Something NEW has popped up at Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort!
All-Star Sports Resort
Disney is always looking for ways to innovate and bring the latest technology to the parks and hotels, and now it looks like they’ve done just that. It’s about to be a whole lot easier to get your food at Disney World food courts. At least, we think it might be!
At Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort, something NEW has popped up in the End Zone Food Court — the hotel’s only eatery. There are now self-checkout stations powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to help folks pay for their food a bit faster. That’s the idea, anyway. We tested the new system out and it didn’t appear to be working entirely as planned just yet.
NEW self-checkout system
We decided to grab a kids’ Mickey Waffle meal to test things out, and when the system tried to scan our items — the meal rang up as a pulled pork sandwich. Luckily, there are Cast Members stationed nearby to assist and they were easily able to fix the issue in the system, but it still was a bit of a hiccup.
Scanning our meal
It was relatively easy to use aside from the mixup, however. We just placed our items spaced out on the tray beneath the scanner, and once the Cast Member fixed the wrong item issue we were able to confirm our items and price, pay, and we were all good to go! We could see this new system saving a ton of time and potential headaches when it comes to grabbing your food quickly from hotel food courts.
A Cast Member had to fix our order
When we spoke to a Cast Member about it, they informed us that the new system is being tested on a “30-day rollout” and if the testing is successful, the self-checkouts would be added to other resorts. But, if the system can’t get the hang of things — it will most likely disappear altogether.
For now, Disney is just referring to the new registers as self-checkouts without any real specific name for them.
Paid and good to go!
While this new system is clearly still in its testing phase, if it does end up getting the hang of things it could save folks quite a bit of time in those food court lines during busy meals. We’ll continue to keep an eye on it and let you know if it pops up at any other Disney World hotels!
In the meantime, make sure you stay tuned to the Disney Food Blog for the latest news and updates from Disney World.
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What do you think of this new addition? Tell us in the comments.
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I think self-checkout is a great idea, and I realize that they are probably trying to keep it paperless, but IMO they should give people ‘receipts’ to scan at the checkout as well. With AI IDing the food alone, I think this is a potential source for a huge amout of shrink, either because people deliberately take steps to under pay, or because the machine makes a mistake and no one realizes it. I’m sure Disney has anticipated that possibility to an extent, and anyone who runs a company will tell you that personnel cost more than anything else, so maybe they think that the forecastable shrink is more than offset by personnel savings. Disney also does undoubtedly lose sales by people who see the lines at the food courts and decide not to buy there (we have). Receipts to scan to pay would still be subject to the guest scanning them, but as a double check with the weight and the AI, it could help to ensure that shrink is less, and Disney would have a decent way to track real-time what isn’t getting paid for (by revieweing receipts that were issued but not cashed out).
Well that’s pretty cool!
How is this check out going to stop 1 person from scanning their meal and leaving with out paying and leaving the next customer to pay for their neal.
And what if your paying for multiple meals in your group. Are you going to have to pile everything on 1 tray and will there be enough space to slide your trays on the payment counter.
When ist launched this is going to slow down checkout. Only a few retail places use this method but on a smaller scale.
People are dummies when it comes to new tech change.
I would have thought that Disney, on the cutting edge of everything would have had this technology in place and be leading the industry. We have it at the grocery store, it’s called self service cashier. Now of they could link your identity, name recognition, AI, iris identification to your credit card or directly to your bank account, that would be something, but I am sure it is coming. This self checkout feature for food is easily accomplished, and if Disney is just getting to it, that is sad.