We just got back from Disney during one of the busiest times of the year (through Christmas Eve) and had our first Magic Band experience. Overall, we REALLY loved them. In fact, I don't think our trip would have been as good without them!

The Cons: Setting them up at first was complicated because we were trying to link my inlaws (who barely use the internet but would be on the trip with us) to our account so that we could get fast passes together. Then the website kept flaking out on us and saying only X number of people in our party were eligible for fast passes on a given day. It took many tries to finally get them. Using the app in the park was REALLY slow to be able to look them up. It was also a bummer that my brother-in-law, who lives in Orlando, met up with us but could not ride the rides with us because he didn't have a band. Lastly, we were able to walk onto one of the rides we had a FP+ for but then basically wasted it because we couldn't use a FP for anything else.

The Pros: During such a busy time, it was so nice to know that we would be able to ride our favorite rides. With strategic planning between our FP+ and being at the park at the right times, we hardly waited in any lines at all. I think there were only 2 or 3 rides total that we wanted to ride that we didn't get to. Given the crowd levels, that wasn't bad. The Be Our Guest lunch FP was also nice because we didn't have to wait in line, and the line was REALLLLLY long for it. If we had not had that, we would not have been able to eat there. As far as advance planning goes, I always plan our park days and our meals in advance anyway, so this wasn't that much different. And with a one hour window for each FP, it wasn't hard at all to do other rides and meals in between them.

I've heard some changes are being made to them that I don't like though. For example, you will still get 3 a day but you have to choose from "tiers" so you can't choose all 3 mountains in MK. I'll be anxious to see if they stick with that.

We head back in June, so we will be repeating the whole band process again in April!