It's unclear exactly how MyMagic and MagicBands help Disney, and they're not really saying.
I've actually given this quite a bit of thought, and wrote about it on my blog. Here's a snippet of what I wrote a while back.
First and foremost is guest spending. It's already been reported that early testing revealed guests wearing these, tend to spend more money. Why? The perception is that guests don't identify with the bands in the same way as cash money, or even a KTTW card which is similar to a credit card. It's similar to the Vegas poker chip mentality, where players tend to identify the chips with playing and not real money.
Second, is the area of advanced scheduling and planning. If more guests choose to use prior to their arrival FP+, this gives them the ability to get a clearer picture of how many guests will be in the park for a specific day, which allows them to schedule just the right amount of CMs, order food and beverage, etc.
Third, is the ability to capture and analyze guest data, including spending, movements and ride tendencies. There's a lot of other information they might be able to assess as well.
Hotel room –
- notify hotel management – this could be used for emergency notifications in case of fire or bad weather, it would give management a more detailed view of how many guests are at the hotel and where
- deliver baggage/packages – If they know you’ve checked back in to your room, they can deliver your packages
- activating or waking up the environmental (heat & A/C) systems energy saving mode.
- Bus stop, automated signalling for one or more buses based on how many guests waiting
Park Entrance/Park Ops
- Transportation management – Identify which resort guests come from, or if from parking lot, allows for better management at end of day with more precise resources (boats/capatains, buses/drivers)
Also, if there is a rainstorm or other event that causes a mass exodus prior to closing, they could know and automatically queue transportation based on how many guests were there from each resort.
- Plan vs Actual – If guests take advantage of the advanced features such as FP+ ride reservations and Dining reservations, the systems could automatically adjust if guests change their minds or for some reason don’t go to their pre-planned destination. For example, if a family reserved FP+s for Space Mountain, 10am, but they still had not left their room at Animal Kingdom Lodge by 9:45, the system would automatically release the reservation they had for someone else to use. The same would work for dining.
- Dining reservations – It would be assumed that if a guest is in the park for which they have a dining reservation, they would likely be using the reservation at the time they scheduled. However, if for some reason, they left the park, the reservation might automatically cancel or be released for someone else to use. The system could also verify the cancellation with the guest before cancelling.
FP+ Ride Queues
- Exact number of riders in queue / on-ride
- Exact wait times (no more red lanyards)
- FP+ Usage
- Age
- Gender
Gift Shop
- Purchases – Sure, they could profile you, based on what you buy. Your preferences, colors, sizes? Although, I have to wonder how well this would work for us since we buy not just for ourselves but friends and family too.
- Spending habits – How much you spend on various types of merchandise, clothing, toys, jewelry, etc.
- Resort level spending
Dining
- Food preferences
- Allergies
- Amount of food you eat – portion sizes? frequency?
Other data
- Time you spend in park
- Time you spend in room
- Touring habits – early riser and arrival at opening, sleep in with later arrival, park closer, mid-day breaker, etc
- Attraction preferences and types
- Hotel Preferences, room preference, bed preference, pillow, towels, etc
- Time of year preference to visit (this could be via a questionaire, or an accumulation of data over multiple visits), serves the purpose of tailoring a custom promotion/advertisement for you and your family
In short, this is going to provide them with mountains of data on how guests visit the parks and resorts. With that data, they can then tweak things to make it even more profitable (for them).
This is kind of out there, but It’s remotely possible Disney could have a second or third phase planned for this that is even more encompassing. A couple of years ago (Aug, 2010), Disney tried out a queueless waiting system
http://bit.ly/XyRDGS at Rock N’ Rollercoaster and it now been implemented a form of this on the new Dumbo queue. Consider, if all of the attractions were linked to FP+, Disney could conceivably set up all queues in this way where guests could pre-schedule their
entire park visit ahead of time. Or, a computer would do it for you based on a pre-selected experience type. Then you would simply show up at the park and mill about shopping, eating, playing interactive games or just sight-seeing until you get notified of your ride time. Whether that’s part of the ultimate plan, will have to just wait and see. I can't really see this happening though, due to the number of people who just want to show up and go about their day unplanned, but still, it's a possibility.
One more thought: With ticket prices inching closer to the $100 mark, many people have questioned whether a day at the park(s) is really going to be worth that much. Will visitors be willing to pay THAT much for a ticket? Rumors have been floating around that all of the big players are looking into alternative ticketing strategies that would ease the impact of raising tickets to this price. Speculation on my part (again), but with the MagicBand technology, Disney
could implement a tiered ticketing system, offering the guest varying levels of “experience” or pre-planned packages with attractions and dining. This would be a similar model as the airlines, hotels and rental car companies, where if you pay more, you get more. For example, they might have a Premium Experience level that has 4 FastPass+ options, a Table Service credit, and free drink refills, then maybe a Standard Experience level that would include 3 FastPass+ options, a Counter Service credit and a free drink refills, then they would have a Basic Experience with just 2 FastPass+ options and nothing else. These might be priced at $125, $105 and $95 respectively, just as an example.
