New Automated Cameras at Mickey & Minnie Meet in Magic Kingdom
New automatic cameras have replaced PhotoPass photographers at Walt Disney World, most recently at the Minnie & Mickey Mouse meet and greet in Magic Kingdom’s Town Square Theater. In this post, we’ll share thoughts, photos, and info.
By chance, we’ve done this exact same meet & greet several times in the last two weeks, both before and after it switched to automated cameras. Our first two times were a couple of weeks ago during separate Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Parties (the low crowds ones mentioned in this post when Mickey had literally no wait) with a PhotoPass photographer.
Our most recent two visits over the weekend when both Minnie and Mickey Mouse were meeting in their Surprise Celebration costumes after the automated cameras were installed. As such, we figured it’d make sense to explain how the new system works, and offer our before v. after review…
The before experience is more or less your standard PhotoPass interaction. Note that this isn’t exactly an apples to apples comparison, as during Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, it’s just “County Mickey” dressed up in his costume. During Surprise Celebration, it’s both of them in their Wonder Bread get-ups.
Our interactions with fur characters are incredibly formulaic: we approach and do basic introductions and almost without fail, they notice something that Sarah is wearing that either feature the character or something that the character(s) “like.” Both times, this happened with Count Mickey.
At this point, the interaction is totally about Sarah, so I usually just awkwardly back off a bit so it’s not like I’m the third wheel creeping on the action in photos. This is pretty easy for a human to observe, and usually (75-80% of the time) the PhotoPass photographer will zoom in to focus on Sarah or compose the photos so I’m not in them.
With that said, the success or keeper rate on these spontaneous interaction photos still isn’t the greatest. A fun or cute moment in person with Mickey Mouse pointing to a hat might inadvertently look like him hitting a nose, etc. I’m sure anyone who has done a character meet and greet has been there, and has that uncomfortable mid-hug shot or something of the sort. It comes with the territory.
Nevertheless, human photographers generally do a good job with timing their photos for maximum impact, capturing awesome and special moments along with a few of the awkward ones. We have plenty of fun and goofy photos from interactions that we still look back on today and smile or laugh at, remembering the exact experience, all thanks to the timing, skill, and intuition of a good PhotoPass photographer.
Now for the automated cameras. As you can see in the photo above, there’s now a bookshelf directly opposite the character meet & greet, and there are two cameras installed (upper and lower) in the shelf on the left side. As guests are meeting with the characters, these cameras take photos (with flash) about every 3 seconds or so.
I have no clue how the technology behind this works (facial recognition? some sort of fancy algorithm?), but I don’t think it’s simply a timer as it wasn’t consistently 3 seconds. In any case, the technology is far from perfect, as the cameras continually captured those in-between moments of awkwardness as people were getting positioned or moving around.
In watching other groups during both of our times through, this is the first thing that struck me–the ‘trash to keeper’ ratio is undoubtedly worse with the automated cameras. The new system is perfectly adept at capturing the perfectly-posed moments, but not so good with anything else. This simply requires instinct and a deft photographer’s touch, and a computer lacks both.
Then there’s the obvious impersonal quality of it all. There’s still one Cast Member (character attendant) working at this meet, and that person does an admirable job attempting to direct guest attention towards the “magical bookcase.” However, even with a superlative Cast Member this still feels a bit like getting your picture taken at the DMV.
That might seem hyperbolic, and perhaps it is, but there should be absolutely zero room for comparing a meet with Mickey Mouse to the DMV. There’s nonetheless a discomforting quality to both and it’s hard to fully articulate this, or appreciate it until you’ve experienced it.
“Discomforting and impersonal” is probably the best case scenario if you’re a party of adults. We observed several families with small children have more issues than that. In fairness, this happens even with a PhotoPass photographer, but the Cast Members in that role have plenty of personal experience and humanity to employ every trick they know to overcome this. A bookcase has no such tricks up its sleeve.
On the way out, you scan your MagicBand at a kiosk to save the photos. I would share ours from this meet & greet to show what they looked like, but unfortunately, we still don’t have any of them. (Hence doing it twice.) It’s odd that this happened with both of our meet & greets, but we’ve now waited 48 hours and filed a claim, and still nothing. (We’ll update this if/when we get them.)
Here’s a file photo of us with the Surprise Celebration Mickey & Minnie, just so you don’t feel cheated:
Walt Disney famously once said, “You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.” That quote is famous in large part because the modern Walt Disney Company has made it famous. The line is used a lot when touting Cast Members and the Disney Difference.
