Blog skyhook logo 4 Ways To Improve Disney Theme Park UX With Wearable Technology

Feb 28, 2014 9:52:00 AM

4 Ways To Improve Disney Theme Park UX With Wearable Technology

Posted by Skyhook

Read All Posts

Disney is one of the global leaders in providing unique and awesome experiences. They are constantly pushing themselves to make every moment matter whether a guest is in one of their parks, restaurants, attractions, on a cruise or watching a movie. Technology is a big deal to Disney and they are constantly experimenting with new ways to surprise and delight their guests from the first-timers to the lifers. Enter the Disney Wearable.

disney theme park wearable UXThe Disney Wearable has the potential to be a win for the consumer and for Disney. They’re in the process of using it to revamp their crowd control system, provide up-to-the-minute park information to guests, “fastpass” attractions, estimate wait times for rides in any park, make dining reservations, access your hotel room, get into parking lots, let guests pay for souvenirs and food and share plans with family and friends. In other words, it’s your hotel key, credit card, park ticket and your fast pass all on your wrist.

The idea is great. They’ve gone to the trouble to install Mickey headed scanners everywhere. Even though the implementation is a still little clunky (to be generous). The social model isn’t quite where they want it to be, they haven’t vetted all of the use cases like: if the person with the hotel reservation isn’t the only one paying, it’s really hard to link another credit card. It’s also very difficult to find a family member or friend who already has an account.

Here are some things they don’t have that we would love to see in the future:

1. Ridealytics

The coolest thing would be real-time ride analytics. Give me the average wait times and show me how much time I saved by doing other things versus waiting in line. Give me discounts on souvenirs or give me ride based incentives if I spend a certain amount at the gift shop. If I spend $500, a fast pass would be awesome! I am thinking it could be a little like FlightTrack where they show flight “on time” analytics.

2. Ride Notification

Let me know when I’m near a ride that someone in my family would love and that the wait is not ridiculous, or notify me when the wait time falls into a threshold that I can tolerate. Again, more time waiting or experiencing things that are not queueing is better than waiting in line. We do love the new playground area leading up to the Dumbo ride where kids get to have a blast on a play structure ahead of their turn on the ride.

3. A Ride Journal

Think time hop. Let me connect my Facebook, Instagram and twitter accounts and pull any Disney content that is hash tagged, mentioned or tagged with a Disney location. At the end of the day, or anytime I would like to see what my day was like at Disney. I could export this to Facebook or keep it in my Disney apps and add photos.

4. Location-based Experiences

I think of this like the Marauder’s map in Harry Potter where you can see where interesting people are hiding. Maybe there’s a special Frozen princess tea party that is only known to wearables users with little kids. It would be cool if there was a cast member gallivanting through the park with a rare pin that only my kids can trade for for a specific amount of time.

Takeaway

Wearables are integrating themselves across multiple industries, keeping the trend alive and offering many use cases for the new technology, including the infiltration into the world of Disney. If these Disney wearables are going to continue to be successful, they will develop to improve user experience for Disney visitors - including location-based experiences.  

wearables_runner