The internet has been buzzing lately with rumors of a possible replacement to the wrist-worn MagicBands. We have it on good authority that the next generation version of the MagicBand will NOT be worn around the wrist, but over the eye!
“The Walt Disney Company is very excited to announce that soon park guests will be able utilize our patented MagicBand technology in a convenient and stylish eye patch,” Tammy Stephens, Vice President of Disney’s Advanced Ocular Technology Division. “Guests will still be able to do everything they could with the wrist band, including entering the park, using it as their room key, to make purchases in the parks, and use it for their FastPass+ reservations, but the technology will be on their eye instead of on their wrist.”
The decision to go to an eye patch over a wrist band was one that was years in the making.
“As soon as the wrist bands were implemented a few years ago, someone on our team said, ‘What about an eye patch?’ and we were like, ‘duh! Why didn’t we think of this sooner?’,” Thomas Jefferson Geronimo III, Technical Lead on Disney’s MagicBand Eye Patch. “It was the ‘ah-ha’ moment we were looking for all along.”
Geronimo only wishes they would have thought of the idea sooner.
“I only wish we thought of the idea sooner,” Geronimo continued. “We wasted billions of dollars on a stupid wrist band when the public was dying to see something more stylish and trendy. In hindsight, an eye patch would have been the perfect way to debut our MagicBand technology.”
Disney has no plans to replace the current MagicBand-reading terminals that currently are about wrist-height, which means guests will have to squat down so their eye is level with the wrist-high terminal.
“We did several focus groups and the response was overwhelmingly in favor of keeping the current height of our [MagicBand] readers,” Stephens said. “Our guests felt that having terminals at eye level would be assuming too many people’s heights, and that we may offend our shorter guests. The solution was to keep the terminals at current levels, so no one’s height identity is assumed.”
The new Magic Eye Patches will slowly start implementing sometime during Q2 2017. They will first debut in red, black, blue, and pink colors. Eventually, they will be branded with various Disney characters including Captain Hook from Peter Pan.
