Jon (00:05.666)
Hey everybody, welcome back to another gone mobile. We're both back from vacations. Um, so I went slightly farther tropical to Belize, but I think that the more interesting one, I mean, not interested. Please was awesome. Don't get me wrong. I loved it there. There's some really cool stuff to do. Um, I like all types of vacations though. And you, you went a different direction, man, the same direction. You stopped shorter, I guess. And we're where, where were you?

Allan Ritchie (00:33.356)
true. I was at Orlando but actually I was in Disney which is the coolest place on earth right? It really is.

Jon (00:41.988)
It's the most magical place on earth, I've been told.

Allan Ritchie (00:44.236)
That's what they call it. That's what they call it. So I was down there with my kids. It was a great time. Picked up some cool souvenirs, which I'm trying to get John to go for. Buy a lightsaber. Buy a lightsaber. They're epic.

Jon (00:57.956)
Oh, I mean, that's very cool, but I guess when you're down there, if you've already opened up your wallet and given Walt himself, or maybe Iger now, I guess, your credit card number, what's another few thousand dollars here or there? Oh, painful.

Allan Ritchie (01:20.332)
Well, Walt's frozen in carbonate, isn't he? He could still come back.

Jon (01:23.748)
Well, that's why you have to pay the money so that, you know, that that can be done, right?

Allan Ritchie (01:28.46)
One day, one day he could come back.

Jon (01:30.564)
One day. So I thought we would talk. I guess the other thing that, that I'll mention too is, um, uh, what my family right now is doing, you know, making up for lost time on vacations from some personal stuff, the last eight months or so that have been kind of a, not a, not a great thing. So we actually are also going to Disney, uh, in may. And I finally got to tell my kids about it last night because we didn't want to, we didn't want to spoil like the, you know, we're going to Belize, which is crazy. Awesome.

And we didn't want to like sour, you know the Belize vacation with like hey, we're going to Disney after this or something right these we didn't want to take away from it because there are very two different types of occasions and for awesome for different reasons, but Finally we got to tell them last night and you know the reaction as expected I had used AI to make a voiceover of Mickey talking to the kids. I don't know that they bought it, you know, like it's

They didn't really even say much about it one way or the other. Like there's seven and nine. So they're at that age where it's like, maybe, maybe not.

Allan Ritchie (02:33.516)
I'm gonna be awesome. My take my takeaway from the video is looking at your daughter's face who absolutely lost her marbles when she figured it out. But she was like her face almost looked like what's wrong with Mickey's voice? It sounds like weird Mickey.

Jon (02:40.484)
Yeah, yeah. You could see it, right?

Jon (02:47.46)
Yeah, it's a little uncanny. Yeah, but you could see like the, the, you could see it in her face as like, she's like, wait, is, is it, are you wait, huh? It, we're, we're going to Disney. Yeah, it was fantastic. Um, so that was super exciting. So it's, you know, I think super relevant to both of us. You were just there. Actually, you were there twice, right? Technically.

Allan Ritchie (03:10.22)
there twice. I was there for my yeah I was there for a business thing about two or three weeks prior. So I have two lightsabers to show for it. That's how good it was. Well it's actually because my daughter bugged me to get to do the second one and the show is great.

Jon (03:17.944)
Mm -hmm. And then, and then you went again. Yeah.

Jon (03:26.884)
Yeah, rubber arm there, huh? Bugging you to do the second one? Twisted your rubber arm.

Allan Ritchie (03:30.794)
Oh yeah, I needed a good one and I need a... Need a good one, need a bad one.

Jon (03:36.036)
Yeah. Yeah. So I think, um, you know, because you were there twice, we're going soon. I was actually there last year for a couple of days. We went down to Florida, uh, but we didn't like do Disney every day. We did a bunch of different things and stayed in the area and other areas of Florida over the winter break. And, uh, but we did do it for two days. And so I'm, I'm pretty familiar still from that trip about how their whole app works and system works and everything.

But we thought it would be interesting to just talk a little bit about this because their mobile application, their whole system is kind of amazing. Like just the way it's architected, the way it works, the engineering that must go in it. It's really cool. Like, I mean, you were there most recently. Like,

Allan Ritchie (04:21.388)
I think, I think we spent a lot of time. I was discussing with you. I'm like, oh my God, this app is awesome. Right. We would be discussing. So I'd be messaging John going, we need to talk about this app. This app is, it's, it's really cool. Like it does everything. It does everything. And I started as, as I was using it, um, the more and more I was like, Oh my God, could you imagine the engineering to build this? Like I already said, I think my line for the week was, you know, cities could take.

Jon (04:30.436)
Right.

Allan Ritchie (04:49.494)
lessons from how Disney moves people, how Disney organizes people, like everything they do is it just it's top -notch right even parking even parking was top -notch like they just move people.

Jon (04:53.892)
Yeah.

Jon (04:58.788)
And this is...

And this is just like the parts. Yeah. And this is the parts that we, we see. And I think, you know, you and I, and most others listening to this would look at the, the app with a little bit different of a lens as a mobile developer, right. And knowing how some of these systems could be fit together under the hood. Um, but that's not to take away from like the, the marvel of engineering that it is. Um, and, and I think, you know, just to start into it, like,

Allan Ritchie (05:15.724)
Right.

Jon (05:28.708)
maybe we should talk a little bit about sort of the overview of features of what it does actually handle for those who aren't familiar. If you've never had a chance to go to Disney world, I mean, it's not everybody's thing. It kind of wasn't my thing, but we had a really good time. So we're like, yeah, let's go again. But you know what, this app does everything, right? So like if we start from maybe, maybe I'll start from the PR. Yeah, the user, but like I've,

Allan Ritchie (05:52.876)
User interface. I say start from the user interface.

Jon (05:57.54)
I want to start from just even like the experience of booking a trip and where you kind of go through the app. Right? So first of all, you know, we booked, I don't know what, what your reservation looked like if you did it direct with Disney or, you know, we did it through like one of these travel agents that kind of gives you a few more, uh, they, they can book reservations and stuff for you. So you're not waking up so early all the time. Um, so we did that. We booked, you know, a bunch of days out and then.

Allan Ritchie (06:02.124)
Okay.

Jon (06:26.82)
Like in the app, you've got, we already had our profiles all set up from the last time we were there. Um, so we, we are already in there. We had kind of assigned the four people that were going to the reservations. We've got a hotel reservation, like we're, you stayed on site in one of the resorts the one time, right?

Allan Ritchie (06:43.532)
just the first few nights and then we were at a friend of the family's for the rest of the week which was pretty awesome.

But yeah, the hotel, the hotel pass. Go.

Jon (06:53.124)
Yeah. So, so we, you know, the hotel part, you, you, you book the hotel, that's all linked up to all of our profiles and everything. So like already, if I'm looking at the app right now, I can see my upcoming plans. I see my reservation. I've already like pre done my, my, um, check -in, right? Like we can basically, I think it'll be like, you know, Marriott and other properties do this too, where they get you like your, your room assigned and stuff. You don't have to actually go to the desk. And so same thing here, you know,

I assume we'll get the room number. There's a spot for it. There's this countdown for like days coming up to the trip and then all sorts of links to information about, you know, learn more about all the things that are going on when you get here sort of stuff. Right. So right out of the gate, they give you sort of a baked in experience of trying to like get you excited for this trip and get you kind of learning about some of their systems so that when you're there, the onboarding is a little bit easier. So I think that in itself is kind of interesting, right? Cause there's ways to optimize.

They want their guests to be successful with it because they're using this for all of the, all of the bookings and all of the things. So day, day one booking, it's like, yep, there you go. And then as we get closer to the reservation window, um, 60 days before we start being able to book meals, uh, experiences, all of that kind of thing. Right? So you, you did a little bit of that before you went to, right?

Allan Ritchie (07:56.556)
Everything. Everything.

Allan Ritchie (08:17.684)
Star Wars lightsabers. Yes, we did a little bit of it. Not as much. You are obviously feeding me a lot of suggestions. The good thing is, is that a lot of the onboarding, like the Disney princess meals and stuff, which is overpriced anyways, my daughter is out of that stuff. So I didn't, we tended to do lunches and stuff there, but we didn't, we didn't stay on resort, but we did book a lot of things through the app. Like,

Jon (08:36.132)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (08:47.308)
I don't know that you can, if, even if you don't book restaurants, they do have mobile ordering, which like, that was awesome. The mobile food ordering for lunch. You could basically, yeah, I'd say, I mean, it's not new. We've had like skip the dishes and Uber eats and all that stuff. What it does do that's really cool is you can pay for it there, obviously with Apple pay. So there's another integration point. I'm assuming Google pay works. I'm not an Android lover.

Jon (08:57.38)
So you book it through the app and then you just go pick it up.

