My Pal Mickey -- Interactive Theme Park Doll

Posted by timothy on Saturday August 2, 2003 @11:59AM from the could-be-used-for-good-too dept.

Dan Howland writes "Big Ruxpin is Watching You: Once again, The Firesign Theatre's I Think We're All Bozos on this Bus proves itself to be the science-fiction story where the most stuff came true. If you recall, a hacker named Clem traveled through the Future Fair, followed by computer generated Holy-Grams who popped up and said things like, 'Why not try [WALL OF SCIENCE], 'cause it's my favorite!' Leave it to Disney to perfect that spooky technology with My Pal Mickey, an interactive talking plush doll that knows where it is inside Walt Disney World, and tells you trivia as you move through the park. Ah ha, but even better (at least from Disney's standpoint) is that, just like the Holy-Grams, My Pal Mickey feeds the info back into the central computer system, so Doctor Memory can track people's movements through the park in realtime. (Of course, these data will be skewed because they only track people who buy the dolls...) Here is another link, with the interesting, Asimov-like sentence: 'He has a strong sense of self-preservation, and reminds you to put him some place safe when you get near water play areas, or on wet rides.'"

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Re:Thank God it's opt-in... by aborchers · 2003-08-02 12:27 · Score: 5, Insightful

But maybe people don't care if they're anonymous anymore... maybe they want a talking AI Mickey doll to tell them what to think... I know that I don't want that however.

Lighten up, dude. It's a freaking toy adding another layer of interactivity to a theme park, hardly more sinister than the 100 Years of Magic badges they had last year that would blink when you were near a parade, etc. As for their tracking you, Disney's imagineers are masters of queue control and optimization precisely because they put a tremendous amount of energy into studying how people move through their parks. Absent any evidence that the doll is correlated to an individual, e.g. by ticket or cc# used at purchase, I hardly consider extending those studies with this doll an invasion of privacy.

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Who the fuck cares if they're tracking you? by SuperRob · 2003-08-02 12:34 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seriously, does it really matter if they're tracking you, and if they end up using that information to change or plan new theme parks? Quite frankly, isn't that exactly what we should want? We're the guests, and anything they do to make the parks better for me is great. Carrying around a MPM seems to be the perfect way to tell Disney what interests me at the park without having to actually TELL them.