Alton Towers: Your Day RFID video capture system

The UK theme park, Alton Towers has a premium serviced called Your Day www.yourday.biz that allows visitors to purchase an RFID wrist band transmitter  that is used to identify themselves throughout the park. When a visitor joins a ride an RFID antennae which reads their wrist band signal captures their unique identifier communicating with a database. While visitors are on the ride strategically mounted video cameras capture slow motion footage at the precise time they pass by.

Here is an example of the clips captured. They integrate stock footage clips with unique visitor clips to create a professional feeling peice. Each of the visitor digital clips are approximately 10 seconds in length and are stored on a central server. Upon exiting, visitors have a choice of take away options as their souvenir.

 I believe computer controlled digitally captured stills and video are going to increase in popularity within various entertainment and cultural venues. Since digital video and still cameras are integrated into our cell phones and hence carried with us everyday people are getting addicted to taking a tremendous amount of pictures and video. Many of these are of themselves and friends, taken to memorialize daily events and used to post on Facebook and alike. You need a digital pic to “start the conversation” through social networking site.

To provide this service at this scale is not cheap (e.g. 4.5 miles of cable, 130 computers, 36 cameras, 100 RFID antennas). I don’t believe many venues can afford such an investment. I suggest integrating RFIDs into the experience for more than one purpose to help spread out the value proposition and expense. Using them to record a visitor’s bookmarked content within their exploration and learning or creating a personalized set of content as a “lens” for each visitor based on their demographics and interests are all possible through the use of RFIDs. Incorporating these elements into the functionality of an RFID system provides visitors immediate benefits to improve their experience the day of as well as a memento after they have left.

posted by eric at 2:49 PM