The Walt Disney Company has recently announced that they will be incorporating Amazon's Alexa technology into their hotel rooms at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. This new feature will allow guests to use voice commands to request amenities and services, such as additional towels or help with baggage, without having to pick up the phone.

The Echo device, which is a modified version of the standard Alexa device, will be equipped with a special "Hey Disney" voice assistant that will provide guests with personalized experiences and responses. The device will have a limited range of functionality, but it will still allow guests to control certain aspects of their stay, such as hearing the news or playing music.

One of the most significant benefits of this new technology is the potential for improved guest service. With Alexa handling requests and tasks, Disney staff will be able to respond more quickly and efficiently to guest needs, without having to take calls from guests on the phone. This could lead to a more streamlined and personalized experience for guests, who are likely to appreciate the convenience of being able to ask their assistant any questions or request any services they need.

The Echo device in Disney hotel rooms will not have smart home controls, meaning that it will not be able to control lighting, temperature, or other aspects of the room's functionality. However, this is not necessarily a limitation, as guests are likely to appreciate the simplicity and ease of use of the Alexa technology.

It's worth noting that Disney is not the first company to incorporate Alexa technology into their hotel rooms. The program "Alexa for Hospitality" has been available since 2018, and allows hotels to choose which features they want to implement with Alexa in their rooms. Legoland Resort in Florida, for example, uses Echo Dots to provide guests with personalized experiences and entertainment options.

The use of Alexa technology in Disney hotel rooms is also part of a broader trend towards the development of custom voice assistants tailored to specific brands or customer needs. Amazon has announced a new program called "Alexa Custom Assistant", which allows companies to create their own customized versions of Alexa, tailored to their brand personality and customer needs.

The potential for branded assistants like this to become more widespread is significant, particularly in areas such as automotive technology. Some automakers are already exploring the use of voice assistants in cars, which could provide drivers with a personalized experience and improved functionality behind the wheel.

However, at present, Disney's "Hey Disney" Alexa assistant remains a unique offering within the hospitality industry. While it may not have all the features or capabilities of standard Alexa devices, its focus on providing a personalized and convenient guest experience is likely to resonate with Disney fans and families alike.