Jon (09:13.124)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (09:15.66)
but I'm assuming Android is in there too. So you pay for it and it can be like, we'll track when you're there and we'll start the order when you're getting close. So it would actually, we'd be on a ride, we'd finish the ride and it would start being like, are you ready to process the order? Da da da, right? And the cool part was is that as soon as you press the button, you didn't even have to find a seat. It was almost like, yeah, your order's ready, come pick it up at the desk. And you're like, this is awesome. This is awesome.

Jon (09:15.684)
I would imagine so, right?

Jon (09:26.628)
Oh, so it, okay.

Jon (09:45.572)
Yeah, see, we never did the mobile ordering last year. And I think, I mean, we had a reservation for like two of the meals of the day. And then I think we just did, yeah, quick, the quick service they call it or whatever. But I doing that mobile order would have been smart. Like we should have done that. I will do that this upcoming trip.

Allan Ritchie (09:59.82)
Oh, it's so fast. You just go up and you show your order number and they're like, okay, here you go. Bang, bang, bang. They throw stuff on the plate. Now they've precooked it obviously, like they're just mass producing food. But the fact that I pressed the button, I paid for it already. I found a seat and I'm already walking up to pick up my order and it's not bad food. It's not like your cheap fast food. It's pretty decent stuff.

Jon (10:11.012)
Sure. Yeah.

Jon (10:22.948)
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's medium. I mean, right? Like some of the places are really good, I would say, but some of the like other, you know, they're not all great. They're all decent and some of them are great and some of them are good, I would say.

Allan Ritchie (10:35.18)
I think we had the luck of the draw because most of the places that we went to were pretty good stuff. You could say it's expensive.

Jon (10:43.268)
Okay. Well, that's good. I mean, this isn't a, that's not a food podcast, I guess I'm a food snob. So I guess that that's right. Uh, so the, the, and that, so the whole like interface and UI of this and experience around it, like a lot of the, the app looks very similarly themed throughout. I like, is the mobile ordering like kind of the same thing. I get the sense that the app.

Allan Ritchie (10:47.884)
That's right. That's fair. That's fair.

Jon (11:08.644)
Generally, there's probably a lot of web content that's loaded in here. I think that's like one of the only ways you could do it.

Allan Ritchie (11:15.052)
I don't know. It looks this app, the app looks pretty native, but like on that first screen, the screen where you're talking about the buildup and stuff, they, they kind of shove content overload at you, like things to be aware of today, the weather, um, you know, what time the parades are at, et cetera. They throw just a lot of info at you, but it looks native. It's, it's pretty cool, but it's not like your traditional list. It's like, here's one.

Jon (11:23.684)
Yeah.

Jon (11:27.3)
They do, yeah.

Allan Ritchie (11:43.436)
kind of advertisement. Here's a different advertisement and they look they look different as you as you scroll down the list right. So I don't know I found it pretty amazing.

Jon (11:52.676)
Yeah, I guess it's compelling if we're debating whether it's like native or web, right? It's good enough that it seems like it could be either.

Allan Ritchie (12:00.204)
Right. It looks, yeah, it's hard to say. It does look native. The one thing I will say though, is obviously we talked about the information overload on that first screen, but there's so many features in this app. They have like a more tab, which is an uncommon, right? We all end up with like, but even some of the stuff finding.

Jon (12:17.732)
Yeah, but their more tab is like stocked full, right?

Allan Ritchie (12:22.956)
Oh, it's ridiculous. There's so many things in it and I'm like, where is this? Where is that? Now, they do things to really help you through getting it. But just I was talking about the parking, right? So there's a car locator portion. Now it took me forever to find it. They have like a general feature search. Like you can search for just about everything in this one screen. So you can say, you know, the Tron ride and it'll just be like, this is what you're looking for.

Jon (12:40.516)
Yeah.

Jon (12:50.852)
Hey, I found it in two clicks.

Allan Ritchie (12:53.42)
Did you? Yeah. Oh, well you did not. Okay, but it wasn't, it wasn't. Yeah, you got, you're in the parking lot. Your kids are screaming at you. But what it did do smart, I mean, as soon as we showed up and I literally turned off the car, it was like, hey, it looks like you're parking. Do you want to set up where you're parked? And I was like, yeah, I do because this parking lot's huge. And so I tapped on the notification. I tapped on the notification. It had already figured out.

Jon (12:55.14)
Yeah, that wasn't so hard. But I wasn't under the pressure of being at Disney and like, yeah, everybody go. Yeah.

Jon (13:15.62)
You know it. Yeah. Doesn't...

Allan Ritchie (13:22.572)
this is the row you're in. And I'm like, holy crap, yeah, that is the row we're in.

Jon (13:26.34)
OK, so they go. I was going to say, cause like doesn't like Apple and Google Maps I think now offer a similar thing like hey, it looks like you parked. Maybe you want to pin your location, but that's just the location right? You still have to navigate. This tells you like the row so you're walking and you're like, oh, there's Rokey. I'm going down there. That's handy, OK?

Allan Ritchie (13:33.132)
Yeah. But not this. Right.

Allan Ritchie (13:41.612)
Yep. So I'd be in like row 150 or something. It'd be like, you look like you're in row 50 of this, you know, Disney character. And I was like, Oh wow, you guys are pretty bang on. Like it gets the row. Like that's pretty precision GPS.

Jon (13:47.14)
How?

Jon (13:58.308)
Yeah, like how do you think they're doing? Yeah, like is it, I mean, it's probably, I mean, GPS is probably accurate enough in most cases. Do you think they're doing any like, like beacon kind of stuff to try and narrow down location in the parks?

Allan Ritchie (14:05.836)
it should be.

Allan Ritchie (14:12.812)
I doubt it. I mean, it's possible, but it looks, I mean, it wouldn't be hard to kind of geo block your, your rows, right? Cause they're pretty wide rows. Um, and then they can look, are you.

Jon (14:17.732)
But they in.

Jon (14:21.956)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, if you get a fix, you can kind of say, I think you're this row.

Allan Ritchie (14:27.02)
It looks pretty solid. It did look GPS. It doesn't show you a map though, cause it didn't really need to. Like, like again, Disney had shuttles going everywhere and they just say, this is your world. This is your Disney character. And it was so easy to get to and from, but like the app being, it looks like you're leaving the park now. Just remember this is where you parked. And it would be like, I mean, it's a helpful little feature and it sounds trivial.

Jon (14:34.468)
Yeah.

Jon (14:49.474)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (14:51.788)
But the way, like you don't get a choice of where you park at Disney. They kind of just say, you're going there and you line up and you go in and it's parking is just like being bang, boom, done and you're in the park, right? So for the app to do this, it's just, it's just awesome.

Jon (14:57.604)
Right.

Jon (15:03.108)
Well, in this, like, I think...

Jon (15:08.42)
Well, and I think that this is like the theme of the app too, right? Cause the, the, the thing that occurs to me is like Disney is always, and I've always had this thought too. Like I said, I, I have, um, you know, friends and family that are like super into Disney, right? Um, and, and I, and historically I've been kind of like, yeah, I like it. It's great, but it's not gonna, you know, it's, it's not where I want to spend every vacation, but I certainly want to spend some. But the thing that has always stuck out to me is like the difference between Disney and other parks too is.

They go the extra mile to for those details to make it feel like a seamless magic experience and magic is generous, but like that's that's kind of what this is, right? So something as simple as, Hey, you're leaving the park. We know you parked here, you know, make sure you go find your okay. That's that. Yeah. It's all those little touches, right? Um,

Allan Ritchie (15:56.364)
It sounds bad or it sounds like it's a trivial thing, but I went to Universal Studios as well and the experience was not that. Oh my God, it took forever to find their car. Disney just, you know, this is where you park. This is where help you get to and from your car and we'll get you home. We'll get you into the park fast. We'll get you home fast. Right. And that's, that's, they just did it magically.

Jon (16:10.146)
Yeah.

Jon (16:24.42)
So I think one of the other cool things about the whole talking about the magicness of how they've crafted the experience, like, do you remember, did you ever go to Disney before they started doing this whole phone app thing? Like, no? Okay, so.

Allan Ritchie (16:37.388)
So yes, I did go to Disney. I went to Disney when I was a kid. So long before there was tech.

Jon (16:42.084)
Okay. And I don't know if they, yeah, they would have had even some, like I've been a number of times. Like I said, my family has been, you know, some of my family really likes going. Um, we've had access to, you know, houses to be able to stay in the Orlando area. So like it's, I don't know, people from, from Ontario like to go to Florida because it's warm in the winter. Right. Um, so we've been down a number of times. We've been to Disney for a single day here and there a number of times. We went a couple of times before we had kids with my nieces and nephews.

