ANAHEIM – Two Fastpass bar-code readers temporarily stationed at the entrance of Space Mountain
are not a precursor to the much-discussed Magic Bands, a Disney official said on Tuesday.
Disneyland spokeswoman Betsy Sanchez said the bar-code readers are being tested for the next few days to measure their efficiency, only at Space Mountain. She said they routinely test things at the park.
The readers appeared on Monday and look similar to those at Walt Disney World. That similarity lead many Disney fans and blog sites to speculate that this could be a test run for Magic Bands.
The MyMagic+ and Magic Band technology is currently only available at Walt Disney World and Magic Bands on the
Disney Cruise Line as part of the children’s programming. MyMagic+ allows visitors to customize theme park experiences via a small wristband with a radio-frequency identification chip.
With a single tap of the wrist using a Magic Band, MyMagic+ can serve as that guest’s theme park ticket, Fastpass for rides, pay for food and merchandise, and work as a key to enter hotel rooms. Visitors can align it with a phone application.
At Disneyland, visitors with Fastpasses were being asked to scan them before entering the attraction. Usually, a cast member stops to look at visitors’ Fastpass tickets and time stamps before letting them proceed.
The Fastpass system is a free in-park perk that provides visitors with times to come back to some popular attractions and wait in shorter lines.
If this is indeed a test for MyMagic+, it wouldn’t come as a total surprise.
Tom Staggs, the Walt Disney Co.’s chief operating officer, told the Orlando Sentinel last year that the technology would be coming to Disneyland and other Disney theme parks. Staggs, though, did not set a timetable and
added that it would not replicate the version at Walt Disney World.
The system was fully implemented in early 2014 at Walt Disney World with some estimating the development of it at around $800 million to $1 billion, the New York Times said.