Ultimately, the success of this technology will depend on how guests respond to it, and what features they request for their customized assistant. As with any new technology, there may be room for improvement or expansion over time, but for now, the integration of Alexa into Disney hotel rooms is an exciting development that could provide a fresh and innovative way for families to experience Walt Disney World.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe amazon echo is getting a new voice assistant i'm not talking about alexa it's a voice assistant made by disney to do disney things and it's coming to disney hotel rooms and if you want it for your home you have to pay extra for it it's called hey disney it's kind of wacky but i can break it down for you so disney and amazon two giant corporations that seem to get all of my money have now joined together to make a disney version of a voice assistant that can co-exist alongside alexa on echo devices so the idea is that if you download this extra disney assistant there's going to be two week phrases to summon either assistant at any time you could say either alexa or say hey disney and each have different voices and do different tasks but both would be active at the same time on one echo device this is new territory to have two assistants at once on an echo it's a first for amazon and there are different layers to how it's gonna work depending on if you're using it at home on your echo or at a disney hotel over the next year sometime in 2022 disney will be installing echo show 5 devices in its hotel rooms at the walt disney world resort in florida so all hotel guests will be able to use hey disney in their rooms and anyone with an echo at home will also be able to try it out in fact if a disney assistant isn't enough disney for you at home there is a 25 stand that puts mickey mouse ears on the echo show 5. but about that hey disney assistant voice it's not gonna come free it'll be available for purchase to download from the alexa skill store sometime next year disney isn't saying the price yet so why would you pay for a disney assistant let's get into all the things it does hey disney is a male voice it is being referred to as a guide the disney magical companion and it's got its own personality so it's not going to answer things the same way alexa might and it comes with a bunch of different entertainment there's jokes trivia sounds games and stories it's featuring characters from not just the disney animated movies but also pixar marvel and star wars so the idea here is not that you're using hey disney to do normal alexa things like turn off the lights or hey disney put toilet paper in my shopping cart now this is about having fun with entertainment and kids could have fun interacting with some disney character voices for example there are interactive games that feature mickey mouse and dory from finding nemo and olaf from frozen you could also get a personalized greeting from a disney character if you have an echo device with a screen you're going to see custom animations and little visual goodies to match the audio there will be sing-alongs bedtime stories there's also something called soundscapes now this could be neat you can listen to sounds from an environment that's inspired from a film or even from a theme park so what if you wanted to hear the sound of the ocean waves on moana's beach or maybe you want to hear the sounds of the birds chirping at snow white's forest cottage well maybe that's possible i don't know what it's going to offer but we have seen disney do similar things on disney plus there is something called xenomation you can also listen to the crackling of a u-log at arendale or you can play three hours of water sounds as dory and nemo swim around in dory's reef cam soundscapes of the disney parks have me thinking it would be pretty cool maybe a little therapeutic i mean i am a disney nerd so maybe i'm weird for thinking that that's therapeutic but hear me out what if they had the sound of the horses trotting on the cobblestone and the trolleys ringing at magic kingdom's main street with the steam train pulling up nearby or maybe just the sound of hundreds of strollers rolling by with cranky children whining about their desires for mickey headed ice cream sticks it could really transport you all right i joke but the hey disney is about giving you access to unique content to get you in the disney mood or just entertain the kids with being able to interact with characters the assistant also has a way of doing some normal tasks like you can use hey disney to set a timer or an alarm and you can ask hey disney to check the weather or the time and you probably get an answer in a disney sort of way ah but you must be wondering if disney has an amazon voice that must mean you can buy things nope disney says this does not support making purchases alexa still will be handling that stuff i've been told there are easter eggs and little quirky moments you may discover depending on what you ask hey disney so we won't know everything that's hidden until it lands next year but with how much disney content there is i'm sure there's loads of things you can ask it like hey disney how do you get to neverland or hey disney what's the recipe for ratatouille or hey disney who shot first we want answers now let's get into the hotel rooms because using hey disney at the resort has some extra magic you might say it could help with hotel stuff like you can ask it to have someone bring you more towels to your room or if you forgot your toothbrush it's going to help with that normal complimentary stuff and it's also going to help with other vacation related questions that you may need to know when you're in your room things like when's the next bus to epcot where can i get good italian food when is the 3 o'clock parade things like that as i mentioned at the top the resort rooms are getting echo show 5 devices and there are over 30 000 hotel rooms at walt disney world so that's a lot of amazon everywhere but it will be a modified version of the echo for privacy the camera and the calling features gonna be off and there's no logging in with your personal amazon account it's really just for hey disney the alexa voice does work it's gonna be in the device she's just a little more limited you can use alexa to do things like hear the news or play music and when you enter the room the smart speakers are inactive and muted you have to opt in to enable the speaker oh and here's an important point the hotel version it's not supporting purchases you can't buy stuff on it because can you imagine if you let kids get a hold of that you're going to get pizza and candy baskets delivered to your hotel room like some sort of home alone two fantasy and a nightmare for parents now disney says the echo in their hotel rooms is not going to have smart home controls so it's not for controlling the lights or turning on your tv or setting the temperature at least not now but who's to say they couldn't make future hotels more smart and control more things with your voice through all this i just keep wondering what about that star wars hotel the galactic star cruiser it's not open yet but this whole thing has me thinking about what is the next step that disney's going to take to expand voice tech to make make-believe more fun disney is not the first to put amazon echoes in hotel rooms disney is just joining in on a program that's been out since 2018 it's called alexa for hospitality and it lets hotels pick and choose what they want the assistant to control and voice recordings are not saved for guest privacy maybe you've come across it already at a marriott hotel earlier this year the legoland resort in florida put echo dots inside their pirate island hotel and guests use their voice to play a legoland themed radio station or get a pirate narrated bedtime story or pirate jokes or start an in-room treasure hunt the echo dots have a little note that says ahoy matey i'm alexa but disney of course does everything in its own way which is why it made a separate hey disney experience and you may see other companies do this soon amazon has a new program called alexa custom assistant and it lets companies make their own assistance tailored to a brand personality or special customer need but behind the scenes the voice recognition and the ai tech it's all from amazon some automakers have been looking into using this so