PAL Mickey

Gizmata · Post by **Gizmata** » Jun Fri 03, 2005 5:36 pm

Oh well. I half considered getting one when i was at WDW 2 years ago, but didn't know enough about it to drop the cash.

Maybe they will bring it here as I don't see myself traveling back there for a while.

Manncab · Post by **Manncab** » Jun Mon 06, 2005 6:59 pm

kgmadorin wrote:
js3901 wrote:
Gizmata wrote:Pal Mickey is only for WDW right?
as far as I've seen, it is WDW only (at least at this time). maybe someone on the west coast can confirm.
I'm almost postitive that's correct. I didn't see any Pal Mickey's for sale at Disneyland or CA last week.

mickey works only in the walt disney world resort, in all 4 parks and inside most of the hotels, the wifi feature enables for it work for almost a mile outside of the parks ( he has activated to let me know the fireworks show is starting and the park is closing for the night)

he comes in the english and spanish formats and german and japanese due out soon

Post by **subsonic** » Jun Tue 07, 2005 11:40 am

I like the short samples stuck into the mix.

I'm under the impressions that the Pal Mickey talks about aspects of the park and randomly puts in jokes.

I only have the Jokes. If there's dialogue that Pal Mickey says from the parks, I would love to get those.

Manncab · Post by **Manncab** » Jun Tue 07, 2005 4:03 pm

subsonic wrote:I like the short samples stuck into the mix.

I'm under the impressions that the Pal Mickey talks about aspects of the park and randomly puts in jokes.

I only have the Jokes. If there's dialogue that Pal Mickey says from the parks, I would love to get those.

oh yea he talks on the approach to the rides and on the rides as well and when you exit a ride he has comment of how the ride was for him

as a example ....the haunted mansion

he says this place sure looks spooky i wonder if any g-g-ghost live here

and on the ride at the ballroom scene he says I see ghost im scared and vibrites like crazy

and when you leave he says at random either i hope no ghotst follow us home pal or that was reallys scary huh pal

the next time i go to the parks i will take my ipod with voice recorder addon with me so i can record his comments

also a side note he all so says things about queline waittimes and maybe we should go over to another ride cuz their is no wait at all and when a parade or firework show is getting ready to start

one of these days im gonna take mine to a computer quroo and have hime explain to me how he knows where he is at and how he can be upgraded when you enter a park by just having him face forward at the turnstiles ( his nose is made of a clear plastic with a tv remote type diodes inside )

Club33Hopeful · Post by **Club33Hopeful** » Jun Tue 07, 2005 4:14 pm

He works via infrared technology. Just like most remote controls. They have little transmitters around the park that transmit information. That is how he knows where he is. You are correct about the nose. That is where he receives the signals. It is the same concept as beaming information between laptops, cell phones, and PDAs.

Here is a MousePlanet review that explains some of the technology, and it also has a picure of one of the transmitters.

http://www.mouseplanet.com/wdwupdate/wdw030617avp.htm

Post by **subsonic** » Jun Wed 08, 2005 10:30 am

I'm surprised it's infrared, I would think it's radio. Infrared can be blocked, what if you put it in your bag?

Gizmata · Post by **Gizmata** » Jun Wed 08, 2005 1:20 pm

Infrared is the smart way to do it overall. No FCC rules about what frequency you can use, not to mention if you have 300? transmitters spread around how low power they would have to be to not overpower each other, or how many frequencies you would have to have to support all of it.

The added benefit is the transmitters can be placed in close proximity as long as you cant see both (or the reflections). If the elevator for HM had absorbant walls you might even be able to have mickey react to all 4 pictures though this wouldn't be pratical most likely. Maybe you could have opposite sides of the room though.

If you put Mickey away it effectively turns it off except for the timed events.

Overall they were really smart doing it this way. Each transmitter can blast out a decent amount of Infrared light which helps eliminate interference. Since Mickey doesn't have to talk back each transmitter can just blast its information hoping something is out there to receive it. Likely each one is just plugged into a wall power, and has a set of dip switches to select the exact location since with 10 switches you can select up to 1024 locations. Thus changing out a "broken" location would be fairly hassle free since the output is just based upon the switches and each identical unit is already fully programmed to handle any dedicated location. And since LED's don't typically burn out there is little worry that a location will randomly fail. Likely the transformer powering the transmitter box will fail, a spider/bird/... will block the transmission instead.

