Comments on: Magic wands for Disney

By: grovenstien

grovenstien — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:32:24 +0000

This is cool stuff but perhaps moding a wii remote may be a cheaper implimentation?

By: strider_mt2k

strider_mt2k — Mon, 18 May 2009 13:19:24 +0000

stunmonkey is just pissed off over his “tying my own shoes” hack being rejected.

By: necromncr

necromncr — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:44:35 +0000

They have something similar in Te Papa Museum, New Zealand. You create your share of interactive items on a terminal and then place it on a several meters long video-wall.

Beside that, is this in the USA? If so, I wonder how long will it take until a kid hits another kid or chokes on the gadget and entire Disney gets shutdown… *being evil of course*

By: nrp

nrp — Sun, 17 May 2009 19:06:39 +0000

@andrew
a) and c) were big use cases we were planning on. c) was partially implemented. Your “display name” follows you around games and shows up as your cursor in drawing. Wand activity is also tracked on a web interface that could be extended to do Xbox Live style achievements.

@stunmonkey
I assume that was tongue in cheek, but our hardware is Arduino based, and we use their bootloader.

@caleb/jack
There is a panic button to clear the screen, but that is indeed a huge concern and would almost certainly prevent it from going into an actual park.

By: Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:42:08 +0000

@andrew
Great ideas. the ability to point traffic is brilliant. I wonder if they already have methods of doing similar things.

By: Andrew Pollack

Andrew Pollack — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:03:00 +0000

I can see this being a key to Disney’s off-ride time consuming stuff. The trick is, they won’t be giving them away. The “wand” controller will probably be for sale, and/or included with multi-day passes and vacation packages. Your own “wand” will, conveniently, have a kind of RFID in it as well. This will allow them to use them to:

a) track park utilization

b) use the wands in an e-commerce way – quick check out, automatically route to room thing. Imagine being in a gift shop and using the wand to buy things which are then just sent right to your hotel room. No waiting on lines to check out.

c) track your “score” at games, and sign your “artwork” (which may help with the problem of inappropriate drawings somewhat). I could see them structuring treasure hunt contents where you use your wand to go to different attractions to collect points or clues.

In fact, imagine a treasure hunt/points system that changed in real time based on park utilization. The clues could re-order or change their weighting to help balance the flow of people in the parks. A particular attraction is under utilized? Make more clues point there for a few hours.

Frankly, now that I think of it I’m surprised they haven’t done it yet.

By: stunmonkey

stunmonkey — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:02:18 +0000

Wait – this doesn’t have an arduino so it can’t be finished yet.
maybe if they made an arduino trigger another arduino to blink an led on top it would be cooler.

By: #YLS#

#YLS# — Sun, 17 May 2009 17:00:39 +0000

Kind of cool tech, depends on how much it costs really, if it’s cheap I’m sure like most IR technology it’ll get implemented just for the sake of it, otherwise I have a feeling it won’t be all that widely used even in somewhere like disney land where people are usually happy to throw away money.

@jack

p.s. if you go to anywhere disney owned and want to be childish, just go to the stuffed toys section and put all the characters in sexually suggestive positions…

It’s what I do all the time :D

By: SOOPERGOOMAN187

SOOPERGOOMAN187 — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:24:20 +0000

It looks more like a vibrator than a wand, design revision time.

By: Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:01:30 +0000

@ed3
Interesting, I haven’t been and didn’t know they already had something similar. Surely they are always looking for new ways to amuse people.

By: ed3

ed3 — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:54:58 +0000

The pong and whiteboard apps are similar to what Disney already has in the Soarin queue. They do body movement tracking to achieve the same thing. Could just as easily implement the poll app based on people raising their hands at the right time. No wand needed.

By: Caleb Kraft

Caleb Kraft — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:38:57 +0000

sadly, that was my first thought. Disney would not implement a whiteboard for that reason. It will probably be some kind of simple game.

By: jack

jack — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:36:10 +0000

Kiddies drawing penises while waiting in line!