I think Walt Disney World leaders would be well-advised to take this quote to heart when undertaking decisions that impact Cast Members and the guest experience. Again, people aren’t coming to Walt Disney World simply because it’s a collection of rides. As with entertainment, face to face interactions with Cast Members are one of those essential core underlying components that help define a trip.
I understand that automation is a fact of modern life, and something that will occur more, not less, going forward. With that said, there are good and bad forms of automation, and it takes thoughtful leaders who understand what defines Disney’s theme parks to realize that just because something can be automated doesn’t mean it should be automated. In some cases, automation is great. I don’t think many guests are going to come out against Mobile Ordering, even if its ultimate goal of cutting labor costs is identical to these automated cameras.
The differences lie in the how, why, and ultimate feeling it gives guests and Cast Members. It doesn’t take extensive studies with psychologists or human behavioral experts to tell you how people were going to respond to these automated cameras. As a society, pretty much our only experiences with automatic cameras are in “negative” situations, and this stands as a very obvious and in-your-face example of removing the humanity from what should be a fun and personal interaction.
Just about anyone reading this could probably predict the consensus reaction to automated cameras at meet & greets. I’m honestly a bit surprised that Walt Disney World has plowed forward with the idea, and I’m even more surprised that the face being attached to this is now Mickey Mouse. I would’ve thought that a meet with the company’s most enduring and beloved icon would’ve been safe from this–or at least one of the last in a slower rollout–but it looks like I guessed wrong.
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Your Thoughts
Have you done the Mickey & Minnie Mouse meet and greet or any of the meets with automated cameras? What did you think of the experience? Do you agree or disagree with our review? Do you think Walt Disney World should be more careful when eliminating Cast Member roles like this? Any questions we can help you answer? Hearing your feedback–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!
Yikes. You’ve confirmed every fear I have about these automatons–especially when they’re attached to key characters in my kids’ eyes, like Tink and Chewbacca. It was PhotoPass human photographers who knew when to take Magic shots, like putting Tink in the palm of a son dressed as Peter Pan or putting my toddler daughter, dressed as Alice, alone in front of the Grand Floridian Christmas tree and making it a snow globe shot. Humans caught a delightful series of that daughter dressed as Rey at 2.5yo totally cuddling up to Chewie like he’s the 7′ stuffy she’s always wanted. It was human with quick reflexes who caught my daughter breaking away from us at the front of the line to meet Daisy to sprint to her beloved duck with a giant smile on her face. I’d rather they skipped the videos that we watched only once and keep the human touch.
I wish to remain anonymous. As someone who works at WDW HR i can say the more ppl push for that $15/hr livable wage the more this is going to happen. There will be less ppl employed if those that are employed at entry level jobs insist on a $15/hr wage at a entry level job that was never meant to support a family and be a life long career.
This happened at McDonalds, walmart, etc. Ave it will continue to happen as ppl insist on $15 an hr at a job that was never created with that wage in mind. A machine will replace the worker. Its cheaper and wont protest and ask for a raise next year for doing the exact same job year after year.
Thanks for unsolicited, unfounded political opinion. Meanwhile, you fail 5o address the actual issue of this post: Photographers. Do you think of photographers as minimum-wage workers? The good photographers with whom I’ve interacted at DLR and WDW came across as professional, experienced, and highly skilled with both humans and camera. I think $15/hour is not nearly enough for their importance to my trip–and to feel like my $170 Memory Maker purchase was a wise investment.
There is nothing political about what i said.
While you’r experience is important to you the WDC looks at things from a high level global view bearing in mind being able to have a sustainable business model.
For every photographer you interact with there are usually 180 more on the clock being paid in that park alone for that one hour. Its alot.
This attitude astounds me: all jobs deserve a living wage so people can…live. Especially a skilled job like a professional photographer. People want to feel good about the company with which they spend money, to know the employees aren’t exploited. Disney earned nearly $13B last year so I’m not too worry about their ability to pay a living wage.
And now that a paid professional is out of the equation, does that mean a cheaper Memory Maker? Disney is charging a lot of money for an automated service that has no human intuition or skill. Everyone loses here except Disney.
My family had a great time at WDW: it was an expensive family vacation for us but I didn’t mind because the experience was so wonderful. A lot of that positive experience was because of the employees and the hard word they do to create & sustain the magic. I believe this work should be fairly compensated.
