Is Memory Maker worth buying for my trip to Disney World? 

If you were only going to get one souvenir of your trip to Disney World, I would recommend the Memory Maker. 

With Memory Maker, you can capture all of the fun of your vacation — posing in front of the castle, hugging Mickey Mouse, screaming your head off on Tron or Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. And if you plan ahead, you get it all for $169. 

Memory Maker is an all-you-can-download ticket to the PhotoPass photos from your trip, including:

• Photos and videos from attractions, including Haunted Mansion, Tron, Space Mountain, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind and many more. (Check out our guide to where all the ride photos are taken.) These photos are worth the price alone, because they’re not photos you can take yourself, even if you’re a selfie pro. If you have an annual pass or buy Disney Genie+ for Lightning Lanes, you do get downloads of attraction photos without buying Memory Maker.
• Family photos taken by Disney PhotoPass photographers at iconic locations throughout the parks. Two of our favorites: You can pose with a floating lantern from Tangled at the Magic Kingdom, or under a lit trellis with a tiny Tinker Bell at Epcot.
• Magic Shots taken by PhotoPass photographers and digitally enhanced with Disney characters and more. Think Figment floating over your shoulder, or Tinker Bell floating above your hands.
• Surprises like professional pictures of the parks you can download and print. 

You can find your photos on your My Disney Experience app, sometimes within moments of when they’re taken (though magic shots can take several days to show up). Download your photos and videos and you can do whatever you want with them. We have a wall of MixTiles with photos from our many visits with friends and family, but you can do anything you want with these photos once you download them. Imagine what your next family Christmas card could look like.

You also can download photos and videos of friends and family who share media with you. 

If you buy Memory Maker in advance of your trip, it will cost $169. If you buy during your trip, the price goes up to $199. A single day of Memory Maker will set up back $69. (If you’re going to Disneyland, the equivalent product is called PhotoPass+ and costs $78 for one week of photos.)

Are there downsides? It is pricey, especially if you typically take a lot of your own photos and selfies or don’t bother with things like character meet-and-greets. But if you throw yourself into it, you can go home with an amazing array of vacation photos that you never could have taken yourself. And if you’re only after the attraction photos, you could get those by buying Genie+ for the Lightning Lanes.

The service also can also be a little wonky, especially if you’re using an older MagicBand. We frequently get random strangers in our PhotoPass feed, and occasionally miss photos we really want to have (read about our experience finding a missing photo). And you have to remember to download all your photos and videos before they expire, 45 days after they’re taken. Once they expire, they’re gone. 

I don’t think any of those downsides outweigh the value of going home with candid photos from your first ride on Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, or your goofy poses at the Haunted Mansion.