Capture Your Moments Photo Package at Disney World

This past February, my family experienced a new Enchanting Extra that I now recommend to all families that go to Walt Disney World!

Capture your Magic is a new extra offered by Disney’s Photopass Services that is perfect for celebrating life events and remembering your Disney vacation.

The details:

Capture your moment sessions are 20 minutes long and your family will be assigned a photographer and an assistant photographer to take photographs at special less crowded locations within the theme parks. Advanced reservations are required and they open 60 days before check-in. Occasionally there is some same-day availability by going to the check-in locations in the morning at park arrival. The cost is 79 dollars and it is available at all 4 parks (note that Hollywood studios packages do not include locations in Galaxy’s Edge at this time). The limit for a single session is 8 guests and back-to-back reservations are required for more than 8 individuals. All the photos will go to the My Disney Experience account of the ticket or magic band swiped. If Disney’s Memory Maker has been purchased prior to the vacation ($169 if purchased at least 3 days in advance), the downloads are included with all the other photos from the vacation. If Memory Maker has not been purchased in advance, a one-day download pass can be purchased for 69 dollars or 199 for a 30-day span.

Our Experience:

We did our Capture your Moment session at EPCOT in February. My bestie Kelly and I were celebrating our Princess 10k accomplishments and my son Liam was announcing some very exciting Connelly family news. Upon check-in at the American Pavilion in World Showcase, our photographer John told us we could pick one of five countries: Germany, Morocco, Italy, Japan or America. We chose Italy for its flowers and view of Spaceship Earth. John made us a cute sign and I showed him the special ears I had made for Liam. Our group was a bit hodge-podge and consisted of my son Liam, my friend Kelly, my mom, Kelly’s mom (the moms are also besties from high school!!), my Aunt Sharon, and myself. We knew we wanted some group photos but also nice ones of mother/daughter groups, sister pair, showing off medals etc. We were prepared with all of the information and shared it with John so he was quick to switch out groups and we got all the pairings we wanted. In 20 minutes we visited two locations within the Italy pavilion and wound up with 108 photos! We had pre-purchased a memory maker for our trip and had so much fun downloading and sharing our (NUMEROUS) favorites at brunch.

Overall impression

We are a photo-loving group and thought this experience was very much worth it. We enjoyed the personal attention of a Photopass photographer and appreciated that we could have photos in locations not typically available with photo pass photographers. It was also worth it for our group since we planned on using Memory Maker for our 6-night trip. This experience could feel expensive if you were not planning on Memory Maker. (Side note… as a mom who winds up with 53450267659 photos of Liam and my husband on vacation but very few that include our whole family, I ALWAYS recommend a memory maker. I love being able to stay in the moment and have memories where I am included). I definitely recommend arriving at the Capture your Moment photo session at least 15 minutes before it starts to meet and discuss your session with the photographers and give yourself a minute to check a mirror. If there are certain small group photos that are important, communicate that with the photographer and be ready to switch in and out quickly. Back-to-back sessions are required for groups over 8 guests and can be useful for a single-family also if you are looking for multiple locations within the park. Confession time, I loved this experience so much that I actually have one booked at EACH of the 4 parks for our small family trip in July. My husband, son and I have never done a family photo shoot and I think a few 20-minute sessions will be better for the attention spans for both my 4-year-old (and my 36-year-old husband).