Don’t be ridiculous. Not all jobs are supposed to paid a “living wage” because they are entry level jobs. You aren’t meant to make a career there. And pushing up the minimum wage simply reduces the jobs available, especially to teens and young adults, or causes inflation so you get paid exactly the same in terms of real world value. Sure, you’re getting $15 a hour now. but that cup of coffee you bought for $2 now cost $4. Congratulations on the raise.
Fairly compensated is whatever the market determines should be paid for that position.
And yes, less photographers means cheaper memory maker. Except it’s not going to feel cheaper because of inflation due to your insistence on paying everyone $15.
As for the crux of the post, I think it is a mistake to move photographers from meet and greets and to other places in the park. The meet and greets are an important experience and a machine isn’t adequate. At least not as the technology currently exists.
I recently signed a petition to keep the photopass photographers. I’m bummed to see they went ahead with the booths
One of our favorite things at Disney is meeting characters. We purchase photopass BECAUSE the photographers are so good at getting kids attention, making them smile, and then capturing memories. An automated system may be able to do this for adults, but let’s be fair, Disney’s core demographic is families with kids.
Is anyone else thinking about how much WDW has removed the human experience? This is the growing concern for me. When I bring my two daughters, there will be no human interaction for them to experience. How can I tell them to get off their phones and gadgets, if there are no humans there to talk to?
I must be cursed or something. Every time the photo bots comes up I always read about how wonderful the pictures are from the human photographers are. I rarely get great photos and more than not the photos are just okay…nothing amazing or wonderful. I find their compositional skills lacking. There’s absolutely no reason to take pictures and have people’s feet cut off at the ankles or not have the image centered. My experience is that the human photographers are average at best. So, to me…the bots can’t be any worse than the human photographer.
Now….the photographers at Disneyland….those people know what they’re doing.
We just returned from Disney and as 2 older adults having our pictures taken with Mickey and Minnie for the birthday celebration was on the top of my list. Toward the end of our trip I realized we hadn’t gotten the photo, so we went back to the MK just for the photo shoot. I was disappointed that it was automated. This ment less interaction with cast members. ( I did have them take pictures with my phone just to be safe). After the photo shoot I scanned my magic band. Need less to say my photos never showed up.
This news is so very disappointing! First the Pressed Penny machines, now this! Disney is trying to suck the fun out of a Disney vacation! Our trip is in October (a first for the grandkids) and I was so looking forward to all the fun pictures!! Now I’m thinking twice about paying for Memory Maker. So sad.
Wait, wait, wait – what are you talking about with regard to the penny machines?? I’m not a fan of the amount of new-fangled ones that take cash, but they better not be getting rid of all the old ones.
What have you heard??
Yes. They’ve slowly been replacing the pressed penny machines with automated ones that you pay for and then it does everything for you, including supplying the pennies. These have been received with mixed reviews. Those who are collectors don’t like them because you can’t supply your own pure copper pennies (pre-82). Others don’t like them because it takes away from the experience of turning the crank to produce it yourself. Others enjoy the convenience of swiping a card and getting a complete set with shiny new pennies.
G8rDaver, the various updates on this site lead me to believe that the old machines will be replaced by new card-reader types. I hope I’m wrong.
https://www.presscoins.com/news/newsblog.php
Argh! This is horrible. The hand-crank ones are the best. There’s nothing exiting to a kid about pushing a button and having a coin drop out when, instead of that, there are options to turn a crank and watch as you physically SQUISH A PENNY YOURSELF. Stupid move by Disney if they’re indeed getting rid of all the oldschool penny machines. That was our family’s tradition every time we go to the parks. I’ve still got at least 100 pre-82 pennies that I sifted through countless coin rolls to find and clean for this.
It sure does seem like all the little things we like about Disney are being taken away, one by one.
This infuriates me. My 5 yo daughter is on the spectrum and, more often than not, the Photo Pass photographers do a good job with taking her photos and making them turn out well (which, if you know anything about autism, can often be difficult). Sometimes, they even take awesome pictures. An automated camera simply CANNOT do a better job in this instance. We are going again in October and I am not looking forward to seeing this. If it goes how I expect (and how can it not?!), I will certainly complain while I’m there.
