Disney has filed a patent for a responsive theme park ride system that can read and interpret a guests emotional state and optimise the ride experience to suit.
The patent “Sensing and Managing Vehicle Behavior Based on Occupant Awareness” reads facial expressions or takes into account known interests, to adapt and customise the ride, improving the guest’s experience.
The sensing and recording technology will be cameras on the ride vehicle or wearable tech like a MagicBand.
“The technology would allow rides to adjust show content appropriate for pre-teens, teenagers or adults; or for thrill-seeking and non thrill-seeking passengers. The control system may also operate the vehicle to address (e.g. even solve in some cases) motion sickness issues for passengers such as by adjusting speed or movement patterns of a vehicle. [Through RFID or some other identifying system] access one or more ride experience goals (or expectations) for the occupant. For example, the occupant may simply desire transportation while in the automated trackless vehicle and, hence, will not be wanting to interact with to be entertained by external display systems. In other cases, though, the occupant may have provided goals/expectations (e.g. by completing a questionnaire on a website or the like) that indicate they want to be educated during the ride, be entertained in a particular manner during the ride, be informed of sales on services or merchandise during the ride, and so on. In the same or other cases, the goals/expectations may indicate whether the ride experience should be thrilling, as smooth as possible, or something in between.”
The ride could respond by changing speed, adding more thrills or making the environment more comfortable.
Guests will be able customise their ride and the technology could also be used to improve efficiency by controlling capacity and queuing issues.
“The ride/travel path may be selected to meet the occupant’s goals, such as to take the path that can be completed at this time of day in the shortest period of time, to take a path that has the best scenery, to take a path that moves past a particular set of display elements, and the like.”
Image: Disney
https://wdwnt.com/blog/2017/01/disney-files-patent-theme-park-rides-controlled-guest-emotions/
