Surprised by Disney’s investment of a billion dollars in AI? I’m not. I’m fairly certain they were already experimenting with it.
I definitely suspected AI involvement this past Summer, when we had our most magical night in Disneyland. I did my usual lightning lane strategic circulation, minimizing our time in line and maximizing our thrills. That night was different though. A larger, grander, more immersive magic than just-usual Disney happened. Our timing seemed to be coordinated with park computers.
It seemed like something strange was happening to the humans plausibly in charge of It’s a Small World. I watched as the workers at the podium frantically pushed buttons. They called hither their professional ride manager. She appeared and also pushed the buttons she was supposed to, and made calls on the podium phone. She was focused and committed to fixing the ride, and appeared to possess expertise. Yet the ride remained stalled and we couldn’t go in. The electric light parade was going by right next to us and we enjoyed the close-up view while we waited. I kept watching the humans at the podium. “I think the computers have taken over,” I said.
I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what happened. You know Disney is into that stuff. They’ve been experimenting with environments since Disneyland opened and since Disney World expanded on that empire. It’s kind of awesome. And kind of scary. (Is it just for entertainment and lifestyle? Or is it also for social control? It’s for stock value, but is it to monopolize family movies, toys, merchandise and entertainment? I grew up with occasional trips to Disney World and repeat viewing of movies like The Little Mermaid. Did I think I deserved to marry a princely guy? Of course I did! Do I love thrill rides and nighttime electric parades? Of course I do!)
The stalled ride was perfect timing. At exactly the right moment, a stuck boat with 4 park-goers was finally released from It’s a Small World and we were able to enter the ride, which had been upgraded, renovated, refreshed, freshened up, made awesome again, and was amazing. OK, the ride was good, but the larger element of TIMING was the magnificent part.
This multi-platformed timing experiment, coincidence or not, resulted in us coming out of It’s a Small World into a bubble of supercharged energy. We sensed parade fruition and had the Mickey climax upon us and then we were immersed in the fireworks show, as if a supercomputer had overtaken controls of the ride to deliver a super-duper, VIP, elevated reality to yours truly. Would I pay for this? Absolutely. It was as if we had upped our genie-made experience to intergalactic dimensions of powerfulness... as if a supercomputer itself had designed it. Was this AI?
When I told my friend Devin about it, prefaced with the sentence that “I think AI took over It’s a Small World, because they made it magical for us, you know Disney does that sh*t,” and about how a family had gotten stuck in the ride but that the timing made our experience an overarching, magical one, he said, “well that’s great, but I feel bad for the family that got stuck in there.”
Yeah, there’s that fallout.
We got to ride high on the hog from some kind of Disney frequent flyer lottery test of the supercomputer luck, but another family suffered the balance of it. I hope they filed a complaint with management and got something free. As for us, the magic was short-lived. Soon we were released from the bubble of invincibility and sent back into the realm of regular Disneyland.
Was it just luck that we got to experience this heightened realm? Or was it AI?