We went a couple of times, you know, for a day here and there when we had really young kids. Um, and they used to have a system of, I think it was called fast pass back in the day. Cause we were old and we still call it that. Cause that's what I remember it being called. And you basically went and I forget you scanned your, your ticket, like your, your physical, um, entrance park ticket in, I think. And then you got a paper back that said like, come back between this time and this time, and you can go in the special faster line.

Right. And I don't remember all the rules around like how often you could do that or whatever. Uh, but that was the way they did it and it worked pretty well. Right. Um, but so they've now taken that obviously a level up and they have, I mean, you can argue about the whole cost of everything. Like this is Disney. If you're going to Disney, you're spending a ton of money. I'm sorry. Like that's, that's the reality. And so Disney now has the, the genie plus I think it's called, right. Which is a paid add on.

So this is a way for you to go and book Lightning Lanes is the name I believe now it's not FastPass. And you can book these kind of same idea though you get like a, if you find it available in the app you can book it for your one or more or all of your party. And you can say, I wanna go on this ride and the time is between, you know, whatever hour in this hour. And then when you show up, right.

Allan Ritchie (18:13.772)
Yep. Yep.

Allan Ritchie (18:29.9)
and it just books it for you.

Jon (18:33.028)
And so like they still have the park ticket, like credit card kind of thing. If you want to use that. And I think that has an RFID chip in it. And so you can tap that into like every, every ride has like this orb that's got like Mickey on it, right? A Mickey head. And it's got like a led ring around it. And that's like the thing you tap your stuff on and it'll go green if you're good or whatever.

Allan Ritchie (18:53.132)
So the part here, you kind of skipped a couple things here that's really cool about that, right? Is the access. So obviously access to the fast lane, like you're talking about those genie or those Mickey heads that are everywhere. So what they are is that like John said, you can scan your card, you can scan your phone. If you're familiar with Apple, they have like an express pass, which works fantastic. You just go up, you hold your phone. Yeah. Oh.

Jon (19:01.732)
Yeah.

Jon (19:05.73)
Mm -hmm.

Jon (19:15.972)
Right, so that's like an Apple Pay thing, right? I was gonna get there. You just didn't let me get there.

Allan Ritchie (19:20.78)
No, no, no, no, but I'll go back. So yeah, you scan in, you scan on these phones and it goes, yep, you're good to go into this ride. You're in your time frame, you know, go forth, have fun. Works on Apple Watch too, which was amazing for me because my band, what do they call them? Magic bands, which is like another NFC Disney add -on thing you can buy.

Jon (19:40.804)
Yeah, so you can get the Magic Band. And this was common before the phones were like a thing. So you get the Magic Band, which is this little bracelet that has the RFID in it. And you can use that instead of your plastic card, so it's more convenient. It's on your wrist. You just like, boop, tap it in, you're good. Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (19:58.7)
It's great for the kids. The magic plus is great for the kids because then they can scan in, but it's just basically a little blue Bluetooth, NFC RFID thing. You have to charge it every night. It does use quite a bit of battery because there's a lot of stuff going on. They vibrate, they change colors. Oh yeah, you gotta get new ones. They're great fireworks started and those things were lighten up and vibrating. It's crazy. So anyhow, they are good for it for the kids. And I used my phone and it was great. You just scan the thing.

Jon (20:10.564)
Oh, see you, you bought the fancy ones. We, we still have the old like, there's no, yeah. No, I, I, I don't know.

Allan Ritchie (20:28.78)
It scans instant off of your watch or whatever. But what was cool is the same thing was your park pass. So they had those big orbs at the front as well to get into each park and they're linked to your hotel room. Like, dude, it's one thing all the way through.

Jon (20:32.29)
Right.

Jon (20:40.194)
Yep.

Jon (20:44.804)
Yeah.

Jon (20:48.772)
And they're linked to your credit card if you want to stay in there and want to link them. Screw Apple pay. You just like tap your magic band and you're gone.

Allan Ritchie (20:52.332)
Well, yeah, well, but hey, listen, it's in all the way through. Yeah, and it just free money, right? But I mean, honestly, the fact that it goes from hotel room to park entrance to your fast pass, this is crazy. And I mean, it's not I don't want to say it's I don't want to cut it down and say it's not hard. It's one ID.

Jon (21:03.012)
Yeah.

Jon (21:11.876)
Yeah, it really is.

Allan Ritchie (21:16.78)
But the fact that it's all the way through, that's the magic, right? Like that thought process from room to ride. I just like, I was losing my mind. Like this, cities need to learn how to do this. It's fantastic.

Jon (21:20.356)
Yes, it's so seamless.

Jon (21:29.156)
So so there and there's a couple little details in there that I'm gonna call you out for glossing over now one of which is so you you did mention it briefly, but I don't think it any Necessarily everyone caught it like the so for app I don't know if it works on Android or if they have a similar mode but like Apple phones their Apple wallet you have a mode where like let's say you have a Transportation pass like a subway or bus pass you can set that as your express pass right here for the Apple wallet

Allan Ritchie (21:34.72)
Okay, okay.

Jon (21:56.932)
And so that pass is always available to tap without opening the wallet itself. Like, you know how for a credit card, you have to double click your button or whatever and then face ID and then you can tap it, right? This is no, no, no, you wouldn't want a credit card for that, but I mean, effectively you have it if it's a, if it's linked to your credit card in the park, right? But yeah, yeah, yeah. But.

Allan Ritchie (22:08.428)
Yeah, you wouldn't want to credit Kurt being a fast pass.

Allan Ritchie (22:15.02)
It's just this, potentially.

Jon (22:19.524)
That you set up with your Disney Pass and then if you're using your phone, if you don't have an Apple Watch, like yeah, you just literally tap the phone without unlocking it or anything. So it's like perfectly seamless. But then like you said, with the Apple Watch too, it also has that mode. And so you don't have to double tap the watch button. You're just like literally tapping your watch to the thing like a magic band and it just works, which is, I know that like some of that tech is because Apple did this.

Allan Ritchie (22:43.98)
and fast.

Jon (22:46.66)
but they're leveraging it, right? Like they're taking advantage of all the options they have in their app. Yes, and it's incredible.

Allan Ritchie (22:49.228)
to the fullest extent. Now, there was one other thing. So I've done a few pass kit implementations. One of the things, this is kind of the details that I noticed. I didn't even know you could do this. Did you use the express pass when you were there? Do you remember using it? Did you notice when you scanned it that the pass animates like the Disney, the Mickey ears expand from it, like an animation. I'm like, I didn't even know you could do that.

Jon (23:06.212)
Yeah, yeah, the whole time.

Jon (23:13.892)
I don't think I actually, no, I don't know if I looked at it. Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (23:17.356)
I've never seen anything in the metadata that suggests that you can animate the pass. And I was like, you do this a few times because unfortunately my watch I killed the one day and I thought I had a charging at night. You know how the watch is and I wasn't.

Jon (23:21.508)
Well, I used it on my watch Joey. So you used it on your phone in the phone animates the pass? Okay.

Hmm.

Oh, that's another thing. I don't know. I guess maybe the newer watches do it. I don't know. But the phone, like Apple phone, I think the Express Pass also works when it's like off for a while too. Like when you're out of battery, like there's always a little reserve and it's like the car key that they do on Apple now too, where if your phone's dead, technically there's still like the Express Pass RFID still works. I'm pretty sure, which is cool too. Yeah, I think so. You know, all Tesla's its own.

Allan Ritchie (23:43.88)
Okay.

Allan Ritchie (23:53.356)
I don't know. Does your Tesla work with it? No, Tesla doesn't like Apple, do they?

Jon (23:58.948)
Yeah, they don't, they don't use the apple car key implementation, unfortunately.

Allan Ritchie (24:00.62)
Yeah, okay. I want to try it. I haven't, I don't have anything with it yet, but, and I didn't get to that scenario. Cause like when my watch didn't charge, I just left it back at the hotel and I took my phone and that scan through, I had a battery just in case. But the fact that the pass, so when I hold the pass up, you can see the pass animate. And I was like, how, where, I, where is this new? I mean, it's a small little trivial detail, but again, it's something you're like, holy crap.

Jon (24:09.86)
Yeah, you have your phone.

Yeah.

Jon (24:26.51)
It's a yeah.

They didn't have to do that. They didn't have to code that in, right? Like somebody is paying attention to that level. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (24:31.82)
No, how did they code that in? Where's the CPI? Is this new? Anyhow, it's cool. It's a one little detail and I was like, Oh, look at that. So my phone vibrated, which that's Apple saying, yeah, it accepted your scan. But for the past to animate and go, ching ching, you know, here's your Disney ears. Have a happy day. They're like, okay, wicked. So I know it worked. I know it worked.