The entry transmitters have to be connected to a brain somehow as they have to know changing information. These could be over a LAN as each special unit could be setup to DHCP and talk to a host IP to get the information.

Likely there are 3-4 types of units, with most being the basic dumb unit that just blasts location information.

Now I wish I had gotten one when I was at WDW, or had been involved in such a cool project.

Manncab · Post by **Manncab** » Jun Thu 09, 2005 1:46 pm

Thank you for explaining how it works and made simple to understand to boot for all of us who dont understand all that techno bable

just want to say Thank You

kgmadorin · Post by **kgmadorin** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 9:14 am

I remember when they first installed the infrared network and began testing (mid 2002, I believe) I was working at MO-7, which is the administrative area for Magic Kingdom operations. From what I understood, the installation was rather simple, and the park execs were very happy with the results. The first devices I recall them using that communicated with the network were similar to blackberry's, but they could only receive information. These handheld devices would receive queue length updates, attraction downtimes, show information, etc., so it makes sense that the Pal Mickey's also utilize that information.

Club33Hopeful · Post by **Club33Hopeful** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 10:20 am

That just gave me an idea, if only I lived closer to WDW. Some enterprising young individual could write a little java app for cell phones that could receive this information and display it on the cell phone...

Gizmata · Post by **Gizmata** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 11:34 am

I somewhat doubt that.

My guess is that 99% of what Mickey says is already saved inside him when you buy him. The 1% are future uploads and schedule information.

Walking up to the haunted mansion the broadcast doesn't likely send out: "Ooohh.. I am so scared", It sends out a location ID that Mickey translates into the action.

So unless you had access to the translation table it won't work.

Yes they could be broadcasting it all, but its unlikely because of the amount of data to send the full audio file every time, with error correction/recovery since you won't always have a clear view of the transmitter.

This is why I believe its just a location ID. It would only take a few bytes of data to accomplish the same task. It also would prevent some hacker from changing what mickey says to anything they would want him to say.

Basically they have a lock on it. Yes a very enterprising person could reverse engineer a mickey and move the audio on to another platform, but you are talking a lot of work when you can just buy the cute Mickey instead.

Club33Hopeful · Post by **Club33Hopeful** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 11:39 am

I wasn't talking about all of the jokes and the pre-canned speech. I was refereing to the schedule information/queue times. As mentioned in a previous post, they had devices similar to blackberrys with this information. It would be cool to have that available on your cell phone or PDA.

Gizmata · Post by **Gizmata** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 11:57 am

My mistake. Yes I think that would be possible. It all depends on how they are sending it out, and if its some special format or not.

Unless you can import it into a scheduler or such to alert you at certain times I don't see a huge benefit to it over the slip of paper they give you when you go in anyways. Just my opinion though.

Post by **js3901** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 12:08 pm

I think that may work if they do some kind of wide-spread text message alert. I know that Disney (at least interactive - games/ringtones/wallpapers) has a partnership with Verizon wireless, and as I work for VZW, I know that those types of text messages can be sent out en masse. To get them to the people within the parks, you just give the telephone number at hotel check-in, and have it removed at check-out. It's actually something that should be quite easy to implement.

Of course, when I go to the parks, I want to get away from the world, sos I don't want to be carrying my cell phone around with me. Plus, I don't think it wise to take a cell phone on Splash Mountain or any of the other water-based rides as people have a tendency of dropping such things or getting them wet. Then they all come crying to me (over the phone) about replacing it...

Club33Hopeful · Post by **Club33Hopeful** » Jun Tue 14, 2005 12:55 pm

Well, I carry my cell phone out of necessity. I almost never use it though while in the park. However, I am always loosing those paper schedules. Plus, they already send out ride queue information over the IR, otherwise PAL Mickey would not be able to tell you that such and such has a short wait time right now. In addition, sometimes they add shows or have smaller impromptu things that are not on the printed schedule.