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Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

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Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#41

Post by joezydeco »

smoyer wrote: post #33

I always wanted my kids to have a wristband that's tied to my credit card - good thing there's nothing they'd want at Disney World! Sarcasm aside, we always get a big wad of cash when we go on vacation (and especially to Disney World). It's almost impossible to track your spending if you follow the normal pattern of pulling out your credit card ... this wrist band (in my mind) is to make sure you don't realize what y…

That's absolutely a goal of this program: increase per-visitor spending. Making purchases as frictionless as possible pretty much guarantees that the average will rise.

Even the whole FastPass+ idea is meant to keep visitors out of the lines and on the move, which gives them more opportunities to spend money. It was seriously depressing on my last visit to MK/Epcot about how every single open space in the park is now filled with a kiosk or stand selling some type of souvenir or snack.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#42

Post by joezydeco »

ehmuidifici wrote: post #8

That's the one of coolest things in Disney World and worth the extra money you'll pay for that (about US$ 14). It's really impressive how does it work and how it gets connected to other services, like restaurant reservations, 'fast-pass' and memory maker management.

At the moment it's free if you stay on the property in one of the resorts. It also acts as your room key.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#43

Post by joezydeco »

oh_sigh wrote: post #38
timf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only adults have charging privileges and even then you need a PIN (that the cardholder does not need to share).

It would be cool if you could get a text message for the charge amount(if it was over some set limit), location, and possibly itemized bill(since disney does control every system after all), and respond yes or no to allow or deny the transaction.

That's not really a Disney-type move since a) it would slow lines down as kids wait for approval and b) would result in a lot of unhappy kids whenever a charge is denied.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#44

Post by madaxe_again »

mbrock wrote: post #39

Neal Stephenson wrote about Disney in "In the Beginning was the Command Line": "Americans' preference for mediated experiences is obvious enough, and I'm not going to keep pounding it into the ground. I'm not even going to make snotty comments about it--after all, I was at Disney World as a paying customer. But it clearly relates to the colossal success of GUIs and so I have to talk about it some. Disney does mediate…

It's a brilliant read, never mind pretty good! I think Stephenson has his finger pretty firmly on the pulse, when it comes to understanding the role and impact of technology in society.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#45

Post by joezydeco »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #40
atwebb wrote: post #4

It reads kind of like a fluff/marketing piece but I'll be damned if it wasn't pretty seamless. I have no idea what it was like prior to the bands but the whole experience was clearly made a lot easier by them and the accompanying app (which is pretty solid). I needed my phone and my band, that was really it (well,...snacks, water bottles, strollers etc..) It was 85% well done, when you're actually scanning it can be…

The long range reads are primarily used right now to detect that you were on a particular ride when your photo was taken so when you swipe your band they can pull up your photo for purchase. A lot of the other ideas they had for this tech was never brought to fruition because it creeped out a lot of the test guests. Source: I played a very very small role in making magic bands happen.

Do you mean like the characters greeting kids by name or saying "Happy Birthday!" if that was a known event?

As a techy parent that's one thing that sounded great on paper but I'd be kind of creeped out if I didn't know what was going on.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#46

Post by drzaiusapelord »

bradfa wrote: post #12

Inside the magic band are 3 radios: 13.56 MHz near field RFID (what's in your credit card's swipe to pay), 915 MHz passive UHF RFID (what's in your timing bib if you run a 5k race or what Walmart uses for inventory tracking), and a 2.4 GHz active radio. The following are my conjectures on how it works. I do not work for Disney or any contractor, but I do work in the field of RFID. The 13.56 MHz near field RFID is use…

>I believe they only use it for detecting rough location of all visitors which is perfect to determine the lengths of lines at rides or to find where a lost kid is in the parks.

Also, I imagine to determine if the guest is still in the park and if so which park, what part, or which restaurant, etc even if the guest is not swiping any RFID readers. I also think they probably have issues with people hiding in the park after closing and such and I'm sure this helps security find people who do this. Confused elderly person comes to mind as well.

I wonder if this system extends to places like Downtown Disney or Disney Boardwalk and the hotels? Then it becomes a scary privacy issue when its just not theme park goer management, but something that extends beyond the theme park's gates.

>This is perfect for knowing crowd density in an area and estimating line lengths for outdoor areas

Accurate density metrics and tracking of crowds must be invaluable. I bet Disney sits on lots of interesting data. I wonder if people migrate to certain types of rides at certain parts of the day or which rides they ride first. Or how these changes when you have younger or older kids, etc.

I also prefer wearing one of these than giving up my thumbprint, which is the current system. That's always made me nervous. I'm sure its stored forever in some database which is trivially tapped by other organizations.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#47

Post by mcphilip »

atwebb wrote: post #4

It reads kind of like a fluff/marketing piece but I'll be damned if it wasn't pretty seamless. I have no idea what it was like prior to the bands but the whole experience was clearly made a lot easier by them and the accompanying app (which is pretty solid). I needed my phone and my band, that was really it (well,...snacks, water bottles, strollers etc..) It was 85% well done, when you're actually scanning it can be…

Just a side note to add about scanning the wristband for a ride's fastpass line or entry into a park: it's a two step process where you put a finger on a finger print scanner and then move on to scanning the wristband. If both are successful, you're let in.

Oddly enough, the fidelity of the fingerprint scans wasn't high enough to read 2 of our party's members, so it was an slightly annoying process having to wait for a supervisor to come over and officially clear them.

The process was seemless for the rest of the party (i.e. 10 people).

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#48

Post by drzaiusapelord »

smoyer wrote: post #33

I always wanted my kids to have a wristband that's tied to my credit card - good thing there's nothing they'd want at Disney World! Sarcasm aside, we always get a big wad of cash when we go on vacation (and especially to Disney World). It's almost impossible to track your spending if you follow the normal pattern of pulling out your credit card ... this wrist band (in my mind) is to make sure you don't realize what y…

I see no way that this is different than using your cc. You can delegate spending privs as you like. Just to yourself, just to adults, etc, and there's a PIN attached. If you can't budget correctly, that's not the problem of mobile payment systems. Personally I can't see the difference between this and credit cards.

If anything, mobile payment systems tend to be more accounting friendly. I can pop open my last google wallet purchases trivially. My credit card requires logging into a website or using a fairly crappy mobile app that's often not updated quickly with my most recent purchases.

Re: Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband

#49

Post by theandrewbailey »

mbrock wrote: post #39

Neal Stephenson wrote about Disney in "In the Beginning was the Command Line": "Americans' preference for mediated experiences is obvious enough, and I'm not going to keep pounding it into the ground. I'm not even going to make snotty comments about it--after all, I was at Disney World as a paying customer. But it clearly relates to the colossal success of GUIs and so I have to talk about it some. Disney does mediate…

link: http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html

The metaphorical comparison between the operating systems is one I'll never forget.

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