Jon (24:46.114)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yes. Um, so the, the, the other thing that I, I don't know if you did, and it's not super popular, but like when, when we're going now, I, I just kind of said, I'm like, if we're already paying all this money to go to Disney, I'm doing maybe except for the lightsabers, we'll see. Cause I, my kids don't seem that into them. So anyway, but I'm, I'm going to do like, ah, maybe I'm going to do most of the other things. Right? So I already said like, yeah, I'll pay the stupid money for the photo pass thing. Right? So photo pass is like,

Allan Ritchie (25:05.004)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (25:09.708)
droids.

Jon (25:20.684)
you know, when you meet a character, you can take your own pictures. Actually, the cast member, the people are nice. They'll take your phone and take a picture for you too. Like that's another thing I like about Disney is they don't, like they do nickel and dime you, but they don't feel, make you feel like you're being nickel to dime. Like those situations where you could have paid for the extra thing, they're happy enough to be like, that's fine. I'll take your picture. Yeah, don't worry about it. Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (25:41.58)
The cast members are awesome though. The people that work there are awesome. They don't, right? They're just there to make magic, right? And they were always, they were always helpful. But you got the lead in on my favorite feature, because this was my favorite feature. This is my favorite feature. Yeah, go for it.

Jon (25:51.428)
So.

Jon (25:55.652)
Okay, so I wanna pick your brain about this a little bit. So you did PhotoPass? Okay, so PhotoPass, so there's a few different places you can use that, right? So let's say we're just walking up to meet a character, like you can tap your Magic Band. Can everybody in my party tap their Magic Band, or does it have to be me, or?

Allan Ritchie (26:01.932)
Yes we did. It was fantastic.

Allan Ritchie (26:11.626)
Yep.

Allan Ritchie (26:16.906)
Anybody can or you can tap your phone. But really what would happen is there'd be photographers. There's photographers everywhere, right? And they have like a little little I don't know scanner. They have a scanner that they can read your tap and then it automatically links the pictures that they're about to take to your phone or to your account, right? So that everybody can go in there. Now, what's cool is when they take that photo.

Jon (26:19.012)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Allan Ritchie (26:44.684)
And I'm going to get to the other part of this in a second, but when they take that photo, what happens is it goes to Disney's back end and they can actually do a bunch of things. So they had us doing like cool little poses. Like my daughter had her hand open and they superimposed, I guess that's the best word. What's the Tinkerbell, the little fairy into her hands. They had another one where we're like acting surprised and then Groot was beside us. Right. So.

Jon (26:55.97)
Mm -hmm.

Jon (27:00.58)
Yeah.

Jon (27:05.73)
Yeah.

Jon (27:13.668)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (27:13.804)
But when they finished processing these photos, they'd send us again a push notification. They'd push notifications everywhere in this app, like just all the time. They'd push notification going, hey, we got your picture with Groot. And we're like, picture with Groot. And you'd open it again. And you're like, oh, well, that's what they were having us do. Right? Like,

Jon (27:21.284)
Yeah.

Jon (27:28.164)
Yeah.

Jon (27:33.604)
I can understand the one with Groot maybe if they know if you're standing in a spot, it's always going to be imposed on one side. But even to hold out your hand for putting Tinkerbell in it, they got to be doing some kind of machine learning or some kind of detection.

Allan Ritchie (27:50.764)
Oh, for sure. They were pressing some sort of button. So they'd be like, here, this is the pose we want you to do in front of the castle. They'd press a few buttons on their phone. They take the picture, right? So we didn't actually know what they were doing. Um, you could guess by some of the poses, but it was like, oh wow. And then they take a picture out further or in closer depending on what they were doing. It's great. And it only took about, I don't know, I want to say about 10, 15 minutes before those pictures would be done processing.

Jon (27:57.636)
Yeah.

So maybe it's like, yeah.

Jon (28:13.316)
That's really cool.

Jon (28:19.076)
Yeah, so they've got some kind of like those things get uploaded from the camera, they go into some queue and then like, you know, with the right metadata, it's going to say, oh, I need to process this one for tinker bells going in your hand and that kind of stuff. That's, that's amazing.

Allan Ritchie (28:30.828)
Yeah, it's crazy. But my favorite one, this is, this was my absolute favorite picture. My favorite part about the photo pass, probably my favorite feature overall was whenever we go on rides, I like to make funny faces on rides. I'm pretty good at figuring out where the cameras are. John got to see some of my classics, um, is the fact that, you know, it used to be, if you've ever been to Canada's wonderland, again, John and I are Canadian, you get off the ride and they try and sell you this crappy photo.

Jon (28:56.836)
Hehehe.

Allan Ritchie (29:00.268)
for like $20 and be like screw it I don't care. But this part was to capture, so they captured good photos of you on a ride and you didn't have to go tap like this is my photo. It knew by your phone, so by the Bluetooth emission or by the magic pass that you were on that car and it didn't miss any of them. It caught every photo and again it took the photo, the action pose which I call it.

Jon (29:00.556)
Yeah.

Jon (29:24.484)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (29:29.1)
I'd be like giving thumbs up or sticking my tongue out or something. And then it would put it in like a collage of like a banner or something saying you know Pirates of the Caribbean or you know my son and I rode Everest which is a pretty fast coaster and got a picture of both of us yelling and it just put like a like a little picture around it but it was great because that would come almost instantaneously. Like I'd be getting the notification the second I came off the ride and like this is great. This is great. I don't

Jon (29:58.34)
Yeah, so I mean, I guess it, yeah, like it to have, there's gotta be some like, you know, some kind of beacon set up and on the cart, on the carts that you're on, right? So it knows that you're closest to that one, but yeah, like to have that level of detail.

Allan Ritchie (30:05.108)
Right.

Allan Ritchie (30:10.764)
Well, I'm thinking, I'm thinking your phone is emitting a beacon because you can't actually broadcast a beacon signal from a phone. Um, I don't know. I was thinking about that one because it's pretty tough because Apple will limit battery unless of course, I wonder if Disney is big enough to be like Apple, please let us into your special APIs. I don't know. Um, cause it wasn't.

Jon (30:19.14)
Okay.

I guess...

Jon (30:25.988)
Yeah, that's true. You wouldn't be having it in the background.

Jon (30:32.962)
Maybe.

Jon (30:37.028)
It would be, I would make more sense to broadcast it, I think from the phone as a constant then to try and be running like some background. Well, but you can register for like doing stuff in the background when you hit it, when you find a beacon, can't you?

Allan Ritchie (30:49.208)
BLE is a bit tougher because that's when you see a beacon, right? So technically it could have been scanning for that beacon and then they just figured it out. I don't know. It's a tough one. You can look at beacons in the background.

Jon (30:53.156)
Okay.

Mm -hmm.

Jon (31:02.98)
Yeah, well, and just even it must be something like that, like, because... Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (31:05.676)
But there's a limitation, right? Because you don't want to be looking for infinite amounts of beacons. You want to be looking for specific ones.

Jon (31:13.156)
Yeah. So they must also use that kind of like, I don't know if it's beacons or, I mean, the other thing that, that is kind of interesting too, that I find is the whole park is basically blanketed in wifi, right? Like, so you can be on their wifi. I mean, I, I think I've always, last time we were there, there were times where it was kind of spotty here and there, but the, the just technical implications of having that many devices on wifi around a park is also kind of mind blowing.

Allan Ritchie (31:25.472)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (31:42.732)
Oh yeah. Well, think about this. So if you've ever been to the fireworks at night at Disney, there's something else. Every other show you've seen for fireworks is put to shame by their fireworks. But what would happen is there were so many people in one area. I don't know. How many people would you say get in front of that castle for fireworks? Just a rough

Jon (31:50.488)
Yeah.

Jon (31:56.74)
Mm -hmm.

Jon (32:05.462)
Thousands like a couple thousand maybe at least

Allan Ritchie (32:06.924)
Oh, tens, tens of thousands, I must.

Jon (32:10.948)
It's, it's gotta be a lot because they'll line the whole street all the way up and then all off to the sides. And yeah, it's gotta be a ton.

Allan Ritchie (32:16.364)
Like it's insane. I've never seen so many people in one place at one time, but they also have like, they send out a signal like with the second the show started, all of our magic bands, you could see them. Everybody's magic bands just erupt in color and vibrating. And it was like instantaneously with the show, like for them to broadcast a signal that reaches that many people in one moment is, I mean, it, it's not technically hard. It's just crazy. The amount of stuff like it.

Jon (32:45.156)
Right.

Allan Ritchie (32:46.316)
And if you've got that many people in the park and you're trying to serve Wi -Fi to them too, the massive amounts of network infrastructure are just crazy. Crazy.

Jon (32:57.412)
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and then like, yeah, and each one of those stations that's reading, you know, cards and stuff is probably wired into their networks. And like, I would love to see their data center in the park. It's gotta be just unbelievable.

Allan Ritchie (33:12.844)
Well, I stopped and thought about this. I'm like, they have places like they have huge buildings where they hire people, right? They have monorails to get people around. They've got the carry cars. They must have their own reactor to power the park. Like I think Disney is its own self -contained city. It really is, right? Like even when you get out of the Orlando, like the I -4 is the main highway that goes through there. You're into like a different city.

Jon (33:26.338)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Jon (33:35.618)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (33:41.772)
and the signs look different, the roads are in better condition and you know your app starts lighting up right away the second you get in there. It's like hey where are you going? Going to this park? Going to that park? Yeah. It actually wasn't, I'll be honest though, it's not that bad because like you did have the option to link your credit card but if I was buying food you could you could just use Apple Pay right there.

Jon (33:43.076)
Yeah.

Jon (33:51.94)
They're like, hey, you're here. Did you, did you link your credit card yet?

Jon (34:07.012)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (34:10.06)
or you could say, bill it to my Disney card. Now, billing it to your Disney card is like treating it like a credit card because you're like, ooh, I'll pay it later, I'll pay it later, I'll pay it later.

Jon (34:13.284)
Yeah.

Jon (34:17.54)
Oh yeah.

Well, I looked even and they have like, I looked into it a bit. Um, when you do that, they batch up transactions and, but, and I think every five days or something, unless maybe you hit a certain limit, they'll do like the charging your credit card for what you've accrued on that account. So like even that's kind of interesting, right? It's like building it up and then it's kind of like how Apple does it with app store purchases.

Allan Ritchie (34:31.116)
Oh.

Allan Ritchie (34:38.476)
you're like, oh.

Allan Ritchie (34:44.268)
Yeah, all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, I should have kept better track of what I was spending. Well, it is what it is.

Jon (34:48.324)
Oh yeah, I bought that. Darn. Yeah. So one of the other, so you mentioned like there's all sorts of stuff in these apps, right? Um, one of the other things that I really thought was awesome and my kids absolutely loved, and they've already talked about, like they can't wait to go back because we didn't do them all. And even some of the ones we did, they're like, yeah, we're doing this again was, uh, I think it's in the same app. Maybe it wasn't a different one. They have a couple apps, right? There's also the Disney play app. I think it might be in.

Allan Ritchie (35:16.716)
Yes. Yep.

Jon (35:18.084)
which is like a bunch of games and stuff that, you know, some are just like in the app. And I think the idea was like, Hey, give your kids a device while you're waiting in line. And they have something to do. Um, but one of the coolest ones was the in Epcot, they have a scavenger hunt and it's through the app. And so it's, it's like DuckTales themed. And so the idea is that you go, you know, Epcot has like all the different, you know, look world showcase. It's like, Hey, now I'm in Japan. Now I'm in Canada and none of the,

you know, all of the appropriation type things in each, each part of the world there, you know, some of them are done. Okay. Some of them are probably less true. Um, but the cool thing is it, Oh, the Canadian one sucks. Like let's be real. They should just get rid of that. The, but you, you go around and so at each stop you're like, okay, I'm in, uh, let's pick, uh, China. Cause this is one of the cooler ones I thought. And.

Allan Ritchie (35:58.474)
Canadian one was a little flawed.

Jon (36:15.588)
There's like a little story on the phone about it and like voice acting and stuff. And then you have to like follow these clues. And it'll be like, go over to like where, you know, the path goes past the pond here with the bonsai trees or whatever. Uh, that was maybe the Japan one actually. And, uh, you know, go stand here looking this way. And then when you do that and you press a button on the app and then something happens in the real world in front of you.

And so in the case of the one in China, all of a sudden there's this bubbling in the water, like in front of you. And this statue slowly rises out of the water with like some smoke effects and stuff around it. And, and, and like noise is happening from it around you. And it's like, that was the thing. Like, so you're activating these like real things in front of you from the app, presumably with like Bluetooth somehow.

Allan Ritchie (36:53.356)
Oh cool.

Jon (37:11.556)
And only on command and like you're going around and finding all these different, like cool little hidden things. And that was just so mind blowing to me because it's again, that attention to detail, right? Somebody they built this thing that's in the water that that lifts out of the water on activation from their mobile app. And, you know, it's doing all these effects and stuff. And some of the, the there's maybe like eight or 10 in total throughout the park. Some of them were, were less impressive, but like some of them were really cool. And.

I think one of the fun things was people around didn't really know it was happening, right? Like if you don't know to look for this, this thing, the scavenger hunt app, like, I don't know, you don't know. That's, that's kind of Disney. There's tons of things you don't know about that you could probably be doing, but like one of the ones was like setting off this robot that like made noises and turned around in the middle of one of their stores. And like, I think the Japan one. And so people are like, what's going on?

Allan Ritchie (37:51.532)
Yep.

Jon (38:05.348)
Like, and we're all, we're just kind of sitting there laughing, right? Cause like we hit the button and it causes this thing to happen and everyone's like freaking out around it. Um, so that was a really cool extra add on. And again, it's got the interplay with like real world and the mobile app and they're using different tech to do this. And it's just, again, mind blowing. That was one of my favorite things.

Allan Ritchie (38:24.268)
Everything was designed like I never felt like I was waiting in line for too long like between because you didn't fast lane into everything right so some rides you'd have to wait on and there was an experience but this app you're talking about always allowed you to be playing a game that was relevant to the ride you're on or now the scavenger hunt that you're talking about it was a bit different for the one that we found they had these golden statues everywhere so they worked with the magic band so you'd go up and you'd wave the your magic band at it.

Jon (38:41.956)
Mm -hmm.

Jon (38:50.754)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (38:53.868)
it would make the sound of the character and they were all over all the parks. So that was one we did. Now the scavenger hunt that I did find, this is kind of where things I think went wrong or maybe I was too stupid to work with it. But at the Star Wars area, they had a scavenger hunt and it was, they had like, I don't know, big TV set up everywhere and they would give you a mission to go bounty hunt some character. The problem was,

Jon (39:20.772)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (39:21.388)
So the Star Wars area, I don't want to say it's small, but it's pretty much half of Hollywood studios. But they had so many characters to bounty hunt that my kids' magic bands were just going insane the entire time walking through there. And we're like, OK, hang on. We need to look at the map. Where is this guy? Well, my son did say, it's driving me nuts, Daddy. You've got to take it off. So I get that the tent was there. And it was awesome. And it was fun for about five minutes. But then we couldn't get to shut up.

Jon (39:38.5)
Too much.

Jon (39:44.132)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (39:50.732)
And so it was, it was fun, but then it was like, okay, Alex had enough of it. He didn't want the band on anymore. Okay, bud. And the bands are a little bit annoying to turn off. I ended up resetting it. So I had to fix it at back at the hotel, but you know, it just shows how they're trying to make everything fun. So if you can't get on a ride, there's still all these little free, I'm going to say in quotes going on. Right. And they've got shows going on everywhere. Right. And.

Jon (40:12.516)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Allan Ritchie (40:20.108)
It's cool because I think they know people that are in the area too. So they go looking for like kids and it's crazy. Like the amount of attention that they put to scanning and where people are and how people are moving through the parks with all this tracking tech on it, on you.

Jon (40:34.948)
Well, that's it. I was gonna say like.

That's another, another aspect of it, right? Like I think, obviously we don't know how or what, if they're doing it. I think we know they are doing it because it makes sense. And knowing that they've put so much detail into some of the stuff they do, like just even moving people out of the park, I have to imagine they have so much data and analytics on how crowds move throughout their spaces, you know, what things they can do to influence that movement.

Um, you know, all of that different kind of thing, and they're, they're clearly using that to manage, you know, attendance and making spaces, you know, keep moving and stuff like that. Right. Like, did you, was there any moments that you got like a sense of like, Oh, something's happening here behind the scenes.

Allan Ritchie (41:23.948)
It would feel sometimes like they were trying to be like, hey, look, the estimation time for this ride is way down and it wouldn't be totally out of your way, but it would be like, oh, it's up there. So they, yeah, let's book it. That's in like half hour. So we'll stay here for another 10 minutes, but then we're moving out of that area. Right. So it was like, they kept like a circular flow of traffic going through the parks constantly. Yeah. With the lightning lanes.

Jon (41:35.556)
Yeah.

Jon (41:45.38)
Yeah.

Jon (41:49.252)
Do you mean like with the lightning lane availabilities or yeah, okay. So that's an interesting aspect to it. Okay, okay. Cause like with, so, you know, we didn't talk a lot about, you know, the lightning lanes and how that kind of works, but like you, the basic premise, right? Is you pay for this extra thing. You get to book, you know, your first like window for whatever ride you can get. So you're, you're looking through the app, right? They give you like all of the different, like if I want to look at this ride, um,

Allan Ritchie (41:54.348)
or even like advertisements.

Jon (42:16.996)
You know, I can see different times available, that kind of thing. And after you book one, you have to wait two hours or use the one that you had first, right? To book your next one kind of thing. Yeah. Right. So, so to your point, right? Like if you, if they're trying to kind of move crowds a certain way, I would be shocked if they're not showing you available lightning lanes based on that pattern that they're trying to move, right? Like you're saying, like we, you saw something nearby and.

