My kids are obsessed with bringing voice assistants home. Not a day goes by without my girlfriend, age 7 or 3, asking Alexa or Google for the current weather, playing her favorite song, or answering random wildlife questions. I think there are many parents who can sympathize.
Now, imagine instead of Alexa answering your children’s questions, Mickey Mouse, Goofy, and nearly 20 Disney characters were speaking to you. Depending on how much you love Disney, this will give you that magical Walt Her Disney World feel. The bane of your existence.
At CES 2023, Amazon announced that Disney’s first in-home voice assistant, Hey Disney, will be available on Echo devices as part of the Alexa Skills Store or Amazon Kids+ subscriptions in the coming months. A simple “Hey Disney!” voice assistant interacts with children, parents, and Disney adults alike, just as they do with the Alexa voice assistant today. It adds some unique features like Disney trivia and Star Wars soundscapes, to name a few.
Amazon and Disney gave Mashable a hands-on demo of their home voice assistant at CES. You can see it in the video below.
I was able to ask basic Disney questions, such as the current weather, and more than 20 Disney, Pixar, and Star Wars characters (such as the Genie). Aladdin or from Olaf frozen response. During the demo, we heard an interactive story. car’ Set a timer for 30 seconds with the help of Donald Duck. The main voice assistant is called Disney Magical Companion, which directs queries and throws random Disney characters at him.
After experiencing the demo, I thought the most interesting feature wasn’t the voice assistant itself, but how it interacts with Disney’s MagicBand+.
For those of you who haven’t been to a Disney theme park in the last decade, the MagicBand is essentially a watch-sized wearable device that allows you to enter parks faster or skip lines with Disney’s new FastPass system called Genie+. You can skip It’s basically a big ticket to Disneyland and Disney World. There is a premium version of the wearable called MagicBand+. This all does the same thing, but with interactive features. For example, he lights up his MagicBand+ when he passes certain statues in the Magic Kingdom, and taps the device to hear characters’ voices coming from the statues.
One big problem with MagicBands, though, is that they’re… well, useless outside of the park. Soon it won’t. In our demo, all of his connected MagicBand+ devices lit up when a timer set by Donald Duck expired. According to Disney, the company has plans for future integrations, such as Hey He Plays Disney Her Trivia with Disney, multiple players tapping on her MagicBand+ to get buzz, and more. For example, to be the first to answer.
Pull that MagicBand+ out of the bottom of your desk drawer. Ready to use at home in no time (if you purchased the Hey Disney Alexa skill from Amazon).
Credit: Matt Binder / Mashable
Hey Disney first rolled out at select Walt Disney World resorts late last year, including Disney’s Polynesian Village. (Disney says it hopes to eventually roll out voice assistants to all guests staying at Disneyland or Disney World resorts.) Answer park questions for Disney guests. And until this week, the only places you could try Hey Disney were at these select Disney resorts.
I’m not a Disney adult, but I’m a bit of a disney fanatic. I grew up on the classics, read Marvel comics as a kid, and was once obsessed with Star Wars. I now have two kids with her who love the characters, movies and shows, and we had so much fun last summer when we took our first trip to Disney World. Still, while the idea is pretty cool, Hey Disney lacks some areas of execution.
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For example, users cannot choose which characters they want to interact with on a regular basis. It’s completely random, with certain characters programmed to only respond to certain prompts. Disney explained to me that the company doesn’t want characters answering meaningless questions to answer. And if the question is completely out of Disney’s jurisdiction, Alexa will stand in for her Hey Disney (also understandable, but disappointing). Therefore, for better or worse, users cannot ask Goofy for medical advice.
Park guests who met Hey Disney at the resort voiced Some criticisms and concerns about the device. Some are disappointed that the Disney Magical Companion, the voice of the “main” Hey Disney, is not a beloved Disney character but an entirely new personality.
Other Disney guests were concerned about potential privacy issues. It states that voice recordings are not saved because there is no The upcoming stay-at-home version will mimic how Alexa works today, allowing customers to control privacy settings and delete voice recordings at any time. The device will only start recording when the user wakes up the voice assistant by saying “Hey Disney” or “Alexa” and the device lights up. Amazon also says that users’ personal information is never shared with Disney.
This partnership between Amazon and Disney is the result of a new Amazon solution, Alexa Custom Assistant, announced just two years ago. This allows businesses to replace Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant with their own branded assistant on Alexa-enabled devices. So if you don’t like Disney that much, Alexa might be able to answer your questions right away with another brand you’re a fan of.
