3. Discounts and special offers

Over the years, Disney has come up with numerous creative marketing techniques designed to encourage guests to make more purchases. One of the most enduring has been a coupon printed at the bottom of certain restaurant receipts that entitles the bearer to a percentage discount on merchandise purchased at specific stores during a particular time of day. But this system relies on slips of paper, which are easily lost, and is not customized to the individual guest.

Why not combine push technology, which has been common for years, with the My Disney Experience system? This would enable Disney to provide personalized offers based on your unique shopping and dining habits. It could even be used for proactive guest recovery, sending out a coupon for a free ice cream or bonus FastPass Plus to those who are stuck in a line past the posted wait time or experience a lengthy stop while on a ride.

The biggest challenge would be notifying guests who aren’t necessarily logged into their My Disney Experience accounts. Maybe they could incorporate new technology that triggers the MagicBand to flash when you have an offer waiting, or perhaps the next scan could cause a purple or orange light rather than the existing green or blue. With the combined brainpower and technical know-how of Disney Imagineers, this should be a relatively simple issue to overcome.

4. Custom vacation footage

Disney has cameras everywhere. Currently, they are used mostly for security purposes. But what if the existing cameras were upgraded or supplemented with the latest in high definition technology, and additional RFID readers were installed on them? Then your MagicBand could be used to pick you out of  the crowd and identify footage of some of your most magical vacation moments. Disney could then stitch those pieces together for a custom vacation video unlike anything you could film yourself.

5. Experience customization

One of the most beloved features of the revered Horizons ride was the opportunity to choose your own flight path for your return to the 20th century. You and your companions voted via flashing panels on the ride vehicle between three different scenarios: space, sea, and land. Depending on what the majority selected, you would view an entirely different scene on a monitor in front of your ride car.

There is no reason that this type of customization couldn’t be incorporated into future rides using MagicBands. Just swipe your band to make your decision, either during the ride or as you enter. Perhaps future attractions could be designed around this idea, incorporating the concept of choice with the capability for characters to speak directly to you. The result would be a stunningly personalized experience that would have been impossible just five years ago.

No one can really say what the Imagineers have in mind for future iterations of the MagicBand and My Disney Experience systems. But with such powerful technology at their disposal, we can only hope that whatever they come up with will honor Disney’s ideals of fantasy and exploration rather than being used solely to drive increased spending. The results could be truly astonishing.