Skip to footer

Why the Magic Kingdom wants to track your feet

Disney World recently secured a patent for foot-tracking technology from the US Patent and Trademark Office that could customize user experiences and gather user data.

|
Jae C. Hong/AP/File
People crowd Main Street at Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif.

The next time you go to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Fla., you may want to think twice about what shoes you wear. Disney World recently patented a new robot to track theme-park guests through their feet.

The technology would help Disney collect data on visitor preferences to improve user experiences, but also “create a customized guest experience,” according to the patent. For example, a park employee costumed as Mickey Mouse could call a child by name without recognizing anything but his shoes.

Tracking the movement of visitors is particularly important to the theme park industry because revenues depend on deploying workers in busy areas and understanding user preferences for marketing, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“The more information they have on the guest, the better experience for the guest and the more they know for continued marketing,” Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services in Cincinnati told the Los Angeles Times.

This would not be the first feature Disney has designed to improve user experience. Disney World already offers MagicBands, Radio Frequency technology bracelets that function as park tickets, FastPasses, hotel keys, and credit cards. The band is linked to a user’s My Disney Experience account and holds information about everything from dining reservations to PhotoPass photos. Disney is able to track those who buy the bands, but foot-tracking technology would increase the company’s sample size.

Plans are nascent and may not be implemented.

“In our ongoing effort to relentlessly innovate and push the boundaries of creativity and technology to create immersive experiences and legendary guest service, we file many patents annually – some come to fruition and others do not,” Disney spokeswoman Suzi Brown told The Los Angeles Times.

If the technology were to be realized, a machine would take photos of visitors’ feet as they enter the park and would pair the photos with a profile given voluntarily by the visitor.

Other camera-wielding robots would be placed around the park to keep track of guests.

The patent claims this is a less-invasive way to track visitors than other options. “Current methods for acquiring guest information and subsequently matching a particular guest with the acquired guest information are limited to rather invasive methods, such as retinal and fingerprint identification methods.

“These methods are obtrusive and some guests may not feel comfortable providing this type of biometric information to a third party. Further, these types of methods may not work when guests are wearing certain accessories such as hats or sunglasses. Less invasive manners, such as comparing a user's clothing or the like, can produce inaccurate results as many guests may have similar clothing or may change clothing, such as putting on or taking off an outer layer or sweater, which can make detection unreliable.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why the Magic Kingdom wants to track your feet
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/0802/Why-the-Magic-Kingdom-wants-to-track-your-feet
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe