Disney pretty consistently works to develop new and exciting ways for guests to experience attractions in the theme parks.

Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge

This is especially apparent when you look at the planned Disney Metaverse that encourages internal work towards interactive and personalized attraction experiences. Today, we’ve found a sign that Disney is working towards a SURPRISING attraction concept — one that interacts with a personal toy YOU’RE holding.

Today, Disney filed a patent for an “Interactive Toy.” At first glance, we expected this to be a consumer product, but it turns out that the toy isn’t just interacting with us, it’s also built to interact with an attraction that we’re riding. Woah.

©Disney

According to the patent, “One aspect of the present disclosure relates to a system for delivery of an attraction experience… The…processor can: control delivery of the virtual portion of the attraction experience via the content presentation system; detect presence of a non-ride device…for example, a toy; and deliver a trigger signal via the transceiver to the non-ride device. In some embodiments, the trigger signal can be linked with the attraction experience.”

That’s some big tech talk that’s essentially saying that this patent is for a system that would connect a guest-held toy to a ride system. The connection could trigger specific responses from BOTH the ride and the toy. Basically, the ride will talk to your toy and your toy will talk back — or vice versa!

©Disney

The patent notes that this could mean the attraction experience would be modified based on whether or not a passenger had an interactive toy in their possession. The most common example is that the toy is an action figure that directly interacts with a character in the ride.

For example, let’s say you’re riding a hypothetical Guardians of the Galaxy themed attraction with your also hypothetical new interactive Groot toy. Groot could know to have positive reactions when he sees Rocket in the ride and negative reactions when he sees a bad guy.

These interactions could include audio reactions such as saying something and physical reactions like moving arms and legs. The toy could also help riders to accomplish tasks in the ride. AND these little guys could be outfitted with memory so that they could learn. Maybe Groot LIKES a certain alien at the start and then that alien does something bad so Groot doesn’t like them anymore. Next time you ride, Groot would start out not liking that alien.

©Disney

As mentioned, the toy could change the ride story as well. Maybe the ride goes one way if none of the riders have the toy, and the story progresses differently if the toy is detected.

This concept was SUPER surprising for us to see in tech and definitely interesting to learn about. Could we be taking our interactive toys on attraction adventures with us someday? Maybe. We’re eager to see! As always, stay tuned to DFB to learn more about the latest Disney tech!

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