The rise and rise of digital still cameras and comeback of video recording thanks to smaller cameras and cameraphones has changed the parks in a big way. Now we don’t watch and enjoy the shows and parades, we squirm and stretch and desperately try to capture them with our cameras. During a nighttime performance of Candleabration or the occasional fireworks show over Sleeping Beauty Castle, Main Street becomes a see of gently glowing LCD screens, floating and bobbing around and above peoples’ heads.
Meeting and greeting Disney Characters is when those cameras really become crucial, however. You’re now no longer quite so concerned with the thrill of getting up-close to a real animated hero, rather making sure you check the camera right after to make sure it was captured OK.
Meeting characters at Toon Studio
But for this, surely, there is already a solution — the park’s official photographers. Let them snap you with Mickey Mouse or Rémy and your photo will be wirelessly sent over to the resort’s database, the photographer then giving you a slip of paper with the photo ID and directions to the one store in the park where you can view and purchase a high-quality print. Meet another character, and you’ll get another slip of paper — and another — all adding to your room key, park ticket, Fastpasses and everything else in your pocket.
Then later that day, once you’ve found the store (usually Walt Disney Studio Store or Town Square Photography), you can join the queue to see your photo and decide whether it’s worth buying. If you decide against it right there, it’ll be gone the next day.
There must be a better way to capture a few memories…
No. 7 - Say “PhotoPass” !
You’ve heard of Fastpass – it’s a major success in Paris and at every Disney Resort, after all. Now, meet Disney’s PhotoPass.
Disney’s PhotoPass cards [Source: About.com]
You’ll find the system in use every day at the two parks of Disneyland Resort and the four parks and two water parks of Walt Disney World Resort. Have your photo taken by an official Disney photographer, and instead of a paper ticket they’ll hand you a plastic PhotoPass card with a 3D optical bar code and printed ID number. Nothing too different so far.
But here’s the clever part: The next time you attend a character meet ‘n’ greet or get snapped around the parks by a photographer, hand them that same PhotoPass card and they’ll swipe it in a special machine on their waist. Automatically, your new photos are added to the same card, a virtual online account, where they’ll be waiting for you later…
www.disneyphotopass.com
Because instead of wasting your valuable time waiting in that long line at Town Square Photography each time you want to buy a photo, you wait until you get home and visit www.disneyphotopass.com, where all your photos can be viewed and emailed to friends for free, for 30 days. If you’d like to buy them, you can order prints, mugs, t-shirts, photobooks or a complete CD of all your photos in high quality.
The prices are fairly high, but no more expensive than you’d already pay in the parks — around $13.00 for a simple print, which you can customise with various borders and decorations. The up-side is that you can see all your photos from the entire visit in one place (and of course save the smal, low quality previews for free), making it easier to choose the best and decide which prints you’d like in your own time, not when you could be riding another attraction.
Rémy and Emile on your PhotoPass [Source: Disney]
If you’d like the see or buy your photos before you get home, however, Disney has thought of this too. The photographic shops in each park are now home to special PhotoPass machines where you can insert your card to see all the photos taken so far. This lets you check that they’ve all come out adequately before you leave the resort, so you can go back and get a few more if not. You can also buy prints right here, so the old system remains in place — with shorter queues, naturally.
At the two American resorts, the system began life mainly for use by the official photographers positioned at key locations across the park — in front of Cinderella Castle, along Hollywood Boulevard, next to Spaceship Earth. The same “roaming photographers” concept isn’t used at Disneyland Resort Paris — except, perhaps, for those unofficial ones accosting guests outside the train station — but the system itself is entirely flexible and could be very profitable at the resort’s character meet ‘n’ greets.
Swipe your card, save your photo
There is definitely a certain amount of “impulse buying” about purchasing a print of a photo which will be gone the next day, as the system currently works, but consider this — how many of those thousands of guests who pick up a paper ticket from the resort’s photographers actually bother to visit the shop to view their photo, let alone buy it? Given a card with a web address, guests are much more likely to check them out, whether they rush to do it as soon as they get home or find it amongst their crumpled park maps and take a curious look. The profits are there for the resort and ourselves.
Imagine your photos from meet ‘n’ greets at Toon Studio or Woody’s Roundup being saved straight to a card for you to look up when you get home. Even better — what about on-ride photos at attractions? PhotoPass is already testing as we speak at Epcot’s Test Track, where you simply insert the card into a reader underneath the screen displaying your photo and it gets added to your account, simple as that. You could ride The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Pirates of the Caribbean or Big Thunder Mountain as many times as you like and add the photo from each ride to your PhotoPass card, then pick the best when you get home.
Check your photos before you leave, or buy them on the spot
The sooner Disneyland Resort Paris bring this concept across the Atlantic, as they have already successfully done with Fastpass and Extra Magic Hours, the sooner they — and us — will start to see the benefits. No more worrying about batteries, memory cards, whether you need the flash or where your Euros are — just enjoy the moment, and swipe your PhotoPass.
‘Makes no difference who you are’…
What do you think? Is Disney’s PhotoPass something that would make your next visit to Disneyland Resort Paris a little more magical? Would it be a worthwhile investment for the resort?
Our Comments system has reopened on the right of this page — feel free to share your thoughts, whether you agree or disagree, on this entry on our Wish List! You can also now revisit the other Wish List entries of recent weeks to share your thoughts and/or support.
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