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Disney Wants To Track You With RFID
Antipater writes "Disney parks and resorts have long had a system that combined your room key, credit card, and park ticket into a single card. Now, they're taking it a step further by turning the card into an RFID wristband (called a 'MagicBand'), tracking you, and personalizing your park experience, targeted-ad style. 'Imagine booking guaranteed ride times for your favorite shows and attractions even before setting foot in the park,' wrote Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, in a blog posting on Monday. 'With MyMagic+, guests will be able to do that and more, enabling them to spend more time together and creating an experience that's better for everyone.' Disney does go on to talk about all the things you can opt out of if you have privacy concerns, and the whole system seems to be voluntary or even premium." With a theme park, at least, you can also choose to avoid the place entirely; that makes it, however creepy, a bit different from compulsory education settings, or mandatory car tracking.
After watching their recently acquired film THX 1138, CEO Bob Iger hailed it as a "feel good" movie although the ending had some flaws and promised to turn all Disney parks and resorts into the futuristic "utopia" from the film. Iger announced at a press conference that Mickey Mouse would replace OMM 0910 as the only approved deity of worship. Iger sat upon a chair made of the late Congressman Sonny Bono's remains while wearing his Grand Dragoon Mousekateer helmet although he refused to answer any questions from reporters who had not been taking their performance enhancing medications.
My work here is dung.
I admit I don't get the reflexive "defend my privacy" stance on slashdot. Why is this "creepy"? You can opt out if you choose, but you can use the system to enhance your experience at the park if you choose. Plus, it gives Disney data to understand patterns and behaviors of people who enjoy the park, and thus allowing them to enhance and modify the park to meet their customer's desires, which makes their experience more enjoyable and increases the value of the park which ultimately makes it more profitable; that sounds like a win-win.
Can someone please explain a scenario, especially when this is voluntarily opt out, where this is a bad thing for people? Note it's also based on your room card/ticket to the park, so it's not like they can track you outside of the park, only when you're on their facility.
... they take the wristband off you when you leave, right?
Right?
Local news media are already saying it's not even available to everyone. They're bundling it for certain people and making it an optional extra for others, and they're really going to have to stretch to come up with good reasons why someone would want to pay extra for an RFID band on a single-day ticket, considering that single day admission is already nearly $100, and you'll be lucky if you get to ride 6 or 8 rides due to the length of lines.
Long signatures suck.
This isn't for you people, its for the rich assholes who don't like to wait in queues with the common folk.
The RFID is for security in case you want to walk among the normals.
I know it's their park, but since Walt Disney World was granted a 20 year tax break from the government for it's purchase and setup in Florida, I don't quite see it as a private company, even though it is. Even still, if we gripe about something like this being done in Walmart or Target or airports, why the hell would we not gripe about it from an entertainment perspective.
I've paid my entrance fee, to have free roam of the park in certain areas. I do not feel they have the right to track my every move.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
"I'm going to build my own theme park! With blackjack! And hookers! You know what- forget the park!"
I am officially gone from
An Orwellian world, after all...
It's an Orwellian world, after all...
I like you, Stuart. You're not like everyone else, here, at Slashdot.
It's a wristband. You take it off when you leave the park.
I took my family on a Disney cruise and you booked all sorts of things before leaving port. It was nice and the combo room key/charge card/etc was super convenient.
I don't think Disney is hiding the fact that they want to squeeze you for every penny you are willing to give them. Any adult with half a brain can figure that out within a few hours of visiting a park/boarding a ship. They manage to make sure that no matter your budget you can have fun with them and that is no small feat.
Be realistic about your budget and stick to it. I for one really liked going up on deck to a pool that wasn't crowded and having someone bring me a bucket of beers that I had already picked out and paid for - without asking or waiting. If that isn't your style, you can always go with the competition and get overcrowded pools and long lines for a smaller selection of beers that really aren't any cheaper.
I don't see an issue with this. You already have a room key tied to your credit card number, a pass with your name on it, and you have to book reservations at most of the eating places in Orlando. Disney already has my information for all of that stuff, and pretty much can already track me. Why not have an all-in-one system? Or is it just because its RFID wristband that everyone here is having an issue with?
I just finished re-reading Makers.
