Life expectancy of Magicbands?

[lorenae]

My blue magicband will be 5 years old. I assume the battery is dead? I think we’ll stay at Shades of Green in January so we’ll have to buy new ones, unless this older one will work. I couldn’t find a post with other people’s experiences on using older ones so sorry if this is a repeat!

 

[mgarbowski]

The power for most uses of the magic bands comes from the scanner, not the band. So absent any malfunctions, old magic bands with dead batteries should still open doors and work for park admittance and fastpass checks. The main and perhaps only thing they will not work for are ride photos and videos. For many, but not all of those, you can scan a reader after you get off. For the remainder, mostly ride videos I think, there is no work around.

 

[lorenae]

Thanks! If we stay at Shades of Green, we can't charge to our room or open our doors anyway with a magicband, so I was thinking more of photos and fastpasses (and admission).

I think I'll try it and see what happens. Again, thank you!

 

[AngiTN]

They will not work for photos for certain. I have bands new than that but don't work for long range. If you are using for photos I would suggest you replace 1 with a new band or you'll be missing out on several photos since you can't scan on them