Allan Ritchie (42:24.908)
Yeah, as soon as you use it, you can book the next one, which was cool, but it.

Allan Ritchie (42:43.724)
Yeah, and they might even prioritize you. So you're not in that area that you want you to get to that area.

Jon (42:48.1)
Yeah. Yeah. So you might see a time that somebody else doesn't because you're there.

Allan Ritchie (42:53.004)
Exactly. Just to keep you moving, right? And it did. It did. It was like hurting the cattle. Like I was like, yeah, I want to go on that ride.

Jon (42:59.652)
See, I didn't think of it from that perspective, because I was thinking about this before when we talked about, hey, we should talk about this on a show. And I was just thinking about just the mechanics of trying to build that kind of system where, because it seems like you can look for times and you can look and keep refreshing and sometimes different available times show up. So I don't know if generally they're probably doing something like, hey, we have so many slots for this time.

We have, you know, let's, let's really hold those or release them to like X number of requests that are coming in. And then, you know, if, if nobody takes it and we start to kind of time those out of that queue of, we already told someone they can have it, you know, they go back into the system and kind of keep getting fed that way. And I already thought like, there's probably some intelligent stuff around how they're doing that going on, but I hadn't really thought about doing, changing those results based on like where you are too, like that, that's probably what they're doing.

Allan Ritchie (43:55.916)
And they can, it would have to be. And that's, I mean, we're, we're a mobile show, but as much as I'm impressed with their mobile front end, I'm curious, like their backend must just be like, I'm guessing they don't host it on the cloud. Why would they? But they probably have all of their parks linked at some point through the system. Right? So maybe they do have a cloud access. What are they running in their backend? I I'm so curious.

Jon (44:06.596)
The backend. Yeah.

Jon (44:23.684)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (44:24.3)
If there is a Disney architect at some point listening, I would love to see the white papers on not only your mobile app, but your backend. Like this, what you guys have built is it's, yeah, I want to build it.

Jon (44:26.852)
That would be...

Jon (44:36.996)
incredible.

Jon (44:41.442)
That would be that yeah, I was gonna say that would be a super fun thing to go and be part of Yeah Yeah, we'll make it even better somehow

Allan Ritchie (44:44.204)
I hire John and I will quit everything and we'll come we'll come work on that. That's all I'll do. I won't just put food in front of my face in a drink and we'll just keep coding. That's like one of those ones I could. Yeah, yeah, it's no problem.

Jon (44:53.988)
Yeah, just let us live in Disney and we'll just build it, right?

Jon (45:00.452)
Yeah, that's that that part of it is, is honestly, um, and, and, you know, like, I kind of still have a bit of a love hate with it too. Cause like the, the whole gamification of it kind of, I both love it and hate it. Like, like I said, because like the, the part of me that's like, Oh, I love the, how the app works and everything. I like having the reservation times and everything.

But on the other hand, like you are also kind of glued to your phone the entire time you're there trying to like look up things and you know, find the next thing I want to do. But maybe that's something that they they keep improving on too. I felt like we were fairly tied down the last time, but maybe not quite as much as the time before that.

Allan Ritchie (45:44.396)
I don't know. My opinion is whatever they did made me feel good there. Like I had a great time. Whatever Universal Studios didn't do, I didn't feel great there. Maybe it was the park. It was too busy. The rides weren't really meant for my kids, but the way Disney's app did everything from games, the gamification you're talking about, to moving me to rides.

Jon (46:05.444)
Mm.

Allan Ritchie (46:13.418)
You know, Disney charges a lot, but they don't, it's not as bad as you think, right? Like the food isn't as bad as people say. It's not as expensive as people say. It is expensive, but you're in a park, but it's not outrageous, right? The way they move you, well, it depends.

Jon (46:26.564)
I mean, it's close to outrageous. I agree. Like, I mean, clearly I think there's the value for the price because we're going, right? So like it is expensive, but at the end of the day, I do agree. Like what you get from it, you know, if that's your thing, like that there is value.

Allan Ritchie (46:35.338)
Right.

Allan Ritchie (46:43.98)
I didn't feel tied to an app either other than to use the park. Yes, I did. But I'd have my phone away most of the time. We'd be talking to the kids because in line is an experience, right? And it just, you know, you'd book your next ride and that would be it. And then you might be looking about lunch and then you put your phone away, right? It just, everything seemed to flow nicely.

Jon (46:57.412)
Yeah.

Jon (47:10.71)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (47:10.796)
The one other thing I wanted to say, and this is for John's benefit, going back to the Bluetooth for a second, if you buy the droids at Star Wars, you can buy a backpack that you unzip the droid's head so the droid can see, and it reacts to Bluetooth events in the park. So the droids just start talking to things. Or for instance, Ray, who my daughter loves and my son loves for different reasons, this girl would come up and the droid would talk to her. So she had something, I could see something on her belt.

Jon (47:18.178)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (47:40.268)
and the droid would just start talking to her and she'd be talking to the droid. And I'm like, this is stupid. Are you serious? I mean, it's great. But again, the droid in the backpack, so my daughter had a BB -8 and now it's got a chain attached to its head so it doesn't flip its head off because it's a magnet that attaches it, but it would turn in and it was talking to her. Like, what the, what is that? What is that? That's amazing.

Jon (47:41.22)
Yeah.

Jon (47:57.186)
Yeah.

Jon (48:02.05)
Yeah, that's yeah who even like you know thought that hey we should do this right like that's that's next level detail

Allan Ritchie (48:09.516)
I mean, they went pretty silent once you left the Star Wars area, but the whole time we were walking through there, like R2 -D2 was just like, and you're like, what do you want about now? And it would be looking at something in the forest that you were walking by and you'd be like, oh yeah, there's a Coke vendor, right? Coca -Cola, not cocaine. And you'd be walking by and it's like, what do you want? Do you want a Coca -Cola or what's your thing, dude? Like you just go nuts and look at it.

Jon (48:13.38)
Sure.

Jon (48:19.94)
at something.

Jon (48:26.372)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean.

Jon (48:33.444)
Yeah, it's like, yeah, yeah, I do. I want you to buy more stuff, of course. I mean, subtle monetization.

Allan Ritchie (48:36.748)
Yeah, buy a $6 .50. Hey, but they're cool. I showed you the Coke bottle, right?

Jon (48:44.772)
I don't know, I don't think so.

Allan Ritchie (48:46.412)
They're like, they're like, they almost look like Christmas ornaments, right? They are cool. They look like Star Wars themed. It's an expensive Coca -Cola, but it's an, my kids kept their bottles. You can see mine. If you look at the, if you look right there on my camera, you can see it right there. Yeah.

Jon (48:49.188)
Oh, so they have like... Okay, so they've done... Well, sure.

Jon (48:58.18)
Okay. Well my, my kids will want to do that, especially after it. Cause, uh, Oh, I kinda, I don't know. It's kind of blurry. I'll have to send me a picture later. Um, they will want that, especially after having been to Belize where like, you know, their whole thing is everything's glass bottle, cokes and fontas and everything. So definitely. Did, did you try the, um, did you go, you were an Epcot, did you go to the place where you can try all the different pops from the world?

Allan Ritchie (49:26.604)
No, I didn't see that.

Jon (49:27.716)
Oh, oh, next time. It's fun. There's like one of the ones is like, you know, cucumber sprite from Russia or something like that. And like there are all these crazy flavors. Some of them are terrible, but some of them are pretty good or like plum soda. Yeah. No, thanks.

Allan Ritchie (49:32.076)
Thank you.

Allan Ritchie (49:43.148)
I did try the blue milk in Star Wars, which was like rice milk in a slushie. Yeah, no, it wasn't good. It wasn't good.

Jon (49:51.62)
I mean, I don't want to see it going down or coming up, so I'll stay away from that.

Allan Ritchie (49:57.324)
Yes, kind of gross.

Jon (49:59.236)
Um, the, the one other thing that, that I kind of, I think we, we w I wanted to touch on too, I thought was interesting as, you know, I, when I opened up the app recently, I also got a alert saying, Hey, you have Google maps turned on in the app. Do you, do you want, if you don't want to use it, you can go here and turn it off. So they're mapping stuff is all based on Google maps. It seems I haven't tried with turning it off, but they, they kind of say, like, if you turn it off, you're not going to see like these details and these details.

So I thought that was kind of interesting that they haven't rolled their own thing with maps.

Allan Ritchie (50:32.948)
Now that'd be a pretty expensive venture to do, right? It's really... I don't know if you're...

