While visiting Magic Kingdom today, we noticed that Disney PhotoPass watermarks have been added to the on-ride photos that can be seen along the walls at attraction exits to stop “photo theft” by guests.
The watermarks can be seen at the on-ride photo walls lining select attraction exits, such as seen above at Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin. These watermarks would show on guests photos when viewed in the app or online, so it may look familiar.
This also follows on the heels of MagicMobile releasing for Apple devices, and soon for Android devices. This My Disney Experience in-app feature will allow guests to receive their on-ride photos directly to their mobile devices via Bluetooth, not requiring guests to tap their MagicBands to add the photos to their account.
In the above photo of the same wall from last summer, the on-ride Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger Spin photos do not contain any watermarks.
Splash Mountain also has new watermarks at its on-ride photos station at the attraction’s exit.
This action has been taken to stop guests from “stealing” on-ride photos as it was a common practice for guests to take pictures via cellphone of the previously unwatermarked photographs. Combined with PhotoPass photographers now allowing mask-less outdoor photos, this seems to be a big push for guests visiting Walt Disney World to purchase Memory Maker.
Keep reading WDWNT for updates on this story.
That does look like a bug in the article image, as “Touch below” is shown twice.
Geez, can Disney get any worse? Seriously? If people want to take a photo of a faced screen on their phone that ends up being a faded not high quality picture, which is what the practice results in, who cares?
Deuteronomy 24:19 –
““When you gather your crops and fail to bring in some of the grain that you have cut, do not go back for it; it is to be left for the foreigners, orphans, and widows, so that the LORD your God will bless you in everything you do.”
Wait… or was that Princess Leia…
“The more you tighten your grip the more [cash] will slip through your fingers.
They’ve been doing this at Hollywood too for a bit. Tower of terror does it, so does I think rocking roller coaster.
I’m genuinely surprised that it took this long for them to do this.
It’s almost laughable that Disney spent research and money on this. I doubt there will be any bump at all in memory maker sales. People who photograph these areas are obviously not interested in a quality photo and will probably continue taking pictures with the water marks. It’s not about the quality to them.
Also, it’s kind of dumb to call it theft since it’s completely legal to photograph these locations, as was done in this article. They may not like it, but it’s not theft. Back when people went online and grabbed the high resolution photos for free, that could be argued as theft. Taking a photo of a screen at the exit of the ride is something guests are allowed to do and was done in the above photos.
This just makes Disney look desperate, IMO, since Memory Maker is clearly not meeting its numbers. This isn’t going to solve that, and if anything, cost the company money. They could spend money better by improving the guest experience, IMO.
We always get memory maker so we can have plenty of pictures of the whole family together. But the way Disney has been lately, it wouldnt surprise me if they do this to try to force memory maker on more people only to turn around and increase the price of memory maker. I hope not though. It is expensive enough as is.
Wow .. way to worry about the big stuff Disney… How about u worry about the long wait times … Bring back fastpass so at least we can have a few rides without an hour wait …