With a group of friends, my family and I went on a two week trip to Walt Disney World in April-May.
For the first time, we used Fastpass+ with the MyMagic+ web pages and the iPhone app. I must say it was quite good: coming from France, I appreciated the fact that I could book in advance some “not to be missed” rides that can have long waiting lines (Soarin’ for example). We were even able to take a 4th Fastpass (even a fifth) some days. Of course, April-May is not peak season…
I also purchased a Memory Maker and shared it with my family and friends (making it a true bargain as we were 11!). That’s how I experienced, after having read about it on the web, the on-ride videos that are done on some attractions, namely the 7 Dwarfs Mine Train at Magic Kingdom and Tower of Terror at Disney’s Hollywood Studios.
You must have a Magic Band, because the active RFID chip is used to detect you and send the video to your Memory Maker account. It’s all done automatically: you don’t have to scan your Magic Band at the end of the attraction (and there isn’t even a place or screens to do it or view the photo/video after 7 Dwarfs Mine Train compared to the photo booth after Tower of Terror).
What do you get? In fact, you are filmed during a small portion of the ride (2 curves for 7 Dwarfs and a pre-drop and drop moment during Tower of Terror) and those 2 sequences are edited within a pre-done movie about the ride.
See, for example, what you get for 7 Dwarfs Mine Train. As we did it by night, you can see what are the pre-recorded views (as they were done by day) and the two short sequences of your passage.
The same logic is used for the Tower of Terror video.
These videos can be played on the web page of your Memory Maker account but also downloaded (and you should because, as with the photos, they are deleted after 45 days). To avoid the download of a too big file, these videos are heavily compressed (only 6 Mb/sec max compared to 17 to 100 Mb/sec for camcorders) and with a size of 1280×720 pixels. So it is a 720p video (HD is 1080p and 4K much higher). The file size is around 25 MB for each movie. However, as these are standard mp4 files, the good thing is that you can use them with the vast majority of editing software and integrate the whole video or the parts where you are filmed within your own vacation film.
Have you used Memory Maker on your vacations? What do you think of the addition of on-ride videos?
Born in France (and still living there) I discovered WDW in the mid 1970’s when I was 10 during a trip to Florida with my parents. Since then, I am a Disney fan, but also a WDW fan with EPCOT as the prefered park. The Contemporary is my “mythic” hotel even if I never stayed there: it´s because of its futurist look. By the way, I also encountered space exploration during the same trip by visiting KSC. And I am today working as the chief editor of a space news website for a scientific park in France. Guess you can see the importance of this Florida trip and the others after…
