Disney Dining Disney Dining Tips, News, and Reviews
Walt Disney World is one of the top vacation destinations in the entire world. Many people spend weeks, months, and even years planning to maximize their Disney vacation time. As Disney World changes and constantly evolves, the days of booking a trip and enjoying your time in the Parks with minimal planning are gone. Highly sought-after Dining reservations, lightning lanes, and virtual queues have all become a complicated mess for some Guests. In addition, many feel influenced by social media “experts” to ride this and eat that, or else their Disney World vacation is a bust.
The pressure of planning and getting every last drop out of your Walt Disney World vacation is immense, so much so that it has become a widely discussed topic among those loyal Disney Fans who dream of simpler times and less complicated vacations. Although Disney has been at the forefront of utilizing technology to ease the planning process of Theme Park vacations, their system interfaces, such as Disney Genie and My Disney Experience, have been bet with mixed reviews.
Even their new MagicBand+ system is more complicated than what Guests are used to. But there is a way to make your Disney DinseyMagicBand work for you and simplify your vacation, and we’re here to tell you how! Get your iPhone and MagicBand ready, as we will give you the inside scoop into a really interesting MagicBand trick.
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A Complicated Solution
Credit: Disney
Let’s start with a little warning. This MagicBand hack is a challenging thing to set up. It’s a bit complicated, but we will walk you through it step by step. However, once you’ve added this little secret to your MagicBand, utilizing your My Disney Experience app will be much easier! In turn, this will lend itself to a more accessible Park going experience during your next Disney World vacation, we promise.
If this secret doesn’t seem like a big deal immediately, that’s okay. We didn’t think much of it when we first figured it out either, but as we used this MagicBand tip to our advantage during our latest trip to Walt Disney World, speaking from first-hand experience, it does make a difference.
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The general idea of this MagicBand trick is that you can bypass a few steps when setting up your My Disney Experience app on your phone, specifically your Apple iPhone. If you’re anything like me, you most likely have a vast ocean of apps you barely use on your iPhone. Sometimes finding the one that you need can be a bit of a pain. This is especially true when you’re vying for a dining reservation or need to access Genie+ quickly for a virtual boarding group.
But what if I told you there’s a way to access your My Disney Experience app on your iPhone with a quick scan of your MagicBand? This MagicBand trick has saved us some time in the Parks, and I’d like to think it’s even given us a bit of an advantage hopping into those pesky virtual queues, and I’m excited to share it with you today!
How to Set Up The MagicBand Trick
Okay, if you’re ready to use this Disney MagicBand trick to improve your planning and Disney Parks experience, let’s dive right in! We will teach you how to use MagicBand to open your My Disney Experience app!
Step One: Ensure your “My Disney Experience” App is updated and you MagicBand is linked.
Step Two: Find your “Shortcuts” App on your phone.
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Three: Click “Automation” at the bottom of the screen and then click “New Automation.”
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Four: Scroll down and click “NFC.” Click-it.
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Five: Ensure your MagicBand is ready and click “Scan” in the “NFC Tag” section.
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Six: Scan your MagicBand and name your new action.
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Seven: Click “Next” and “Open App.” Type in “Disney World.”
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Eight: Select My Disney Experience App and Click “Next.” Then click “Open.”
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
Step Nine: Turn off “Ask Before Running” and Click “Done”
Credit: Disney Dining/ Canva
If you’ve gotten this far and struggled to get your scan to work, here are a couple of tips that will help:
- ensure you don’t have a wallet case on your iPhone
- double-check that your Bluetooth is turned on
- try the scan near your camera lens
- double-check that your app is up-to-date
Now that you’ve successfully connected your Disney Magicband, you can simply scan it with your phone and open your My Disney Experience app instead of combing through all those apps. Super helpful, right? We thought so too! As Disney becomes more innovative and aligns with a more direct, efficient, albeit more complicated Disney Park experience, we’ll do our best to bring you these tips and tricks.
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Sadly, I don’t see the use of systems like Genie, MagicBand+, or My Disney Experience going away, as just about everyone owns and uses a smartphone these days. The devices are too advantageous for Disney. They can track where you are in the Parks, redirect large groups of people, and have a world of live data at their fingers tips. Although hacks like this MagicBand trick are cool, we just hope Disney continues to use that information to infer a more enjoyable experience for all of us!