Jon (50:36.388)
Well, or maybe more interesting that like Google Maps has the tiles for Disney, like the, that level of detail. Cause it's not like photo realistic, right? But like, if you look on the map, it's all like, you know, nice, um, what's the word I'm looking for? Like picture that I don't know, not photos, but pictures of the details, right? Like it's very detailed if you zoom in far. So that's kind of interesting.

Allan Ritchie (50:57.836)
Yeah.

Yeah, Google Maps had no problems finding places. I'm in Disney.

Jon (51:05.412)
Yeah. But I mean, like for the map view they use in their own app, it seems to be powered by Google, right?

Allan Ritchie (51:12.332)
without the logo though, which is interesting.

Jon (51:14.596)
Right, without the logo. Yeah, that is interesting. And I do find that like, I don't know, it doesn't load as well as I would like it to in the app. Like it's fine, but like as I pan around, like it doesn't seem to cache the tiles super well. I don't know, maybe there's like some optimization they should be doing there. There we go, that's my end. We'll fix your maps.

Allan Ritchie (51:16.972)
That's interesting.

Cough

Allan Ritchie (51:34.764)
I'm frustrated.

I do understand why they might be using Google Maps on both the Android and the iOS side because you usually have to pay. Oh really? Oh okay I just noticed it. All right.

Jon (51:44.292)
It does have the logo in it. I just, yeah. Yeah, I can see it in the bottom corner now. Yeah, it's very, it's different than normal. It's very subtle.

Allan Ritchie (51:56.3)
Well, they're probably paying the money, right? Because if you have a paid subscription and Google Maps, if you integrate with it at like a high, like a very integrated, like deep level, it can cost you quite a bit, right? So I've worked with fleet management where they had deep maps and everything had to be on Google, right? Because you had all the APIs and they paid like just an absolute ton of money to use it. So I imagine...

Jon (52:09.188)
Yeah.

Jon (52:21.124)
Well, and that's, that's why I find it kind of interesting that they do use it because it's like to roll your own vector maps and have your own illustrations and stuff. I mean, I guess other products out there are maybe not any cheaper by the time it's all said and done. Maybe that's part of it, but it seems to me like that would be an area that they would want to have a little bit more control over.

Allan Ritchie (52:43.18)
So that point of if we build it, what does it do for us money wise? I don't know. I don't know. Again, if you're an app, if you're a Disney architect, we want to talk to you. I want to, I want to, I want to see the white paper on this app and all the decisions that were made because you've built the Mecca of apps. This is the Mecca of apps.

Jon (52:43.908)
That's interesting.

Jon (52:47.908)
Yeah.

Jon (52:55.78)
Yeah. Yeah.

Jon (53:02.116)
Yeah, that's fantastic. It really is. I mean, like, like you said, the sheer just amount of functionality in the apps, like I can even go in and, um, click the chat with us and it, it will open a thing that presumably somebody will actually reply to me on, right? Like that's, that's cool.

Allan Ritchie (53:18.348)
Yep. That was one of the other features they told us about too, is if you got your kids a Magic Band. So Magic Bands aren't too ex... well they're a bit pricey for what they are.

Jon (53:25.41)
Mm -hmm.

Depends which one you get, because you can still buy the not fancy ones.

Allan Ritchie (53:31.724)
I don't think so anymore. Not at the stores at the moment.

Jon (53:34.82)
Maybe not. We, we, I mean, we got these ones last year and they didn't, I don't think they had the fancy ones or maybe they didn't. We're like, I don't need to buy that.

Allan Ritchie (53:41.516)
I think you got one coming in your future there, my friend. Anyhow, the Magic Bands are great. Now, I stuck air tags on my kids. I've never lost my kids. I've got one eye, you know, I'm, yeah, yet. I'm sure it'll happen at some point, but I prep for it just in case. I'm a bit of a pessimist like that. So I put air tags on them.

Jon (53:45.058)
Ugh.

Jon (53:51.172)
Hm. Yet.

Jon (54:01.444)
What did you use to put them on? Like what kind of holder or whatever?

Allan Ritchie (54:06.924)
I had them in their fanny packs one day. I had them, my son's got like a little... No, I thought that might be bad because you know those watch batteries are in them. Probably not good. I've heard some horror stories there. But it turns out if you have... And it's an expensive air tag. They might not pass it properly. So the Magic Bands... So apparently this is like another feature. They don't really talk about it because again, it's not a positive thing.

Jon (54:11.3)
You didn't just make him like swallow an air tag.

Jon (54:16.58)
Yeah, how do you replace the battery?

Jon (54:25.38)
That's true. It's true.

Allan Ritchie (54:37.036)
But it is if you're a parent. So what they would do is because the bands were linked to your pass and you had to have a phone to hook up to the band, if your kids got lost, the cool thing was, and John and I talked about this earlier, is the cast members. That's the employees of the park. They call them cast members. They're watching for, even people changing the garbage will help take pictures or talk to people. Like they're all friendly. So if they see a kid that's lost, they can take them.

Jon (54:39.14)
Yeah.

Jon (54:43.66)
Jeez.

Yeah.

Jon (54:54.628)
Yeah.

Jon (55:01.548)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (55:06.38)
scan their magic band and message you on the app saying, come here, we've got your kid. I mean, it, it sounds like it doesn't sound like a big deal, but they've built a chat in. They know who's, you know, who's party the, this magic band is with come get it. Right. And you're like, that, that sounds like a trivial thing in it. And it kind of is, but to map out, I need to go to this spot.

Jon (55:12.74)
I mean, that's genius, right?

Jon (55:19.596)
Yeah.

Jon (55:27.972)
Yeah. That's probably even... Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (55:36.076)
My kids will be there because of a magic band. I mean...

Jon (55:41.092)
And it just gives them an easy way to, to be able to like have that feature, right? Like, yeah, I agree. Like it's, it's, it's trivial and, and in terms of like implementing it probably, but it's just, it's another level of another safety net, right? So this is one thing that, that I'm kind of excited about because I've, every time we've been in dizzy, I've never felt. And any, you know, sense of like, Oh, I don't know if I trust like my kid going a few feet from me or anything. Not that I'm going to like let them run off, but.

Allan Ritchie (55:54.614)
detail.

Jon (56:10.786)
You know, at the end of the day, there's just so many protocols that they have for like dealing with situations that come up like this. Right. And so this is another one of them too. Right. That helps you feel a little bit more at ease about like, okay, if something did happen, like heck probably should even have the conversation with the kids before and be like, Hey, if, if you manage to get separated from us, like go find somebody that works there and tell them, right.

Allan Ritchie (56:33.004)
Yeah, and they'll help you. They'll contact us on the app and we'll find you. One other part about the magic bands, they were a bit of a pain to link up to my account. And when you're going into the park, you have to give your fingerprint too. It prevents pass backs, right? So if I take my magic band and I hand it back, you know, you kind of rip them off. So what they do when you're going into the park is you scan your band or your phone app and you put your fingerprint. Now kids are disgusting. They have crap on their fingers, you know, from

Jon (56:37.06)
Yeah, and we'll find you right away and you'll be fine.

Jon (56:48.036)
Yep. Yep.

Allan Ritchie (57:03.116)
God knows what they've touched. So my son or they would move their finger around and like, dude, keep your finger still. So I don't know, a couple of times we'd go into the park and this just talks about the technology and the, the, the, how their ability to manage it on the spot and wrap it. So what would happen is my kids of course would fail the fingerprint. So what they'd have to do is reset it. So they had, they had a couple of people walking around with tablets. You know, the guy at the gate would put up his hand.

Jon (57:22.05)
Mm -hmm.

Allan Ritchie (57:33.164)
They'd come over and scan your band and be like, okay, Alex, you screwed up your fingerprint. Let's reset it. They'd scan it there, press a reset button. Bang, he'd scan it, scan his fingerprint again and it was in. And it was dealt with in seconds. We didn't have to go to guest service line. We didn't have to throw out the band and get a card. It was just dealt with on the spot with another app in practically real time. And again,

Jon (57:47.172)
Yeah.

Yep.

Allan Ritchie (58:00.844)
just more technology to deal with when technology does fail. And we were moving. It took maybe a whole extra 15 seconds for them to fix their finger.

Jon (58:13.636)
Now you were there, I thought when you were there, I saw some mention that like AT &T took a dive one of the days you were there. Did you experience that at all?

Allan Ritchie (58:23.66)
Um, yeah, I had like just cellular issues when I was there a few times. I don't know.

Jon (58:29.572)
Yeah, yeah, that's what I saw. And maybe you weren't like whatever carrier you're with here didn't use them anyway.

Allan Ritchie (58:37.356)
I didn't have a problem when I was in the parks. I had a problem outside of the park.

Jon (58:38.404)
Cause it's, I had heard some about that. Okay. That's interesting. Cause like, I, I, you know, probably is some click baity headline was, was what it was then. And they're like, Oh, that's chaos and pandemonium and Disney. Cause you know, AT &T is not working in the park and everyone's, you know, trying to get, cause I think that's the thing, right? If there's a failure point for getting in the app, like if that goes down, there are problems.