She bought it all: all the fast-passes and priority cards, all of it loaded into a grinning Mickey on a lanyard, a wireless pendant that would take care of her everywhere she went in the park, letting her spend money like water.
Thus girded, she consulted with her bellhop some more and laid out an itinerary. Once she'd showered she found she didn't want to wear any of her European tailored shorts and blouses. She wanted to disappear into the Great American Mass. The hotel gift shop provided her with a barkcloth Hawai'ian shirt decorated with tessellated Disney trademarks and a big pair of loose shorts, and once she donned them, she saw that she could be anyone now, any tourist in the park. A pair of cheap sunglasses completed the look and she paid for it all by waving her Mickey necklace at the register, spending money like water.
OK, so it's a bracelet, not a necklace -- otherwise, pretty much spot-on.
Great book, and you can read the whole thing (and all of his books) online for free in a variety of formats.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I have no desire to ever step foot in a Disney theme park ever again. Overrated.
It'snot like they don't know where you are. Are you secretly attending their resort without them knowing?
This is all about a better experience at Disney resort. It's a good idea. It's not even creepy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're already in the public, they already know you are there since you bought tickets. Might as well take advantage of the technology to improve and personalize your experience, they already have each area filled with cameras and tracking when you enter and leave the park.
I forget. Is evil Mickey is the one without the goatee?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm all for privacy, but really, is tracking you via RFID much different than the fact that there are literally thousands of cameras in the park now? And don't you fucking slippery-slope me...it's a private park. Don't like, don't pay the $100 to come in.
Outside of the possibilities of better fast pass-style ride reservations and more accurate wait time tracking for ride lines, as a parent, the ability to know you have a backup plan if your kid gets lost in the light show maelstrom would be nice. Also, not having to carry/lose a ticket would be nice...that's happened to my kids before (which meant no fast passes or park-hopping). Also, think of the cool ride personalizations they could do...using your ID for ride pictures (might make girls think twice about joining Club Flash Mountain, sadly), using your name for Buzz Lightyear shooter games...maybe Pooh or Tinkerbell could greet your kid by name (before you use that as the creeper defense, remember that they already get a name for every ticket holder, and it's printed right on the ticket). Most of the benefits go to Disney, but there would be some cool potential perks if they implemented them.
I've been to Disney twice now with my family, and I gotta say anything they can do to improve the experience, including reducing wait times, is welcome. Exactly what 'privacy' do you need while visiting a resort like this? Like Disney actually cares about your personal data; they care about your CUSTOMER data. They only care about the data that will contribute to their improved algorithms for increased customer experience and service. And if this card EVER posed a security risk to your personal data such as credit card info, like Disney would tolerate that for longer than 2 minutes. They'd fix that faster than Donald Ducks temper.
So get over your bad selves; you (the individual) are not that important. The collective you, as in all of us as customers, is what they really care about.
You are already in their park, quite probably staying at one of their resorts. If you bought a meal package they know when and where you are eating. Even if you didn't anytime you use your credit card they could determine what and where you are buying things. I am all for protecting my privacy in the general world, but I'm at freakin' Disney doing Disney things for a couple days. No this is not Orwellian. When Google/Apple/Microsoft/the Government start requiring these things, then we can talk.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
I've never been to any amusement park so I can't tell whether they are actually fun and worth it, but whenever I hear of one I'm thinking of Westworld with Yul Brynner. Oh, and by the way, whenever someone mentions McDonalds or a circus, It comes to my mind.
Needless to say I avoid amusement parks and McDonalds.
The downfall to wristbands is you have to keep them on all the freaking time unless you make it loose enough where you can squeeze it off. I just stayed at a resort where the wrist band was your room key and entry into parks of the resort. PITA to keep it on all the time. If you lost it/broke it, it was $40 to get a freaking new one.
The coolest part was not fumbling with a sleeping kid in your arms trying to get the card reader to read the card. Just smash your wrist to the door and it opened.
Yeah, but when you're already booked and just spent 2 days driving 1200 miles to get there, already checked in and spent one night at a resort, then show up at a theme park where they ask you to stick a finger in a scanner.... That's not really the time to opt-out. Thanks Disney World.
here, please make sure it's secured around my wrist,...
