MagicBand Upgrades Now Available
The recently announced MagicBand upgrade option is now available for pre-arrival Walt Disney World resort hotel guests and new and renewing Annual Passholders. In this post, we’ll walk you through the process of upgrading your Magic Band via the My Disney Experience app with screenshots–and show you every single themed design. (Last updated May 25, 2019.)
In case you missed the announcement in our most-recent Walt Disney World News & Rumors Round-up, which also covered the ‘blank slate’ dark ride for Disney’s Hollywood Studios and exhibits in Epcot’s Play Pavilion, this is a new upgrade offer for resort guests and Annual Passholders.
Originally planned to go live May 15, the new upgrade process just appeared in My Disney Experience. It 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. We discovered today that there are a total of 43 paid options that are each $10.
May 25, 2019 Update: Every single upgrade option is now temporarily sold out, and when logging onto My Disney Experience, you’re now greeted by a message informing you of that (see below). Note that these are temporarily out of stock–all of the MagicBands offered as part of the upgrade are open edition, meaning they should all return as soon as Disney is able to procure more inventory.
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.) The first day the option was available, Disney’s web servers were slammed, with all sorts of glitches occurring. If your Walt Disney World vacation is not in the near future, we’d recommend being patient–but not too patient. When anything is this popular, Disney invariably raises the price…
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.
As I said before, if a cool Figment or Country Bears one was included in the $10 offer, I could see splurging on that. Otherwise, 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 any of 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!
Has anyone called recently? I have been checking multiple times a day and for the past several days there are only 8 solid colors to pick from. Wondering if/ when they will restock. We travel in Aug.
I called today and no indication of when they will replenish stock. I was just told to check daily. Not a good enough answer for me. I told them I was disappointed how this program rolled out. Granted I don’t go until September but still feel like I have to check daily.
I’m surprised the Disney was not prepared for the popularity of the printed magic bands. It’s been nearly a month; I assumed they would have restocked by now. I’m hopeful though, my trip isn’t until November. Let’s hope they are restocked by then 😉
They are trying to correct CONFIRMED orders where a solid color was substituted for a premium band and a charge was made.
I called today because my order came and my Thumper band was indeed substituted with a solid grey. You can call the phone number on the packing slip if your arrival date is July 3 or sooner. If your band is still available on Shop Disney online they will ship it to you from that inventory without a custom name and you also keep the solid band.
For arrivals after July 3 that have a confirmed order, were charged, and received the incorrect band they are not currently doing corrections by phone. I was told there is an email coming which will detail options.
If you have an arrival date July 3 or earlier but the premium options were sold out before you could make an order and you do not have a CONFIRMED order there is not an option for premium bands at this time at the discounted rate. Even if the band you would like is still available on Shop Disney online. Your options are a complimentary solid band or to order the premium band at full price through Shop Disney online.
does Disney plan on restocking anytime soon?
i am taking different grandchidren on 2 seperate trips. Finay got part of the upgrades but cant even order for the trip at the end of July and it says i ony have 21 days to order any.I am going to have some dissappointed kids.
I was told the goal was to restock by “early July”
I am going on September 11th, do you think by that time they will have it or we won’t be able to get them anymore?
This is something that is intended to stay for the foreseeable future. It’ll hopefully get easier after they work out the early kinks. I’m sure you’ll see a time frame you can order the upgraded bands in the future… to keep the traffic and inventory in check.
Ordered 2 custom bands out of the 4 on May 20th, first time we were able to get into the site. Got the confirmation email saying they were ordered & would be arriving 11 days prior. Yesterday, May 20th, got another email saying due to unexpected demand they’re sold out & our order has been canceled, we won’t be charged.
I called the number in the email & the lady said sorry they’re sold out & did I want the solid colors, so I had the tell her our selections since the MDE just has dwarfs when trying to edit. Out trip starts June 25th, so we’re out of luck here. I asked about a voucher & was told they’re not offering any. How did some of you get them?
All I can say is, boy did Disney screw up this one. I hope the same people that planned this aren’t the ones handling crud control during the Star Wars opening.
Not going to deal with the hassle and possibly disappointing my granddaughter if our order is unavailable. Also, it adds another 50 bucks to our trip. For us, it’s not worth it this year.
You should realistically only be able to order these upgraded magic bands 30 days out. That would allow less congestion and more availability of stock. Anyone ordering a year out is just adding to the problem… there is no reason to order that far in advance. My current trip is June 21st and I only got one(snacks band) of my 3 I ordered the other 2 were just the default grey even though I had a confirmation for Vader and the castle. My next trip is in October and I didn’t even attempt to order because there is no reason until I get closer to October so maybe September. Basically if you are more than 30 days out calm down and wait. It’s more fun to get them closer to your trip anyway.
