3. Understand that your memories are on a timer

The only "catch" if you want to call it that involves who can download files. Only one person receives that authorization. The default is the person who purchases Memory Maker. You do, however, have the options to switch those rights if it's more convenient for someone else in your traveling party to do so. That's the sort of thing you should determine prior to your trip. Also note that you must purchase Memory Maker more than three days prior to your trip. Otherwise, your first three days of images will not show up in your account. If you're running into time constraints in this regard, I suggest contacting Disney directly to clarify what can be done. They're wonderful about finding solutions to existing problems.

What's important is that as long as you're linked on My Disney Experience, all photos from people on the trip propagate to the master Memory Maker account. Simply inform all members of your party to look for Disney photographers throughout the parks. They'll stand in line to take pictures by various landmarks such as the Tree of Life at Animal Kingdom, Hollywood Boulevard at Hollywood Studios, Spaceship Earth in front of Epcot, and Main Street at Magic Kingdom.

Once your loved ones show their magic bands to the photographers, everything uploads. Sometimes, photographers will even surprise you by adding Magic Shots unbeknownst to your party at the time. The process is simple. For pictures you take with a Disney photographer, they'll pull out a scanner at the end. You show them your magic band, they scan it, and the images automatically upload to your account.

When you visit your MyDisneyExperience account, you'll find a treasure trove of vacation memories. Our eight party members took almost exactly 500 pictures plus roughly 50 ride videos. We were together for less than 10 percent of them. Once we returned home, we shared the images quickly, but you should know that there is a time limit on this. After a 30-day period, your images are no longer available for download. So, you shouldn't dawdle once you’re back from vacation. It was literally one of the first things we did after we unpacked, and I strongly suggest that you do the same. It’s just as bad to forget to download your pictures after the fact as it by messing up the process beforehand. It’s the equivalent of fumbling at the one-yard-line.

4. Recognize that ride videos require one extra step

For ride videos, there is a bit of misinformation among cast members. Some believe that it happens automatically. We found this inconsistent in our recent experience. The safest thing to do to guarantee that your ride videos upload is to look for the magic band activation kiosk once you exit the attraction. These are right below the televisions featuring imagery from your ride, so they're impossible to miss. The process is seamless and painless. If they fail to do it, however, there is a chance (and in our experience, a good one) that their ride videos will not upload.

Simply click your band against the gigantic button to ensure your video is added to your Memory Maker library. The process of matching your band with the button literally takes less than a second, and you'll get a green color confirmation when it works. So, you'll have peace of mind about the process. If you receive a blue light, something went wrong. Simply tap your magic band against the button again. If it doesn't work a couple of times, there is usually a cast member around who will step in at this point. If that doesn't happen, quickly look for one and ask for help. We never had this issue, but we witnessed a few instances of it during our most recent trip.

Let your friends and family know that ride videos aren’t exactly what they’re expecting, either. They’re not full versions of the particular rides. Instead, it’s a clever video package featuring stock video of the attraction that highlights its themes combined with a few highlighted moments as they go by cameras. A video that is three minutes long may contain as little as 20 seconds of actual footage from the distinct ride they enjoy.

5. Beware the final countdown

Capturing your images and ride videos on Magic Maker is a snap. The only issue is that you may have to navigate through a bit of visitor traffic as onlookers try to take cellphone pictures of the television images, aka the free version of Memory Maker.

You'll have roughly 45 seconds to identify the image you want and tap your band. That's a lot of time on virtually every ride save for Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, which has a slower pace for people disembarking. You may have to become a bit more aggressive in getting to the Magic Memory station on that one, especially if you're on the back row of the ride. Our countdown reached single digits a couple of times on that one due to the onlooker traffic. If you're on a ride that has video and you realize that people are exiting slowly, you should rush your pace a bit in getting to the Memory Maker video kiosk.

Taking a Walt Disney World trip with Memory Maker is the smartest thing that a person can do. If you’re going to use this splendid service, however, you must recognize all the potential pitfalls. Understanding the issues above and anticipating them will go a long way in avoiding the heartbreak of a ruined vacation caused by losing all the memorable Walt Disney World photographs and videos.