We spent the last week of August at Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida, then spent two days in Fort Lauderdale and finally spent 12 nights on a transatlantic crossing on the Oasis of the Seas. We got home late last night, and while we had a wonderful trip, we are very happy to be back home and into the "normal" things again. Rio starts back to school tomorrow, Marika will get set up and start back to online school as well and Dave is going to be back at work (and, yes, travelling already tomorrow)--so it is back to normal alright.
I could not possibly go into day by day accounts of Disney (or the Oasis, but more on that later), but there are a few things I want to blog about from the trip, starting with our impressions of the new ticketing system: Magic Bands.
WOW. This is just mindblowing technology. Wearing our Magic Bands around, we felt more like sci fi characters, or super heroes than normal people at an amusement park. Here we are doing a super hero "Magic Bands--Activate" pose:
Do you see those rubberized bracelets on our wrists? Those are the Magic Bands. As guests staying on site, they came "free" with our hotel room (they were being sold for about $15 in the parks otherwise) and we got to choose our own colors from several options (our names were printed inside as well, so had more than one of us wanted the same color it would be fine).
The bands are adjustable (getting big enough to fit comfortably on Dave's wrist) fully water proof and much more than just fashion accessories.
There is an RFID chip in these little gizmos that does, well, everything. That band is your park entry ticket---you just hold you wrist up to a pole with a reader on it and in you go. No more digging tickets out of wallets, or holding them for kids, etc, and no more turnstiles. That must be a thousand times easier for parents with young kids, people in wheel chairs, etc--any entry point will work.
It's also your room key. Arriving at the room, just hold your wrist near the door knob and it unlocks--presto! Oh what I would have given for that back in the days when Dave and I arrived at the room holding a sleeping child each and tried to get keys out of pockets without waking (or dropping) anyone.
Need to pay for a snack, meal or souvenir? Just hold your wrist up to the scanner and enter the four digit code you chose at check in, and it will go on the room bill. That makes it so easy with the kids--they can go off and buy lunch and charge it to the room, and needing a code means that a "lost card" cannot result in fraudulent charges.
We also bought the Memory Maker photo package (mmm, maybe I should post about that tomorrow) and every time our photo was taken in the parks, they just scanned one of our bands, and the photo was linked to our account.
Fastpasses (prebooked times to ride, without waiting in the main line) are also stored in the band and you no longer have to keep up with separate paper tickets for those (but you have to remember your time slot, or check it on the ap if you have a smart phone with you).
All of the above is really not THAT different than the older style system with everything on a plastic credit card type of system, except that fraud got harder and I could now carry my own key even when wearing a pocketless sundress and refusing to tote a purse around (which is my "norm" at the parks). It was all just a little bit easier and a little bit smoother.
Here is where it gets really cool (and bit freaky). These things can transmit fairly far--so Disney can use them to track movement and do all kinds of studies of guest behaviour. They can use them to find lost children faster, or make sure that a princess already knows the name of a young fan coming up for a visit.
We personally experienced this in two ways:
One of the rides (The Little Mermaid) had a short spiel that included Sebastian talking to the riders and on our second time through he said we looked familiar (it KNEW we had already ridden that day) and on any ride that has a ride photo, we never had to stop or scan our bracelets anywhere at all, but
our ride photos were taken and magically appeared in our account. WOW.
If any of us rode Test Track, Space Mountain, Tower of Terror, Rockin' Roller Coaster, Test Track Splash Mountain or Buzz Lightyear, it was there on our account later on. That is a really cool feeling (and also just slightly creepy--I don't mind it at WDW for the sake of convenience, and you do have the option not to use it, but it is mind blowing to think it can be done at all and what nefarious uses someone could come up with).
Overall we really like the bands. They were so easy and convenient. I wore mine on my wrist, and everyone else ended up with them on belt loops most of the day (which is fine) and we had no problems with them at all--just fun doing silly poses to show them off:
--Hadley
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