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Biometrics at the gate - Disney has recently begun using finger scanning to add a level of security and protect its revenue stream

at its theme parks

by David C. Wyld, Southeastern Louisiana University

Entertainment

It’s a small world after all

Global IDentification - December 2005

You’re in Orlando, making the pilgrimage with the family to see Mickey Mouse’s place. With kids

in tow, you may not be expecting to encounter biometrics at the gate. However, before you enter any of the four Disney World theme parks, the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Animal Kingdom, or the MGM Studios, you will be asked at the turnstile to insert your ticket into a reader, and after doing so, make a “peace sign” with your index and middle fingers and inserting those fingers into a scanning area. Once the scan is taken – and all adults are required to do so - the ticket is returned to the guest. While Disney may be at the vanguard for using biometrics at the customer level, it is by no means alone in exploring how this established technology in the theme park industry. This use of biometrics has drawn some controversy and raises some practical operational issues for Disney and its guests. However, the biometric scan is part of Disney’s latest effort to ensure that its passes are not shared by family members and friends, counterfeited, or resold through venues such as eBay.

pass, once it is first presented for use, the pass is then associated with that user. On the back of every pass, Disney informs its guests that: “The owners of the Walt Disney World Resort reserve the right to revoke the Annual Pass if it is presented for admission by anyone other than the Passholder of record or if the Passholder violates park policies.”

Disney has moved over the past decade to use automatic identification in various forms to protect its passes and its revenue stream. In 1996, Disney moved away from a hard plastic laminated pass for all holders of multiday or annual passes, which contained both a bar code identifier and a photo of the passholder. In its place, the company began issuing mylar paper passes. These new passes had no photo identifier, and indeed, contained only minimal visual evidence of ownership, basically only the guest’s name and the expiration date of the pass. Beginning in June 2005, all Walt Disney World parks began using finger scanning at its park entrances to complement the security measures embedded in its mylar passes.

Surprisingly, both at ticket sales’ locations and at the actual park entry points, Disney has not seen fit to post information on exactly what is being done when the park patrons are asked to make the peace sign and insert their digits into the reading machine. Most patrons – and even some public interest groups and media covering the developments at Disney – have assumed that the company is fingerprinting park visitors and matching the passholder’s print to the pass – and perhaps even other databases, such as criminal records, sex

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Disney’s pricing approach

For a number of years now, Disney’s marketing approach has been to shrewdly push the sale of multiday and annual passes to its theme parks that comprise the Disney World complex (Disney passes are not interchangeable between its parks in Anaheim, California and Orlando, Florida). The pricing structure at Disney World is transparently meant to encourage its visitors to buy passes for longer stays at its Orlando parks. Longer stays of course mean that families visiting Disney World will have more opportunities to spend more money on food and beverages, souvenirs and trinkets, and other experiences, such as breakfast with Cinderella, while on Disney property. Perhaps even more importantly though the passes serve to “lock-in” guests to focus their Orlando visits on Disney parks, rather than spending their time – and money – at the competitor’s parks and other entertainment experiences available in this burgeoning family resort area.

As can be seen in the Table, the daily price of a Disney park visit drops significantly as longer-lasting park passes are purchased – by half at the 7-day mark and by almost two-thirds at the ten day mark. To put it quite simply, Disney makes about $200 more by selling five separate two-day tickets than by selling a single ten-day pass. So, to protect its revenue stream, Disney does not allow its annual or multiday passes to be shared or transferred. They don’t want people to buy (say) a ten-day pass, use it for two days, and then resell the pass to somebody else to use for the balance of the remaining days.

Protecting the mouse’s house - Disney pass security

While the identity of the buyer is not encoded on the individual Disney park

www.global-identification.com

Disney World’s multiday pass pricing structure

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than his/her fingerprints, the biometric is indeed suitable as an identifier for a wide variety of circumstances, where one in a thousand uniqueness is sufficient. The commercial use of finger or hand geometry began in 1975, when it was brought to Wall Street for security purposes by the investment firm of Shearson Hamill. It has been used successfully in a wide variety of settings for secure access over the ensuing years, including the safeguarding of athletes at Olympic villages, members of the Colombian National Legislature, employees of over 90% of all nuclear power plants in the U.S.A., military officers and prisoners. It has also been used to verify the identity of parents at day care centers, donors at sperm clinics, and college meal plan users at the University of Georgia. Probably the widest use of finger or hand scanning is in the corporate realm, where such scanning is used in association with employee badges, passes, and ID cards to prevent payroll fraud, a seemingly intransigent problem which has been estimated to cost employers in the U.S. alone hundreds of millions of dollars each year. For instance, Coca-Cola has used hand geometry for over a decade to prevent workers from “buddy punching” – a practice that would allow a worker to “clock-in” for an absent colleague and let them be paid erroneously for time not worked.

