Skip to main content

Disney’s wireless wristband replaces tickets at theme parks

Walt Disney World Resort
Image used with permission by copyright holder

Detailed in documents filed with the FCC this week, representatives with Disney are seeking approval for a wristband that will be used for admission privileges to major theme parks like Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California. Rather than having to keep track of tickets, the “Magic Band” can be worn throughout the day and it communicates on the 2.4 GHz spectrum. The bracelet is designed to be disposable as well as waterproof for rides like Splash Mountain or Disney’s various water parks. However, it’s also likely that Disney could produce more permanent models for Los Angeles and Orlando residents that have purchased yearly access to the Disney parks. Hypothetically, it would be as simple as visiting the Disney site or using a mobile application to add a day-pass to the account tied to the band.

disney magic bandBeyond waterproofing, it’s also likely that the band is fully sealed to prevent kids from tampering with the internal components of the band. The band houses a non-replaceable battery and there isn’t a power switch on the device. Regarding communication, the band houses two passive RFID (radio-frequency identification) tag radios; high frequency and ultra-high frequency. 

The band can also be personalized with a specific name. According to documentation printed on the band, the admission rights are nontransferable and the band must be used by the same person each time they visit the park. 

Beyond allowing visitors to gain access to the parks, it’s likely that the “Magic Band” will interact with turnstiles offering Disney’s FastPass system. The FastPass allows park visitors to register at a specific ride for a future time in order to skip long wait times. During November 2011, Disney started rolling out RFID turnstiles at Epcot that interact with a ticket using an embedded RFID chip underneath a Mickey Mouse sticker. In order to activate the turnstiles, guests hold the ticket up to the RFID scanner and press their finger on the bio-metric scanner to gain access to a new area. It’s also possible that Disney could use the “Magic Band” to allow guests access to hotel rooms at Walt Disney World resorts.

Mike Flacy
By day, I'm the content and social media manager for High-Def Digest, Steve's Digicams and The CheckOut on Ben's Bargains…
This AI cloned my voice using just three minutes of audio
acapela group voice cloning ad

There's a scene in Mission Impossible 3 that you might recall. In it, our hero Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) tackles the movie's villain, holds him at gunpoint, and forces him to read a bizarre series of sentences aloud.

"The pleasure of Busby's company is what I most enjoy," he reluctantly reads. "He put a tack on Miss Yancy's chair, and she called him a horrible boy. At the end of the month, he was flinging two kittens across the width of the room ..."

Read more
Digital Trends’ Top Tech of CES 2023 Awards
Best of CES 2023 Awards Our Top Tech from the Show Feature

Let there be no doubt: CES isn’t just alive in 2023; it’s thriving. Take one glance at the taxi gridlock outside the Las Vegas Convention Center and it’s evident that two quiet COVID years didn’t kill the world’s desire for an overcrowded in-person tech extravaganza -- they just built up a ravenous demand.

From VR to AI, eVTOLs and QD-OLED, the acronyms were flying and fresh technologies populated every corner of the show floor, and even the parking lot. So naturally, we poked, prodded, and tried on everything we could. They weren’t all revolutionary. But they didn’t have to be. We’ve watched enough waves of “game-changing” technologies that never quite arrive to know that sometimes it’s the little tweaks that really count.

Read more
Digital Trends’ Tech For Change CES 2023 Awards
Digital Trends CES 2023 Tech For Change Award Winners Feature

CES is more than just a neon-drenched show-and-tell session for the world’s biggest tech manufacturers. More and more, it’s also a place where companies showcase innovations that could truly make the world a better place — and at CES 2023, this type of tech was on full display. We saw everything from accessibility-minded PS5 controllers to pedal-powered smart desks. But of all the amazing innovations on display this year, these three impressed us the most:

Samsung's Relumino Mode
Across the globe, roughly 300 million people suffer from moderate to severe vision loss, and generally speaking, most TVs don’t take that into account. So in an effort to make television more accessible and enjoyable for those millions of people suffering from impaired vision, Samsung is adding a new picture mode to many of its new TVs.
[CES 2023] Relumino Mode: Innovation for every need | Samsung
Relumino Mode, as it’s called, works by adding a bunch of different visual filters to the picture simultaneously. Outlines of people and objects on screen are highlighted, the contrast and brightness of the overall picture are cranked up, and extra sharpness is applied to everything. The resulting video would likely look strange to people with normal vision, but for folks with low vision, it should look clearer and closer to "normal" than it otherwise would.
Excitingly, since Relumino Mode is ultimately just a clever software trick, this technology could theoretically be pushed out via a software update and installed on millions of existing Samsung TVs -- not just new and recently purchased ones.

Read more