Hey Thrill Seekers,
Yesterday Apple held one of its legendary keynote events in which, among other things it unveiled more about its new wearable technology the Apple Watch. Now I’m a massive Apple fan boy (sorry) so even before Mr Cook had got the first syllable out of his mouth I was sold.
However at $349 I can’t quite stretch to one, so what I thought might be a way around this was to prove to the Orlando Attraction Tickets bosses that they’ll be beneficial for theme park visitors. Here’s what I came up with…
Gate Ready Ticket App
One of the demonstration’s shown yesterday was for the hotel industry, showing how, via the hotels Apple Watch app, a customer could open their room door by just swiping their watch.
If this can be done for hotel rooms why couldn’t the technology be transferable to a ticket turnstile? Imagine walking up to the turnstile swiping your wrist and walking right in. Pretty simple hey?
Updates for fastpass
Another use for the Apple Watch would be in relation to fastpasses. Some fastpass systems allow you to book a time to ride your favourite attraction. With Apple Watch when your fastpass reserved ride time was, for example, 10 mins away it could buzz you to remind you.
If integrated with Disney’s My Magic+ you could take this even further and allow visitors to amend and add attractions and reservations via their Disney account.
Updates for ride times
Imagine being able to check wait times for rides the same way you’d check the time. Well with an Apple Watch app you’d be able to do this. You could probably even set up an alert for when a ride time hit a time you were comfortable to queue for, for example you want to ride The Hulk Coaster but the wait time is 45 mins, you don’t want to wait that sort of time but you would queue for 20 mins. You set an alert for 20 mins and when the queue time hits 20 mins your Apple Watch buzzes you. Cool huh!?
Navigation
Theme Parks can be big, with Apple Watch parks could create an app that worked in the same way as a sat nav but just for their park. With Siri integration you’d just say;
“Hey Siri, take me to Falcon’s Fury”
From there the app directs you via speech or images on the watch face…
Apple Pay
Last year Apple introduced Apple Pay, a way for users to pay for items by swiping their phones. This is definitely a feature that will be extended to Apple Watch which could be beneficial to park goers.
A few examples that spring to my mind are, firstly the ability to impulse buy , you see something that you want but you haven’t bought your cards with you in case you lost them, no problem just swipe your Apple Watch. You’re hungry, no problem buy it on Apple Watch. You don’t want to queue anymore, buy an express pass via Apple Watch.
Sounds to me like every park should be looking at making purpose built Apple Watch app’s and that the bosses at Orlando Attraction Tickets should definitely buy me one to test. 🙂
Smiles included…
Jamie
