Dispatch From Disneyland
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In my February column I introduced a concept called TIE (Total Immersion Environment), which speculated how this new technology might be used to enhance the guests experience at Disneyland. This month, I want to look into how another technology being developed might effect your future visits.

This technology is called face recognition or 'Biometrics' It is the computer analysis of video or still images to identify someone via unique characteristics of their face. Like a fingerprint, your face is unique to you. Biometrics looks at the angles of your face, distance between characteristics, and other items to make a map of indicators unique to you. Software then matches that map with a scan it makes of a face clipped from surveillance video.

By using a Biometrics System retail stores can track how long you're in the shop, what products you buy or are interested in, analyze your path through the store, even track how frequent you visit. A company might use this technology to suggest sales to you at the counter, or, if they have your address, even mail coupons to your house.

In a place like Disneyland, surveillance video is already omnipresent. Therefore all that is needed is a database of photos and the software to do the match up and they're ready to go. Actually, they already have a database of photos for the many thousands of their best customers, Annual Passholders.

This is not just about tracking your purchases, they can already do that just by scanning your AP (which they don't currently do). The idea here is to find a way to track not only your actual purchases, but what you're thinking about purchasing, as well. And this may be just as lucrative, if not more, than tracking actual purchases.

You walk into The Emporium, pick up a t-shirt design with the Fab Five on it, carry it around as you pick out a couple other things, then end up putting the Fab Five item back (silly!). Now, Disneyland may use a list of your actual purchases to send you offers for similar stuff, but they'd be much better off if they could simply send you a coupon for $2 off (or whatever) of Fab Five merchandise on a future visit, since it's what you've already expressed an interest in.

Not only that, but one of my current favorite human engineering facts of the moment is that the blood flow across your face is a highly accurate indicator of mood, so if they had infra-red cameras as well they could not only tell what you picked up, but also whether or not you like it.

In the store Biometrics could also be used for loss prevention. Each item would have an embedded chip or slightly magnetized tag that has a unique serial in it. Every time you walk through a sensor (at the end of a given aisle, or entrance to the dressing room, say) the computer tags it. then they can extrapolate that into a 3D map of it's movements through or out of the store. That could be easily matched to vidcam surveillance if anything needed to be cleared up.

If you think this is all fantastical speculation, I assure you it isn't. Go to Google.com and do a search on 'Biometric' and find out for yourself. We don't often think about our privacy at a public place like Disneyland, but maybe we should.

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On a lighter note, let me tell you about a wonderful little scene I stumbled upon a few weeks ago at the park.

I was making my way on foot from the Simba Tram to the Pacific Hotel for a dinner meeting with the wonderful proprietors of this very website when I witnessed a cute little ritual that I'm sure takes place every weekend at the Magic Kingdom.

A family ran out of the hotel and over to their large white pickup truck. A bit unusually they gathered together on the passenger side of the truck, which is what attracted my interest. But instead of anything nefarious, the father reached up and removed a Millennium Jack-In-The-Box antenna ball. He then released the antenna which sprung back into place.

Next mom reached into the Disneyland bag she was carrying and pulled out, yes you guessed it, a Mickey Mouse Antenna ball. She gave it to her son, who was screaming, "I want to put it on. I want to put it on." Then the father lifted the boy up to the appropriate height, and the boy put their spankin new Mickey Mouse Antenna ball on the truck's antenna.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you've just witnessed the ritual ascension of Mickey Mouse to his proper place on the antenna.

-- Indigo

-- Posted June 7, 2000