Please hold off on the trigger if you have more than 30 days before you leave…
See my comment above. If you paid and the incorrect bands were shipped to you, you should be able to call the phone number on your packing slip and have them correct your order IF the band is still in stock on Shop Disney online. Although I think when I looked earlier today Vader and the Castle were sold out at Disney online as well. I did not ask if they will substitute a different design if there is one in stock that you would like instead.
Thanks for the info Anne… I’ll call and see what they say.
Just wanted to comment that although bands still sold on MDE for $15, today shopDisney.com has in stock over 60 custom bands. Unfortunately, they are 24.99 each. They claim they are not connected with MDE, but same bands and only needs to be linked after receiving them.
Agreed – it makes no sense that someone traveling over a year from now should be able to select now while those with reservations less than 60 days out are unable to make selections. I’ve been kicked off the site both times, unable to check out, lost my selections, etc. The same system for Fast Passes and Dining (reserve based on date of trip) should have been employed here as well.
I ordered the bands the day they were released and I received them today. My trip is not until September, so I was surprised that they came so early.
Lucky. I ordered mine on may 20 and just received an email today that my order is delayed due to strong popularity. My trip is beginning of august
I got a “delayed” email too My trip is sept… it’s the birthday band…my husband takes me every sept for my birthday since we retired!❤️ Hope it comes!
What a fiasco ! This morning at 6:00 am MDE was showing all the upgraded bands back in stock. Go booted off the site multiple times, made selections and couldn’t check out multiple times, and then the bands were just gone. Called and said yep, sold out again. Will be sticking with the free ones – not worth the time or hassle
I don’t think they sold out. I tried for 3 hours and it wouldn’t complete the purchase. I called and spoke to someone and she said no orders were going through. She opened up an IT ticket. They probably took them off
I ordered separately for DH & I and my parents. We both got confirmations and I got a subsequent one alerting me to shipping. My parents didn’t. After speaking with a CM yesterday, it was discovered that my parents’ order had been canceled without notice to either them or me. So much for the surprise. Really embarrassing. This entire thing is complete bull honkey and I ended up repurchasing the bands at full price for my parents because I felt so horrible.
I hope everyone else gets the chance to order and it goes as smoothly as possible!
I ordered a Minnie Mouse one on Monday along with a free solid one. I went through completing the order and got a confirmation email. My magic bands arrived today. My trip is early July. My husband wanted a Mickey one that was not one of the ones offered. I went to shop Disney where the one he wanted was marked down. Disney also had a 30 percent off code, so we ordered his for $15. It arrived today too. I had a tracking number for that one but no notification for the $10 one. So excited especially as I was a little worried after reading some online comments.
I’m going in August and a couple weeks ago my party selected complimentary solid color MagicBands with custom names. I just went to MDE to look at my MagicBands order and while it shows the band colors for each person, I can no longer see the custom names we picked?? When I click “Edit Order” it starts from scratch – no assigned colors or names. Is this another glitch? Do I have to assign MagicBand colors and names all over again?
Well, we ordered ours for a trip that was this weekend. We have magic bands and guessed we would get them in the mail after our resort stay as we are both AP holders. Got an email confirming our order and that they would be waiting for us at our hotel on check-in. As you can expect there were no custom bands waiting for us even though their computer told them the same thing our email said. They said they had no idea what was going on. We said no problem we will just use our old bands and sort it out after we get home. They said they didn’t want our trip to be less than magical and gave us a voucher for 2 custom bands at the Co-op at Disney Springs. So we now have two custom bands so it felt like a win.
How did you order again after you already had magic bands for this trip? I don’t see where I can order. Our trip is June 7.
Glad they did that for you! Could you use the voucher at any of the custom kiosks in the parks or just at Disney Springs co-op?
I can’t believe they had such poor planning. They didn’t realize they would be so popular!? REALLY? WDW has 50 million visitors a year and they are expecting huge crowds for Galaxy’s Edge ……and ……they didn’t know this would be such a popular item. There are families who this is a once in a lifetime trip who will miss out on this “special item.” Talk about a PR nightmare…… I’m just hoping they will be back by October! You would think a multi-billion dollar corporation would do better……….
I was saying the same thing!!! How did they not realize this was going to be such a hit?!? Talk about not being in touch with your audience lately!