Practical and privacy issues

Do all Disney visitors using a pass have to undergo a finger scan? The answer is no, as the parks do provide patrons with the little-advertised option of entering the park by simply presenting a photo-ID to Disney customer service personnel at the gate. However, a significant downside to opt-ing out of the finger scanning process is that the Passholder will not be able to use Disney’s free, automated FastPass system at the most popular attractions. The FastPass

Global IDentification - December 2005

The use of biometrics means that only genuine passholders can enter Disney World

offender registries, and terror watch lists. While upholding that myth may indeed be beneficial in some regards to combat pass misuse and even crime prevention, Disney is absolutely not taking fingerprints – or even matching biometric data with the name of the passholder. Rather, the company is employing the proven - but less controversial and precise - biometric identification method known as finger geometry - a technology the entertainment giant explored for a decade before finally choosing to employ it in 2005.

Finger geometry

Finger – or hand – geometry has been aptly described as “the ‘granddaddy’ of all biometric technology devices.” According to researchers at Western Carolina University, finger geometry is essentially based on the fact that virtually every individual’s hand is shaped differently than another individual’s hand, and over the course of time, the shape of the person’s hand does not significantly change. Operationally, finger or hand scanning systems capture the physical, geometric characteristics of an individual’s hand (in Disney’s case, the length, girth, and other physical identifiers of the first two fingers on their right hand). The process of capturing an individual’s hand measurements can be accomplished in less than a second. From these measurements, a profile or “template” is constructed which will be used to compare against subsequent hand readings by the user. One of the principal advantages of the use of finger geometry is the fact that the information compiled to create this biometric identifier has one of the smallest reference templates in the biometric field, generally under ten bytes.

In a recent study, the National Academies of Science found that while a person’s finger geometry is indeed far less distinctive

system enables Passholders to pre-reserve, in effect, space on a ride or at a show, blocking out a window of time later that same day when the guest can return and bypass the normal standby waiting line. This system enables Disney to better manage its flow of guests through the various popular park attractions and facilitates guests to enjoy more attractions, while spending less time waiting in lines. Thus, by choosing not to undergo a finger scan, a park guest will likely not be able to enjoy as many rides or see as many shows that are the most popu-lar attractions with the highest demand.

There are practical issues that also pose impediments to Disney’s use of finger geometry, not the least of which is what has been termed “the missing body part conundrum” for finger scanning by Professor James Wayman of San Jose State University. According to this noted biometrics expert, “with any (finger-based) device, some portion of the population - 1 to 3 percent - doesn’t have that biometric.” This led one blogger to criticize Disney’s use of finger geometry on the basis of “what do they do with visitors who are missing a hand or two?” Dr. Wayman also stated that there can be significant variability even in a single person’s finger geometry, which can be caused by swelling from various medical conditions, dehydration, or even the positioning of rings on the fingers.

Disney’s move to finger scanning has generated some degree of controversy in the six months since its implementation. Since Disney defines an “adult” park guest as being 10 or older, many minors are being subjected to finger scanning. Leading privacy groups have also attacked Disney’s move. The American Civil Liberties Union recently called the addition of biometric technology “a step in the wrong direction.” EPIC – the Electronic Privacy Information Center – recently issued a blistering attack on Disney for its use of finger scanning. It

called the practice a “a gross violation of privacy rights,” as there is little notice given to consumers as to why their biometric information is being collected, how it will be used, and the protection afforded to the data. EPIC also criticized Disney’s move based on the legal principle known as “the proportionality test,” which can be encapsulized as whether the amount and type of information being collected equals the level of security being sought. To date however, there have been no lawsuits filed against Disney over its use of finger scanning technology.

On the other hand, some industry observers have seen fit to call upon Disney to find creative ways to leverage the technology - and the data it collects – beyond gate security, in order to provide better in-park customer experiences for its guests.

Conclusion

Clearly, the wave of the future may indeed be the “peace sign,” as Disney is by no means alone in the theme park industry in pursuing this auto ID technology. Indeed, several of the company’s principal competitors are looking to implement similar pass protection technology to their valuable tickets and passes. These include Universal Orlando, SeaWorld Adventure Parks and Paramount Theme Parks.

Thus, unless civil liberties groups in the United States are successful in their efforts to derail the technology, biometrics will soon be the common way of identifying all park guests to match the pass or ticket to the person holding it. By doing so, the companies can protect their pricing strategies and competitive positions, as well as further protecting both their companies and their passholders from the threat of counterfeiting or inappropriate use. “Mickey Mouse technology?” Hardly!

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Disney patrons that choose not to provide their biometric at the gates are penalized by not being able to use the FastPass system, which allows passholders to reserve a place on rides and spend less time queueing