Allan Ritchie (59:00.716)
That's why they have the wifi. But that's why they have the wifi. Now.

Jon (59:03.884)
Wifi but but even like their system right like imagine their system somehow crashes or goes down like just the the amount of redundancy and and kind of failover they must build into that would be crazy to see too.

Allan Ritchie (59:15.094)
Oh yeah, I'd be like, cause the park would stop dead, but never had that problem. Now the one problem Disney does have, and I kind of get it is that those rides are running like nonstop, right? So they're constant, like there'd be broken down rides, unfortunately. So they got to fix that. But I get it. Like they had like nighttime, you can go between 12 AM and three or like midnight and three AM. So like the rise, they, they,

Jon (59:28.098)
Yeah.

Jon (59:32.708)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (59:44.46)
It's like, when do they fix these things? Right? They just kept going and going and going. When do they fix them? So there would be a lot of times when the rides would be broken down or if you've ever been on haunted mansion, one of my personal favorites, you'd be on it would break down and they'd be like, hang on a second while we deal with it. And you just keep moving through and eventually you get off. But maybe that was the only thing that they still got to figure out is how do we keep these things moving?

Jon (59:58.082)
Mm -hmm.

Jon (01:00:02.466)
Yeah.

Jon (01:00:10.052)
Well, there's so much mechanics behind all these things too, right? Like I know I w we were on, um, years ago on pirates, uh, and it broke down while we were in it. And, but it was like, you know, the, the boats stopped and then they turned on all the lights in the warehouse that this thing is in, which was really cool on its own, right? Cause you're like, Oh, I can see the building and like the where it's like, it's, it's wild to see it lit up because it's like this, they, they, how do they make it look like it?

Allan Ritchie (01:00:10.924)
I don't know. Oh yeah.

Allan Ritchie (01:00:25.108)
Yeah.

Allan Ritchie (01:00:35.372)
You're in a warehouse.

Jon (01:00:38.34)
does when it's all, you know, properly going, it's crazy. And, you know, you had to listen to the pirate song like 10 times or something. It didn't take that long to get out. They got us through.

Allan Ritchie (01:00:47.052)
At least it wasn't Small World or something. Imagine being on that one.

Jon (01:00:49.732)
Oh, geez. Yeah, I know. That's like my kid's favorite ride. So I'm just, I don't know. It's going to be in my head forever.

Allan Ritchie (01:00:56.064)
It's a bit tough. Surprisingly, the song that got stuck in my head while I was there though was on the Simpsons ride. If you remember Duff Beer. Duff Beer for me. Duff Beer for you. You must... There we go. Yeah, that was a universal. That was the song that got stuck in my head.

Jon (01:00:57.892)
It is, it is.

Jon (01:01:06.444)
Oh yeah, but that was a universal, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Um, have we, have we missed any, any aspects of this? I know like we, we spent the whole time more geeking out over, you know, the, the fact that this stuff all exists and kind of talking about the details that obviously we don't have access or inside knowledge into how it's all architected. So it's hard to, to have too much of a conversation about like that. Technical level of detail, but you know, I think like, if anybody, uh, is on the fence about ever going or whatever, like I'm not.

I'm getting a kickback for this. I should get like 10 % off my trip or something. It's amazing if you're interested in mobile app space, which presumably you are, if you're listening still, it's kind of a marvel just to experience from that perspective alone. It's so good.

Allan Ritchie (01:02:00.46)
To be fair, John, you were my travel agent for the most part for when I went to Disney this round, but yeah, you're like, you need to go here.

Jon (01:02:05.252)
Was it? I mean, yeah, cause we, we had gone, like I said, I've been a bunch of times over the years, but like, I wouldn't call myself a Disney person. We, we always wrestled with the, the, like, I want to, I like it. It's fun, but I also want to go see like real things in the world, which, you know, we try and balance too, but it's, it's such a well done thing. And I'm excited because this is the first time that we're going and just kind of saying, I don't care. I'm doing the full experience. There's very few things that I'm not going to go, you know,

shell out the money to do probably is the lightsabers. Other than that, like, it's just like, just take my money. You know, there's that Futurama meme, like that's going to be me. Just let's go and have fun and it's going to be awesome.

Allan Ritchie (01:02:39.34)
rates.

Allan Ritchie (01:02:48.78)
and you're going to try and figure out the app while you're there. Because again, that's what I was doing in line going, this app is amazing. I wonder what they're doing here. So I'd be messaging John about this stuff and it's like, aren't you in?

Jon (01:02:55.46)
Yeah, how how are they doing this? Well, even even like the reservations for dinner and stuff like and

Allan Ritchie (01:03:03.596)
Yeah, go ahead.

Jon (01:03:04.322)
I don't tell you what I just like the, the, the reservations, like we didn't even, we talked a bit about, you know, all that system, but there's all these things like you can join like a walk -up wait list for a restaurant in the app, right? Like if, if you don't have a reservation for a place, you're like, I want to eat here. Join you join the wait list and it'll like keep you updated on what's going on and give you the info. Um, we didn't even talk about like virtual cues, which is kind of like lightning lanes, right? But it's like a whole other thing where.

Allan Ritchie (01:03:17.706)
Yep.

Allan Ritchie (01:03:29.388)
Same thing.

Jon (01:03:32.26)
same thing, but it's like just managing all of these like reservations and systems. And, and I think we, we talked about it enough that it probably sounds somewhat like onerous or like monotonous, but it's like you said, it's really not like I said, I felt like I was more tied to my phone the one time we went, but in, in, in fairness, a lot of that was we were doing like we were in magic kingdom and we had a group of 10. So we were constantly looking like, can we get,

Allan Ritchie (01:03:57.898)
Yes.

Jon (01:03:59.684)
We just did this right. We did a fast lightning lane, right? And we're all like looking like what's another one that's available soon. And to their credit, we'd usually find like, oh, like this next one within the next 10, 15, 30 minutes. And we just were like going through them all, right? Just cause we're like doing that. So I guess that's probably why I felt more tied down to it because we were using it to actually go do the things more fast than we could have otherwise.

Allan Ritchie (01:04:25.036)
Maybe you're playing on your phone though, aren't you?

Jon (01:04:29.176)
I mean just looking for reservation times. Yeah. I don't know. Anyway, we've spent a while on this. You know, it always is. I almost felt like we could have done two episodes on it, but I think we did it pretty good justice. We'll have to see if I have any new findings after we come back, after I come back. We did try to think of a plugin package or product for the week and the best that we could get...

Allan Ritchie (01:04:30.188)
little bit.

Allan Ritchie (01:04:35.348)
Anyhow, it was a bigger topic than I thought.

Jon (01:04:57.892)
that we could come up with were a couple Bluetooth packages. Because like we said, like Disney's clearly using Bluetooth in their app like crazy. I don't know that Disney is built with Maui. It's probably not. I probably would know if it was. I'm guessing, who knows? You never know. Sometimes we have like these big customers that are, you know, you find out they're like, oh yeah, they wrote like 10 different apps that they use with Maui. And you're like, you've never asked us for help. Like you're a huge customer. Like you probably could have come to us and said, hey,

Allan Ritchie (01:05:11.274)
Yep.

Jon (01:05:26.98)
but they didn't and that's cool. So maybe you never know until someone proves otherwise. So yeah, we've got the .NET Bluetooth LE library, which is one option for doing these things in your apps. And then we've also got, we just can't get away from Alan's shiny libraries because there's also shiny Bluetooth LE. I don't know if, you know, what the spread is between them in terms of differences, if one's better for something than the other, but we'll link to them, go check them out. I don't know if you want to touch on that.

Allan Ritchie (01:05:55.116)
One is they're more async based, which is great. They kind of follow the traditional kind of async event C sharp based, very stable package. The original developer was an MVP as well. Him and I were both writing it, I think at the same time he released it at the same time, except I went RX. So again, a lot of people don't like reactive extensions. We're still working on selling you on them.

Jon (01:05:59.746)
Okay.

Jon (01:06:06.37)
Mm -hmm.

Jon (01:06:21.124)
Okay.

Allan Ritchie (01:06:25.612)
but mine's slightly different. I do have async options now, but it's through RX.

Jon (01:06:27.396)
Yeah.

Jon (01:06:33.476)
Okay, cool. Yeah, so check those out. You know, as, as usual, if you like this episode or other episodes, give us a review on Apple podcasts or other podcast platforms. Drop us a line on the website, gonemobile .io. There's all sorts of different ways you can get in touch with us there. If you have questions, comments, feedback, ideas for other topics, we'd love to hear from you. So I think that'll do it, Alan. It's great episode. Love, love the Disney app.

We'll see you all next time.

Allan Ritchie (01:07:03.404)
Yeah, that was a high point.