Originally Posted By RoadTrip We had the random misfortune of experiencing a couple of problems with our Magic Bands... they weren't really the fault of the bands themselves, but could have happened with the old card-keys just as easily. But of course the band-haters out there would be sure to blame the bands. ;-) We came back to our Wilderness Cabin and tried using our bands to open the door. No luck, even though they worked just fine an hour before. Luckily we noticed housekeeping was right next door, so we asked if she could assist us. She came and tried using her "pass key" (a flat disk on a handle... looked much easier to position properly than a Magic Band) to open the door. It failed also, so she put in a call to maintenance. About 10 minutes latter maintenance arrived, and he also tried his pass key with no luck. He said he would have to go get a "hard key" for the door (there is a traditional keyed lock beneath the band reader). I was curious why he hadn't brought that with him to start with, but whatever. About 15 minutes later he was back with the key and with another cast member. I assume they all have strictly defined jobs and the guy in charge of opening doors is not the same guy in charge of replacing dead batteries in the band reader. But the door was soon open, the batteries in the band reader replaced (they have to be replaced from the inside) and we were back in our cabin. Fortunately, it was a lovely day and not pouring rain, so waiting to get in to our cabin was not a big deal... we just enjoyed hanging out on the deck of our cabin and chatting. Our next problem came at the Magic Kingdom when we tried renting a wheel chair for Ann's mom. The band reader there rejected both of our bands for making payment, even though they had worked just fine the prior night when used to pay for dinner at Chef's de France. We were told by the CM that it had returned an error code she had never seen before, and that we should go to City Hall to get it straightened out. I started to pull out a credit card to pay for the chair, but the CM told me to put it away, they were comping the chair for our trouble. When we got through the line at City Hall the CM was very helpful. She checked our account and said everything was showing green for charge privileges... we were still at our resort, we had a credit card securing charges, and we were well below the assigned charge limit. We were still a little uncertain because both of our bands had been rejected just 20 minutes before. She understood and said she would walk with us to the refreshment cart outside and see if we could purchase a bottle of water with a band. It worked fine, so it must have been a momentary computer glitch or a bad band reader at the wheelchair rental place. The CM said she would reverse the charge for the water and comp it... something we would not have thought to ask for but thought was nice. So... we certainly had problems I had never experienced before in going to WDW on an annual basis for over 20 years. But I can't say it was Magic Band problem... more a computer problem that could happen with any media. I was also impressed with the way Disney CM worked to resolve our problems so quickly.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros My parents also had an issue with a dead battery for their room door in January. As you said, it's not a Magic Band specific problem (though the awkwardness of getting it to lineup is), but it's still kind of annoying. I don't think they had to get quite as many CMs to help as you did, but it was a bit of a process for them too. For all the great technology in the system, I would think they might be able to get something that alerts them when batteries are getting low But overall, I agree that the problems have been relatively minor and handled well overall. Disney was infamous for having terrible IT and out of date systems, so it's great to see how much emphasis they've put on making the MM+ system work and keeping it functioning on a daily basis. With something that complex, there are countless things that can go wrong, so it's very impressive to me to see all the CMs who know how to fix it
Originally Posted By Yookeroo We had the same problem last month. "I would think they might be able to get something that alerts them when batteries are getting low" The CM who changed our battery said they do get alerts. Obviously isn't working quite as good as it should.
