Hi all,
I wanted to share with you all, an experience I just had with Disney photopass... and maybe y'all have had similar experiences and this is somewhat normal... but its also a first for me, so please let me explain.
First, let me say, I'm a lifetime Disney Fan, so I'm thrilled to have found this forum, especially as an adult with no kids.
That said, I did a short, 5 day solo trip to Disney World - Florida in May. (Its been a very busy and stressful year at work, and so the trip was my treat to myself for a lot of hard work, and simply a trip to go ride rides, have some fun, and relieve some stress. - I realize Disney is dubbed as the 'happiest place on earth'... and though it may be a bit cliche, Disney World truly is "my happy place".)
So then, Let me say, I got a deal on the trip through Costco vacations, and chose not to spend the funds on memory maker or photopass pictures this trip. I really just went for some fun... I went solo, was riding single rider lines when I could, and trying some restaurants that I hadn't visited yet. Also, I had my own camera, with which I planned on using for most of the photographs that I wanted. I'm not a big fan of selfies anyway.
Now, I will say as preface, that I ended up purchasing one, singular, roller coaster photo toward the end of my trip... because of the uniqueness of the photo. I bought the prints for it, but was also given a card for the digital download of the photo itself. That said, I recently received the reminder email from Disney saying that my digital photos were about to expire. No Big. I knew I had a photo there from that purchase.
So then, I recently went online to retrieve the digital download...and much to my surprise .... I had SEVERAL roller coaster and ride photos on my Disney photopass account from _This Trip_ including a kind of cool video from riding the seven dwarfs mine train.
Now, this almost is creepy to me... and kind of weirds me out just a bit.
(a) Since I didn't buy memory maker or plan on purchasing these photos, __I did not scan__ my magic band at the photo kiosk to load my photo.
(b) Even IF Disney knows which park I am in, and can estimate my ride time based on my fast pass selections, .... I could almost understand these photos appearing... (even though there can be a 20 minute window on the FastPass line), but this still means Disney is "following" riders from magic band scan to ride photo....
(c) Yet several of these photos were taken when I rode the rides either by "single rider line", or by "standby line"---especially one of the Mine Train photos, which doesn't even have a photo kiosk at the end of the mine train to scan. And... some of these photos would have been during regular park hours, when one doesn't have to scan their magic band to enter the queue.
Now granted, maybe I make it easy for Disney when I ride a ride 3 or 4 times in a row with the same T-shirt on. And I will admit there were one or two photos on my photo pass account where Disney's "recognition software" clearly missed the boat and picked the wrong person.
But I have to ask:
___(a) has anyone else experienced this or noticed it?
___(b) is it just me, or is it just starting to cross over to the creepy side?
___(c) what are your thoughts in general? Like it? Dislike it?
That said, I know there are cameras all over the park, I know that the magic bands help Disney track consumer behavior, and in part this probably helps with security as well...
But, this one was a bit of a shocker--It certainly surprised me to see photos of myself, that I did not scan for, that were not from magic band or fast-pass times on my account, especially on rides where I was unaware of them having cameras.
Just some food for thought...