We had the automatic photos with Tinkerbell and it was indeed awkward. We received our photos but there were so many just complete trash photos because it was taking photos at such strange intervals. It seemed as if it got nothing that I would’ve thought to be super cute and tons of just awkward waking by and strange positions or movements. I agree with an interactive meet and greet such as these a real live photographer is so much more personal and so much of the Disney experience.
We never bought the Disney photographer’s pix, but always asked him to take our pix with our camera. I guess I’ll be disappearing from all the pictures again if there’s nobody to take the pic with our camera.
That’s a good point. Probably another way to encourage you to buy the Memory maker.
But if its going to be all auto-pics, why waste your money?
Probably part of the reason they don’t have phoyographers anymore. Everyone just had then take free pics with their cell phone.
wouldn’t surprise me. With the increasing camera size and quality on phones, it’s probably harder to convince people to buy memory maker.
Hhmmmm…Don’t really like this idea at all! I was thinking though for any automated photos – a character “photo booth” would be a fun twist to this idea. (Of course the booth would need to be extra large 😉 I agree that the CM are just as much apart of my experience than rides, parades, etc. Maybe this is a trial run? Thanks for the info, love your blog!
Like others we ended up not getting our Tink photos last trip and decided to go back and wait in line several days later because it was a photo that was important to us. The handler saw me take photos with my phone and PhotoPass photos (hoping that, this time would link them to the app properly). We got to talking that we had come back and she mentioned that the photopass customer service might be able to find our original photos. My husband waited in that line (an hour) and it turned out my photos from my phone were better than BOTH automated experiences. I get they probably pay the photographers more than the handlers and there’s probably less training involved for handlers but we love PhotoPass and these changes make it a little harder to love.
Hey Tom and others, is there a mechanism in place where we can complain directly to Disney Parks about this and some other BS they have been putting in place for the last 12 months? We need names of people who we can email blast and/or social media blitz. I suppose in the end, the wallet has the biggest response.
I had the opportunity to have my picture automatically taken with Chubacca and it was awful. We never received the pictures! I went to the photo shop and in trying to find my pictures I was able to see pictures from other groups and they were awful! They were out of focus, people walking or standing in front of the camera, just terrible! I can see using these photo boxes for stationary posed photos, however, when there is interaction with the characters it should definitely be live photographers. Otherwise, yo7 miss all of the spontaneous shots!
Sign the petition to remove the cameras!
https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-keep-the-disney-photopass-photographers
It’s a little terrifying your photos didn’t show up. Many of us plan outfits and wait in line for those meet and greets so we can get good character photos – and it’s not like most of us live in Florida and have passes, and can go back and re-take them. I would expect those paying for Memory Maker will protest loudly if this nonsense continues. For my family, the photos taken by photopass photographers are our souvenirs from the trip, and memories to cherish. Very sad that they’ve cheapened the experience.
Kids (and parents) LOVE editing and making their own videos….
I think if you installed several 3-4 video recorders and even a couple of 3D cameras in the character meeting areas – then have those sent over to “Mickeys editing lab” (another building in the park) then the kids could go and have a fun time creating their own videos in that new editing attraction. All linked by the maxpass system already in place.
Cmon Disney get with it!
Yeah – this stuff kinda pisses me off.
Disney has done everything they can to reduce labor costs at every point lately, and it is reducing the customer experience. And as Tom indicated, the photographers impact is even greater when it comes to kids.
I seriously think these sort of photos are some of the best advertisements for coming back to WDW. They make a large percentage of computer backgrounds and are part of the reason I keep making future plans.
And if they were so determined to automate this process, they could have upgarded to video. A stationary video capturing character interactions would cost very little, even considering server costs.
Does no one at Disney watch Black Mirror?! 😉 It’s not to say the concept can’t be implemented at all, but it is an incredibly poor choice, to say the least, to automate interactive character photos. Magic shots, Castle shots, static characters like Cars, those would all be fine. But for the ones that MOVE and interact with children (especially mobile) and adults who also MOVE and interact, there also needs to be a photographer who can MOVE and capture the moments as they happen. I have to also wonder how the costumed CMs feel about it. I know they are still engaging with people, but they also have to feel a bit stressed about “ok, now I have to make sure we all face the right way and pose for that fixed camera over there”. Finally, it’s a bit worrisome that photos aren’t showing up. If there is no one to take group pics or pics with one’s personal camera, or for people who want to have the experience and leave their camera at home, memories could be lost.