You do not even want to know where they stick your personalized "hidden Mickey".
When someone says, "Any fool can see
With and RFID band tracking your movements, and maybe your kids as well in their massive parks, I have no trouble with this. There are times when at least one of my 3 has vanished in the blink of an eye, only to reappear shortly thereafter in some store we are in. I haven't taken them to Disney yet, but it would be nice to have the comfort of knowing if one of my kids ran off and got lost, the RFID band would be able to tell me where they were faster than security could search for them manually.
imagine the awesomeness if they gave you a loaner nexus phone with google now to track you in the park, let you pay with google wallet, make some limited free calls, plan your vacation and track your movements to organize the park better
that would be a geek wet dream come true
i mean how awesome would it be if you put in your plan for the day and disney google now told you when to leave your hotel and where to have breakfast to make the most of your time
to Yul Brenner wearing a cowboy hat...
The music festival Bonnaroo has been doing this for 2 years now. The first year was a complete failure with large plastic bracelets that only tracked when you entered the festival grounds and left everyday by having you tap your hand. The second year was much better with a return to cloth bracelets with a square block that was interweaved onto it. If you registered your name with the # you were provided on the bracelet and put your facebook information in it would tell everyone when you entered the park and you can "check in" at each stage or other areas by tapping your hand against one of the many panels setup around the festival grounds.
Basically Disney may be the first mainstream place to be doing this but its been around for a few years now with smaller places trying to perfect how it works. I would say its not even close to perfect yet but seeing how far they came in 1 year and seeing how much more money Disney can throw at it im sure it will be perfected when its used in their theme parks. I still don't know how they will get around the fact that you have to tap a device for each location you visit. Basically if you don't check in you are not really being tracked. One things for sure they really want to see exactly what people do all day, but im sure its only to make the experience for everyone better in the end by adjusting areas that they didn't know people went to so much with more to do or more food. I don't see why people think this is that bad.
I took my family to WDW in Orlando last year for a week. We had a great time, no problems. But one concern I had the entire time was "what if we get seperated from the kids?" I'm sure this happens constantly at the park and there's a whole system in place.
Before we left I installed an App on my android that featured maps of the four parks, wait times for rides, locations of characters, restaurants and all that. What if you could your individual party members on your phone? "Person 1 scanned their wristband at Star Tours at 12:34pm"
You can fry it in the microwave once you've been mauled by enough actors dressed as giant mice (now THAT'S creepy).
After all, you're surrendering a lot of your normal rights when you agree to Disney terms and conditions and yu will be experiencing the corporation ethos on their premises. Its not as if you're going to be permanently chipped, like the family pooch, though I can see that as an option for those who buy an annual pass!
Apropos of nothing,in the UK, EuroDisney produces TV adverts showing little children wetting themselves with excitement because their loving parents have spelled out "You're going to Disney!" on the fridge door with magnetic letters. I'd love to have a sequence of thoroughly devastated kids who see a scrooge-like parent amend it to "You're NOT..." Perhaps Jim could fix it? But then we'd be back to those actors....
Everyone meets in the hotel lobby at the beginning of the day, and swaps wristbands.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
'Imagine booking guaranteed ride times for your favorite shows and attractions even before setting foot in the park,' wrote Tom Staggs, chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
Imaging smooth flowing lines, or no lines at all! Imagine being able to find a seat at the restaurant area. Imagine having a great day.
Now for get all of that because it ain't goin to happen! You will stand in line, you will stand to eat your $10 hot dog. You will be tracked and monetized to the fullest. $90 to get into the get is only the start of the raping that we will put on you. Oh, by the way, we're also planning on extending copyright law another 50 years, just for the fun of it.
Imagine!
Having been to Disney world this past august this is just a more advanced version of the system they currently have in place. The only real difference is you currently use your park pass and buttons (personal event greeting) instead of an wristband. The new thing is pre-booking some ride times which considering the lengthy wait times on some of the more popular rides (2 hours+ some days). Disney constantly tracks ride times, guest flow, guest approval and a whole host of things we would never think of all to improve the quality and safety of the experience to allow you more time in the shops and restaurants where they make the real money. Disney above all is into selling you as many of those trinkets and meals as they can manage. The rides are there to give you a reason to come back.
