reservation, it’s just two of us, we have multiple options each, several times a day we would be happy with the selection available and most of the time be able to add them to the cart and would try to check out to no avail or some kind of error. This system is down right awful. I’m about ready to just purchase the two we want on eBay rather than give Disney any more of our money.
Same, same, same, same, same. Yesterday, after 6 weeks of trying to make this happen for my group of 4 (with lots of flexibility and me setting on gray), I finally threw in the towel.
This was the most aggravating experience I’ve ever had with Disney (including the time a bus driver walked off of a hot, completely packed bus (with aisles full) and never reappeared, leaving those of us in the back row with no way out and me in a minor (major) panic attack).
I’m ashamed of the amount of time I tried in good faith to stick with it while they have avoided acknowledgement or correction of the issue. I finally accept defeat and reminded self solids are completely fine. I’m so relieved to be done with it.
Truthfully, I’ve had more luck getting same day FOP fast passes and Oga’s Cantina reservations than a set of 4 magic bands! Far more rewarding successes!
I feel free. lol
I’m with you. I finally just gave up after 6 weeks of trying. I’ve read everyone’s tips, logged on at all the supposed “right” times, heck I’ve even logged in at 2:30 in the morning after waking up to use the bathroom! It’s entirely too much when I wake up in the middle of the night thinking of magic bands and logging on just to see if this will be the time I can get them for at least my two kids, not even for me and my husband. I decided to take someone else’s advice and ordered plain bands with the engraving that we wanted, but I picked the colors that match the puck of the premium bands we wanted. Then I reached out to a family member who works for Disney and asked them to get me the bands we wanted…they had them in hand within 24 hours. No, they were not free, but at least I got the ones my kids wanted. Donald Duck is hard to come by, even on shopDisney.com.
I think this was the worst thought out plan Disney has had. I was nothing but a big pain in the butt. If you have 3 people in your party, you must be able to order all three at the same time except, they aren’t always available at the same time. Finally ordered two and had someone pick us up the third at full price in the park, only to receive an email yesterday to say the bands have been delayed, I hope I get them by the time of our trip. They already took the money from my account!
Patiently waiting for the Little Mermaid. Hope it shows back up before my trip in November.
It’s on there this morning. 7:52 cst
I’ve been waiting the little mermaid as well..my 2nd is the castle everytime I see it I add it and when I checkout its sold.out. same for Belle that my neice wants…I’m just.going to get the solids. Its annoying.
I would definitely like to upgrade my magic band. Still waiting for a chip n dale design to be included in the group.