We upgraded our kids’ bands and paid the $21.40 upgrade fee. We got a confirmation email… but now they show their bands on MDE as the original solid color bands we selected. I think Disney is struggling with the new MagicBand system they rolled out…
this happened to us as well. My mom’s was showing as a special band. My daughter and I were showing solid. They were all charged to my account. They came today. My mom had a special, the other two are solid. My mom sat on hold for 38 minutes with no answer. I am currently on hold. An email says that as a “one time courtesy” (as if it were us who messed up) we can order 2 additional bands at $10 each….ummm we already paid for them!
The sold out MBs are now on eBay for 3-5 times as much. I’m not surprised… (rolling eyes here)…
How is that possible? They are linked to a specific person on MDE when ordered though a resort stay and are non-transferable. Or do you mean bands purchased in parks or from Disney online that haven’t been linked yet? In which case they were initially for an undiscounted $25 minimum price.
Scammers know the system; however, I believe with Magic bands, all one has to do is switch the center module which has no design. I don’t think anyone purchasing one of these (ebay offers) cares about the benefits associated with resort stays. Obviously, the people selling them don’t. Any band associated with one’s account will allow all (the few?) privileges.
Ordered 2 of them, HM & the grey “castle” band as our original picks were gone, had to repick, so we said why not, ordered them on the night of the rollout with no issues, got eh confirmation email, just this morning go the email telling me they have shipped, so I go to MDE and the HM one I ordered is there and Disney did activate them already……..BUT…….the castle band now has magically turned purple and is active for my wife……what……I was charged $20 on my card so I am REAL curious on what is in the box??? Will find out this week……Anyone else actually get them yet???
We got ours and the same thing happened. One of our six was supposed to be the Donald Duck band, but it said a green one was shipped and yup, that’s what came. I haven’t seen a charge for it on my car yet though.
Same here. I had a Thumper and Miss Bunny band that changed to grey after the order was confirmed. I called and was told by a CM the order looked ok on their end and that on their end it said the custom thumper band was confirmed. It hasn’t arrived yet so I’m a little bummed to hear the CM might be incorrect.
My trip isn’t until the end of August, and they shipped the upgraded MagicBands pretty much as soon as I ordered them. It seems to work more like the regular online Disney store, and less like their usual ~30 days before your trip schedule.
Did you get the ones you picked?
does anyone know, if you don’t have a trip coming up right away, if you place an order for these (if they restock) will they guarantee their availability by shipping them to you right away, or will they still ship just before your trip? what are the chances of placing a successful order but having the ones you ordered unavailable when your trip arrives?
That is the problem. I don’t think Disney thought out the answer to this question. Which is why all the character bands are sold out. Even if someone doesn’t have a trip for 9 months, it appears they are counting that inventory as sold/gone.
In hind sight they probably should have rolled this out just for arrival dates in the next 2 months. But now that people have ordered it’s not an easy fix. Either you cancel orders far out and free up inventory for current arrivals and anger those who have already ordered. Or have angry customers with pressing arrivals upset they are sold out. My bet is it’s worse PR to cancel existing orders and they will just do their best to come up more inventory as quickly as they can. And if they can figure out the IT piece start limiting how far in advance you can order custom bands.
Once the bands are ordered and paid for there is not way to cancel them……….so……………
MEM my point was more hypothetical, what Disney COULD have done if they wanted to. They could have cancelled orders on their end and not actually made a credit card charge for arrival dates far into the future to preserve inventory for those traveling in the next 1-2 months. And clearly they DID cancel some orders because they were short even on bands where the orders completed. As evidenced by Susan’s experience above.
That’s not true, MEM. We ordered 2 upgraded MagicBands for our family of 4 (in addition to 2 solid color bands). We paid the $21.40. We got the confirmation email. It seems Disney canceled our upgraded bands because now MDE shows them as solid color. So, Disney is cancelling orders… I just wish they started with the people going at the end of the year and worked backwards. Our trip is in 2 months, so we’ll see what we get.
Becky S, Well was told by the CM that once the order was placed there was no way to cancel, now they have changed that, wow, the CM are lost and have no idea what they are saying, guess this is what we get when they are work at home people…….lets see how this turns out ….
I don’t currently have a trip booked but am an Annual Passholder. I ordered mine and it was shipped immediately, not the regular 30 days prior to a trip.
When they come back in stock I will probably buy a special one for my daughter, but I probably won’t get one for myself. They are all out of stock today.
exactly the same here. the grown ups are probably just going to stick with the solid freebies (unless there’s one that blows me out of the water) but if i see special ones for the kids, i will get them. but that requires the site to be working and them to be restocked.
Glitches are worked out, but most of the bands are sold out! I think there’s only 5 or 6 options left now. They are working on replenishing their stock though!
I’ve always wanted a character band but wouldn’t pay $25 for it so I’m excited. Hopefully all the glitches will be worked out by the time I go next.