As for the other issue mentioned (scanning your finger print) it is to prevent people from buying one yearly pass or multi-day pass and renting/selling the use of the pass. Neither of which I can blame them from wanting to prevent as this does cut into there bottom line on ticket sales and skews park numbers.
and after that this star wars fan aint gonna ever watch it ever again
nor any of your upcoming crap
you want to spy point a camera at my butthole ( farts)
You can choose to avoid car tracking. Remember, cars aren't people. (We tend to forget that.)
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
As a general rule I am against any sort of tracking. But, knowing what I know about the "happiest place on Earth" from my college room mate who worked there in the summers, having a tracking wrist band on my kids while I'm there is something that I am 100% for. While the Mouse does everything it can to ensure that the "no child has ever been kidnapped FROM a Disney park" statement holds true, the fact is that things happen to kids there every year and the perpetrators don't have to leave to property to do it.
Clearly Walt Disney Corp is the handiwork of Satan. Even the founder is (cryogenically) un-dead, now we get the mark of the beast.
In my browser, this story appeared next to an ad for a Disney/Chase Bank Visa card. I think Slashdot is recording the stories I read and using them to pop-up similarly themed advertising. Is there nowhere I can go to be free of the spying?!?
With apologies to the right honorable gentleman D. Duck.
I'm going to open up an aluminum foil stand just inside the park entrance.
One of the cool benifits that they could offer would be locating members of your group. All the wrist band for a group would be grouped together in the system. All that you have to do is go to a Kiosk and select something like show group memeber locations. At which point a map of the park would show where each member was. From there, there are a lot of additional features that could be added.
Why are the collars on the wrist when they should be around your neck? Would be nice to have a tag on the collar with the name of the master and master's address.
Big Bro...I mean, Mickey Mouse is watching you.
"Disney would make an excellent dictatorship."
If I can pay a fee to get the Disney Princess of my choice to surprise my daughter during our time at the park then I like this.
For every benefit you receive a tax is levied. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
You walk into any supermarket, if your right handed you turn right first. Thats were the sweets and fresh breads are. If you're a woman, you get milk first. Thats why its in the back corner. cookies are what you see after you get milk. People study people. if they aren't tracking your movement individually with RFID tags, they are watching you on video or using computers to track how an individual moves around an area.
... and nothing of value was lost
I misread this as something petrochemical.
Do the world a favor, give everybody guns and take each other out.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/everyone-at-office-planning-shooting-spree-for-sam,30793/
Similarly to the "Your Tivo Thinks You're Gay" problem, Disney might decide that you like "It's a Small World", and have its pinkness follow you around on TV screens and its music playing on any nearby speakers. And imagine(er) that they sell that information to the Hello Kitty people so it also follows you around the mall next time you're there.
I'm much more bothered by the California Transportation department's FastTrack than by Disney's. I don't need them tracking me fast, and they already charge $1 more for paying cash, and they're going to start making Fastrack use mandatory on the Golden Gate Bridge (or take your license plate photo and send you a bill.) I use that bridge 2-3 times a year, so buying a surveillance appliance is annoying. On the other hand, Disney World FastTracks were somewhat useful, not that I plan to go back. (I saw "It's a Small World" at the 1964 New York World's Fair, and once was really enough :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
When people warned of projects to mass chip Humans at the birth of such tag technology, they were mostly dismissed as 'tin-foil hatted' nutters. Now we see governmental 'conditioning' programs in full flow.
The project currently has two main arms. Those where people are forced to be tagged, and those where people are told tagging will put them into an 'elite' status. Top-down and bottom-up schemes playing on the weak and the vain.
With every tagging project comes a careful list of plausible excuses for the 'slippery slope' fanatics to use when they justify such schemes on places like this.
Put simply, the government wants to know where you are, every second of the day. The mobile phone achieves this goal to an amazing degree, but isn't perfect as an intelligence gathering mechanism. A mobile phone checking a small embedded identity chip in the person him/herself would be very much better, and doable with today's tech.
That cretinous part of every population- the part responsible for the rise to power of monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Julius Caesar, Ghengis Khan, Tony Blair, etc, will say "what is wrong with the government tracking everybody- it isn't as if they give a damn about most of you anyway". It is the age old tactic of telling the sheep that as sheep, they have nothing to lose because they don't have individual importance in the first place.
