Can your average smart phone communicate with an RFID system.
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iPhone "Keys" Coming to Starwood (Swalphin)?
- Thread starter BoarderPhreak
- Start date
luv
Well-Known Member
I actually love that feature. It saved me once with a rental, lol.
I don't think they'd do that with room keys. People need the doors locked while they're in there.
If you want it to, it will. Point is, how many millions (or billions) of dollars are these companies going to spend to keep up every time the tech changes?
I know that to some people, "falling behind" seems unthinkable. Like, if the technology exists, it must be used! Can't fall behind!! Egads!!!
But it's just a hemorrhage of money that can't be stopped until someone applies a tourniquet by saying, "We don't need it."
I liked the magic bands, on days I wasn't planning on taking pictures I left my phone and wallet in the room safe, it was refreshing not having the temptation to check email, check news, check [whatever] and instead just happily move throughout the parks and use the band to buy meals and get on attractions. I was there from day after Christmas until jan 6 and the magic band system worked very nicely, although I would like the ability to have fast passes in different parks since I almost always hop around.
EOD K9
Well-Known Member
That's proprietary. Also, to the poster mentioning the monorail, there is a great article in Yesterland.com about this very thing.
The Visionary Soul
Well-Known Member
The door locks just like it does now. After 5 seconds. If you leave your phone in your room you will lock yourself out. Same as a key.
Darth Sidious
Authentically Disney Distinctly Chinese
Sort of, according to Michael Eisner's own book the contractor that was used to build EPCOT claimed exclusivity to build EPCOT resorts. Long story short, Tischman (contractor) reached an agreement for two hotels to be built near EPCOT. Eisner asked a few architects to build models and eventually tapped Michael Graves' design and presented it to Tischman. Tischman agreed and Swan and Dolphin were born. You can actually see the model presented to Eisner in the lower lobby of the Dolphin.
It is true that Disney at the time had no interest in owning and operating hotels but Eisner had different plans after joining the company. Eisner nearly entered a partnership with Marriott to operate the resorts while Imagineering designed and built them. Eventually Eisner pulled the deal off the table and poached the Marriott CFO to join Disney and the company entered the hotel business alone.
Darth Sidious
Authentically Disney Distinctly Chinese
And why wouldn't you explore it if you're Disney? They surely can make a few tweaks to the current system and save the cost of Magic Bands. I suppose some RFID capabilities would need to be adapted to this tech but it's not as costly to begin with. It's a bit surprising they never went this route to start. @flynnibus would know best.
R W B
Well-Known Member
Ok, so how do you get back in? Is their a normal key slot too?
The Visionary Soul
Well-Known Member
You go down to the front desk and get a key for your room. This isn't like a phone is the only way in a room. It's not a one-fits-all solution for everyone. It's for people that have Starwood Accounts linked on their compatible smart phone that have no desire to stand at a Check-In-Desk. As far as the key itself, they could very well even have a hard keyhole on the door (Like Disney does) or just have RFID enabled locks as well or even (Not sure why they would want to) keep the old mag stripe system. It's not that hard of a concept to understand, it's actually pretty simple and effective.
surfsupdon
Well-Known Member
I thank Micheal because when there are ZERO discounts at Yacht/Beach/BoardWalk...you can grab a stellar rate at Swan/Dolphin and still be in that amazing Deluxe Epcot Area for a fraction of the Disney cost.
I'm booked for 209/night for Christmas Week at the Swan. That is cheaper than Disney Value Resort for the same time period. Gotta book early tho, the rate is now up to 329/night, still cheaper than Disney's 545/night.
Disney needed a system where they had complete control - they could not assume that everyone would have a smartphone available. With the bands, they can be sure that everyone has everything they need to take part in MyMagic+.
There is also the risk of changing standards with smartphone RFID support. Several technologies are going to be competing to control this - and the winner is not clear at this point.
The MagicBands are also expected to be a significant money maker, with extensive amounts of customizing of both the band itself and the add ons. If Disney went the smartphone route they would lose this revenue stream.
The Visionary Soul
Well-Known Member
Not only this, Steve, but we would't have those cool, "I'm with the band." T-shirts. Ha ha.
