So, as someone who has been going repeatedly for a few years, who is also suspicious of big corporations, and who is really interested in how and why stuff works, I wanted to make a comment about this for people who haven’t gone as much.
This all started for me when Disney came out with something they called, “My Pal Mickey,” which was a stuffed animal that had a sensor in its nose. You could purchase or rent MPM, and if you rented him and took him with you in the parks, he would react to certain things by vibrating, and then if you squeezed his tummy he would say things. Rob was a little frustrated at the time because I wanted to rent one, but I like toys, I like gadgets (Aquarius much?) and I just wanted to see what was going on. So we rented it. (MPM would only say certain things in the parks, and I THINK perhaps during certain TV shows on the Disney channel, but I’m not certain of that.)
The first time it did anything I found significant was in Mickey’s Philharmagic….there’s a moment in the show when Donald gets sucked into a kind of black hole. There’s a lot of noise and light and he gets sucked in and everything goes black and goes silent. Mickey vibrated. I squeezed him and put him near my ear and he said, “Don’t worry. Donald is okay. The show will start again in a second,” and it did.
“Hmph!” I thought. “This could eliminate a bunch of crying in theaters. I could see where this would be useful for children who get frightened easily.” I was curious about the application, and thought it was pretty awesome.
Then we went to Animal Kingdom.
We have a route we take in AK because all the parks are essentially designed the same. When you enter the parks, they are designed to slow you down before you spread out to the rest of the parks. There are entertainers, stores, gadgets, food….all things to walk past before you get to the parks so that the rides don’t get flooded upon entry. If you know this, you can ignore it all and head straight to the ride that you’re trying to avoid a line for (currently at this writing, the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars land) but if you don’t know this you get easily distracted. It’s a sound strategy for park design, honestly, and certainly earns money….the stores are the first thing you see in, and the last thing you see out.
So we were going to AK and taking our usual route, we spent the day in the parks, and then we were leaving when Mickey vibrated. He said, “We already saw all this stuff when we came in. There’s a secret route behind the waterfall! Let’s go that way!”
Thought one – There’s a secret route behind the waterfall? We’ve been here a zillion times! Why do we not know that? That’s pretty cool!
Thought two – WAIT. Disney is tracking me?
This had huge implications for the business. I realized that, at that moment, my entire day had been charted with that doll….what rides I went on. How long the wait times were. Anyplace I wanted to continue to spend time in…which stores….what stopped me….what didn’t…it was….
It was creepy.
So fast forward a few years. Disney provides wristbands if you stay on property. Instead of having a ticket, you scan your wristband. And they connect your credit card (if you want) to your wristband…so you scan it to pay instead of pulling out a card. It’s also your room key….so you can scan it to enter your room. It’s waterproof, so you can take it on the water rides. And nowadays it even stores your fast passes, so if you register for a ride between 1 and 2 pm, and it’s 12:59, when you scan to get in it tells the ride operator you can’t get on line for another minute yet. It’s the expansion of the MPM tech.
Convenient for sure. I mean, if I spend too much time on line, it lets the park know they need to open up something over there to get people moving faster. It also lets the park know that if I see the line is 90 minutes and I get on anyway, it tells them how much line I’m willing to tolerate to get on whatever I want to see. I get it. It makes sense from a business perspective…more information lets you better service your customers, and lets you cater your services to them. Disney is aaaall about customer service. If you register that it’s your wedding trip, every dinner reservation will be aware when you get there, and the servers will congratulate you without you having to say anything. It’s nice. Still creepy, but nice.
Then Star Wars Land (Hereafter referred to as GE for Galaxy’s Edge, or BSO for Black Spire Outpost) opened up, and deeply incorporated the Disney Play app.
So the neat thing about the play app is that it gives you things to do when you are on line. This is in most of the park areas no matter what land you are in (though in some places it’s just trivia questions) but in the Outpost, it’s incorporated into the landscape. The Millennium Falcon is there, and you can hack into it. It’s just a prop, you can’t enter it (though maybe the actors can) but if you hack into it, it steams or it revs up, or does whatever. You create an alternate persona, and you can choose a team, the First Order, the Rebels, the Neutrals, or the Scoundrels, and you can accept jobs from them to earn credits or pieces of blueprints or what have you. In GE it includes a translator (for alien signs, but also for recorded messages that can be translated) a scanner (to scan the barcodes of crates and discover the contents, sometimes that are being looked for by the Resistance or the First Order), a Hack app (which lets you hack into doors, ships like the MF, or other props) and a radio wave kind of hack thing, which you can use to eavesdrop on radio transmissions that are going through the park, if you are near any of the radio towers, or props, or whatever.
As you complete jobs, your ranking in your particular faction goes up. Also, in GE, the actors are no longer posing in a spot for a meet and greet. They are wandering through the outpost, sometimes Rebels, sometimes Kylo Ren and a few stormtroopers….and I’ve seen the stormtroopers stop guests to ask what they’re doing….and not necessarily in a nice way. More like, “I KNOW that’s a datapad. I want to know exactly what you’re DOING with it.”
Because now not only do they know where we are, but they know what faction we’re playing, and whether we have a ranking. And they may be searching for Rebel Spies.
Suddenly, it’s a little creepier, and a little cooler. Now I want to hack signals, but not get busted by the First Order.
And in the Meta….they know how much time I’m willing to run around and not be on rides, just scanning and completing jobs.
What’s the point of this whole thing I’m writing?
Well, They’re opening up a Star Wars themed hotel. It is being billed at present as if it were a cruise….you get on some kind of transporter that takes you off-world, and when you get there, there’s no windows or anything, because they need to keep the illusion that you’re on another planet. Everyone there is an actor. All of them have backstories. And while you’re on this trip, they have to have some way to keep you busy.
And this datapad thing at the Outpost is how they’re figuring out what we want. It’s how they will adjust their work at the hotel.
Everything Disney does, I’m learning, is a step to something else. And that’s cool when it’s for customer service. But I am naturally suspicious of big corporations. And Facebook tried to cater to me too….look where that went.
I don’t know how I feel about all this. it’s still creepy.
But it’s all amazingly cool, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to check out this hotel. I can’t help it. It’s the big, shiny, candy-colored package with a bow. I need to open it.
But I’m a tiny bit worried that it might be a little more like Hellraiser’s puzzle box.