Eugenics, forced sterilization and the gas chambers were great examples of "because we can now do it, we should now do it". Just because advances in technology give the monsters vast new opportunities does NOT mean society is obliged to change and experiment with incorporating these technologies into the everyday lives of people.
For instance, the EU has just enacted laws preventing insurance companies from discriminating between male and female clients. Technology PROVES there is a vast difference in life experience between the sexes, but it has been deemed socially beneficial to ignore these differences, and to treat the sexes the same for the purposes of insurance.
A pea-brained Slashdotter, after defending the chipping of people, will scream "how dare the lawmakers prevent the insurance companies from exploiting the statistics generated from mass computer analysis of claims". However, the rare Slashdotter who isn't constantly cheering Israel and demanding that every vaccine made by proven corrupt and criminal drug companies is forced by law into our bodies, will have a different, vastly more intelligent, point of view.
They will appreciate that the deployment of technology is never neutral, and never a good thing in and of itself. They will know that wicked people have been very good at finding excuses to justify their wickedness, in the name of 'science'.
Why are doctors, even in the USA, against the use of invasive, drawn out, expensive, painful, debilitating, and usually useless cancer treatments when it is THEY that have the cancer that will be treated this way? And yet the ordinary, chip supporting, all vaccines under any circumstances by law supporting, Israel supporting Slashdotter will cheer the drug companies when they introduce even more expensive, even more useless cancer treatments for profit only.
When people allow those that rule them to treat them cattle, then people will be cattle from chipped birth to the slaughter house (the battle-field, or euthanasia) when no longer of use. You only gain respect by demanding respect. "I am not a number, I am a free man" is the most profound philosophical statement when considering the role of the ordinary person in society.
Tagging people is both useful to your masters and degrading to the person tagged- a double whammy. The aim is to get 90%+ of the sheep to except tagging, so that the government can use the "how dare they refuse" argument against the hold-outs. Only a complete cretin would deny that many nations will be chipping newborns at birth by law within ten years, or that migrant workers in these nations will also require chipping. No Western nation will be first on this list, but unless we see radical change in the attitudes of the people of Western nations, within 30 years many of them will be doing the same.
It's way stupider than big brother. People go on vacation to experience things they won't at home. If you continue to offer them what you know they already like, they won't find anything new. They'll feel disappointed and not want to return. Even though you provided them exactly what you determined they wanted. I don't want a salesbot looking over my shoulder every minute of my vacation and neither will anyone else.
Ah.... Mooby, you delightful golden calf you. It use to be porn that led the charge in employing technologies.
Maybe the government should dump money towards this, purchasing the data mining algorithms etc that go along with these wrist bands and then find a way to retrofit the whole system back to suspected terrorists.
the mutual attraction of Jobs' and Disney makes more sense to me every time one of these news bits crops up: They had a shared, mildly predatory, vision of how to control the common consumer.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
Here in Southern California, Disney is having trouble with "brokers" buying a three day park pass for the price of two days and then "renting" the card by the day. They are now taking pictures of people with the three day passes, causing some delays entering the parks.
I call BS
Went to disney with the family. Paid for a ONE day pass, it was about opening time.
They wanted our fingerprints. I said no. They rep they were not really scanning the finger, it was not a fingerprint, they were just mesuring length and width. I called BS, they can't get the length from a finger tip, and width means nothing.
Well, but it is not a fingerprint, it is a biometric, they claimed. I point out that a finger print is a biometric.
Try to get in, for another 10 minutes. WOULD NOT LET ME TALK TO A SUPERVISOR!
Finally, about 15-10 minutes in, with a wife and 2 kids in tow, I demanded my money back, including parking. (how many people have the conviction or balls to do that?)
INSTANTLY, oh well, you can just sign the back of the ticket, but if you loose it you cannot get back into the park. (Gosh, no, really?)
This was a one day pass. Why did the so Desperately want our fingerprints???????
I think disney already biometrically tracks you.
If you have a multi-day pass, I believe they can find out if you have transferred the pass to someone else by your biometric signature. (hand size?)