But seriously, I think Disney wanted to roll out something that was just too early to roll out. In the next couple years we're going to see a standard win out on Smartphones for ways to pay and unlock doors (and cars) and Disney just didn't want to wait that long to see what technology would win. My bets are on Bluetooth Low Energy for door locks though. Credit Cards are still a bigger burden.
flynnibus
Premium Member
Like @wdwmagic said, typically the reason would be about control. You can't control your own destiny when you ride on a platform that is independently supplied by the customer. The property doesn't control the rate of adoption by the customers and doesn't control when Apple or Motorola decide to iterate their products. The lifecycle on these consumer products is relatively short... 2-4 years.
You can accept that kind of 'take what you can get' when you are doing a simple 'value add' service. There, it's just about balancing the cost vs the gain... will enough people use it, will the value the customer gets from it be sufficient to justify the expense, etc. Disney on the other hand tho was looking at a technology where the token would be the foundation used for essential services.. for everyone. For WDW, the penetration rate for customers needs to be near 100%.. (not just who happens to have a phone..) and the investment in specific reader technology is so massive due to the scale of the project you need to be able to garuntee the usable lifecycle. You don't want to replace thousands of readers to find out in June '14 a vendor you don't have influence over just invalidated all your new readers
I think the main takeaway is 'value add' vs 'fundamental technology'. If you are as big as WDW, you can't build your entire operating world on something you have no influence over.
This isn't to say WDW had to build a CLOSED system.. that couldn't use customer provided devices as an alternative token if the customer had it. But it's entirely a different world to do it the other way.. which is 'customer must provide token'
There are also technical benefits to the design that is highly optimized to your application... like power consumption, control over range, cost control, etc. The one thing going for WDW is scale... meaning they can justify dedicated R&D and production design costs because the application of it is so massive and in theory with a sufficiently long life cycle.
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
A NFC enabled one can - Samsung GS4 is an example, And from a 'Green' standpoint it reduces the number of keycards which are simply discarded, They are of course meant to be re-usable but frequently are not.
Sounds like it could be an option in the future. "Don't want to wear a band? X, Y, Z phone can take the place of it."
and just hope the guests have the phone charged, otherwise they aren't getting into the park or hotel room LOL.
Well there is that. They will just have to put charging stations in the ride vehicles and theaters at CoP, UoE, HoP and the like. Guest counts will go up, phones will be charged, everybody wins!!!
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
Like @wdwmagic said, typically the reason would be about control. You can't control your own destiny when you ride on a platform that is independently supplied by the customer. The property doesn't control the rate of adoption by the customers and doesn't control when Apple or Motorola decide to iterate their products. The lifecycle on these consumer products is relatively short... 2-4 years.
You can accept that kind of 'take what you can get' when you are doing a simple 'value add' service. There, it's just about balancing the cost vs the gain... will enough people use it, will the value the customer gets from it be sufficient to justify the expense, etc. Disney on the other hand tho was looking at a technology where the token would be the foundation used for essential services.. for everyone. For WDW, the penetration rate for customers needs to be near 100%.. (not just who happens to have a phone..) and the investment in specific reader technology is so massive due to the scale of the project you need to be able to garuntee the usable lifecycle. You don't want to replace thousands of readers to find out in June '14 a vendor you don't have influence over just invalidated all your new readers
I think the main takeaway is 'value add' vs 'fundamental technology'. If you are as big as WDW, you can't build your entire operating world on something you have no influence over.
This isn't to say WDW had to build a CLOSED system.. that couldn't use customer provided devices as an alternative token if the customer had it. But it's entirely a different world to do it the other way.. which is 'customer must provide token'
There are also technical benefits to the design that is highly optimized to your application... like power consumption, control over range, cost control, etc. The one thing going for WDW is scale... meaning they can justify dedicated R&D and production design costs because the application of it is so massive and in theory with a sufficiently long life cycle.
To Flynns points NFC is a relatively new standard because it is designed for ranges of inches it will be more secure than BT LE, It was designed from the outset as an access control/payment technology but it will NEVER have 100% penetration in the phone market. So it will always be an 'add-on' feature but systems like MM+ require that 100% of participants have compatible media hence magic-band/rfid card
ford91exploder
Resident Curmudgeon
This I can see in the not too distant future.