when you get in your car you can have special voice controls that are just tailored to commands for your particular vehicle on top of the normal alexa voice commands but disney is the first to make its own assistant so maybe as the years go on we're gonna be talking to a few branded assistants on amazon devices but we're only at the real early stages here so how does this help disney now to have all this technology in the room well for the hotel at least the back end work is going to be smoother when you have alexa handling the automation of letting the team know who needs more towels and who needs baggage help compared to having someone man the phone lines for requests and now guests don't have to pick up the phone so that's also a plus for saving time disney could in the future add more features to this assistant it all just depends on how guests respond so what are your first thoughts about a disney voice assistant at home and at hotels would you use it what would you want it to do or what would you want it to sound like and if it's at home i wonder how much folks are willing to pay for it let me know in the comments and thanks for watching you know with this being a disney report i just had the urge to break out in song and sing about the news it's a whole new assistant a new fantastic voice to talk to is it alexa no it's in your echo and it answers to hey disney a whole new voice it's a man's voice a downloaded skill i never knew disney's characters appear and will sound crystal clear with jokes and greetings for you should i keep going unbelievable deals no it's not about shopping because that would be cringy unlike my singings it's not cringy at allthe amazon echo is getting a new voice assistant i'm not talking about alexa it's a voice assistant made by disney to do disney things and it's coming to disney hotel rooms and if you want it for your home you have to pay extra for it it's called hey disney it's kind of wacky but i can break it down for you so disney and amazon two giant corporations that seem to get all of my money have now joined together to make a disney version of a voice assistant that can co-exist alongside alexa on echo devices so the idea is that if you download this extra disney assistant there's going to be two week phrases to summon either assistant at any time you could say either alexa or say hey disney and each have different voices and do different tasks but both would be active at the same time on one echo device this is new territory to have two assistants at once on an echo it's a first for amazon and there are different layers to how it's gonna work depending on if you're using it at home on your echo or at a disney hotel over the next year sometime in 2022 disney will be installing echo show 5 devices in its hotel rooms at the walt disney world resort in florida so all hotel guests will be able to use hey disney in their rooms and anyone with an echo at home will also be able to try it out in fact if a disney assistant isn't enough disney for you at home there is a 25 stand that puts mickey mouse ears on the echo show 5. but about that hey disney assistant voice it's not gonna come free it'll be available for purchase to download from the alexa skill store sometime next year disney isn't saying the price yet so why would you pay for a disney assistant let's get into all the things it does hey disney is a male voice it is being referred to as a guide the disney magical companion and it's got its own personality so it's not going to answer things the same way alexa might and it comes with a bunch of different entertainment there's jokes trivia sounds games and stories it's featuring characters from not just the disney animated movies but also pixar marvel and star wars so the idea here is not that you're using hey disney to do normal alexa things like turn off the lights or hey disney put toilet paper in my shopping cart now this is about having fun with entertainment and kids could have fun interacting with some disney character voices for example there are interactive games that feature mickey mouse and dory from finding nemo and olaf from frozen you could also get a personalized greeting from a disney character if you have an echo device with a screen you're going to see custom animations and little visual goodies to match the audio there will be sing-alongs bedtime stories there's also something called soundscapes now this could be neat you can listen to sounds from an environment that's inspired from a film or even from a theme park so what if you wanted to hear the sound of the ocean waves on moana's beach or maybe you want to hear the sounds of the birds chirping at snow white's forest cottage well maybe that's possible i don't know what it's going to offer but we have seen disney do similar things on disney plus there is something called xenomation you can also listen to the crackling of a u-log at arendale or you can play three hours of water sounds as dory and nemo swim around in dory's reef cam soundscapes of the disney parks have me thinking it would be pretty cool maybe a little therapeutic i mean i am a disney nerd so maybe i'm weird for thinking that that's therapeutic but hear me out what if they had the sound of the horses trotting on the cobblestone and the trolleys ringing at magic kingdom's main street with the steam train pulling up nearby or maybe just the sound of hundreds of strollers rolling by with cranky children whining about their desires for mickey headed ice cream sticks it could really transport you all right i joke but the hey disney is about giving you access to unique content to get you in the disney mood or just entertain the kids with being able to interact with characters the assistant also has a way of doing some normal tasks like you can use hey disney to set a timer or an alarm and you can ask hey disney to check the weather or the time and you probably get an answer in a disney sort of way ah but you must be wondering if disney has an amazon voice that must mean you can buy things nope disney says this does not support making purchases alexa still will be handling that stuff i've been told there are easter eggs and little quirky moments you may discover depending on what you ask hey disney so we won't know everything that's hidden until it lands next year but with how much disney content there is i'm sure there's loads of things you can ask it like hey disney how do you get to neverland or hey disney what's the recipe for ratatouille or hey disney who shot first we want answers now let's get into the hotel rooms because using hey disney at the resort has some extra magic you might say it could help with hotel stuff like you can ask it to have someone bring you more towels to your room or if you forgot your toothbrush it's going to help with that normal complimentary stuff and it's also going to help with other vacation related questions that you may need to know when you're in your room things like when's the next bus to epcot where can i get good italian food when is the 3 o'clock parade things like that as i mentioned at the top the resort rooms are getting echo show 5 devices and there are over 30 000 hotel rooms at walt disney world so that's a lot of amazon everywhere but it will be a modified version of the echo for privacy the camera and the calling features gonna be off and there's no logging in with your personal amazon account it's really just for hey disney the alexa voice does work it's gonna be in the device she's just a little more limited you can use alexa to do things like hear the news or play music and when you enter the room the smart speakers are inactive and muted you have to opt in to enable the speaker oh and here's an important point the hotel version it's not supporting purchases you can't buy stuff on it because can you imagine if you let kids get a hold of that you're going to get pizza and candy baskets delivered to your hotel room like some sort of home alone two fantasy and a nightmare for parents now disney says the echo in their hotel rooms is not going to have smart home controls so it's not for controlling the lights or turning on your tv or setting the temperature at least not now but who's to say they couldn't make future hotels more smart and control more things with your voice through all this i just keep wondering what about that star wars hotel the galactic star cruiser it's not open yet but this whole thing has me thinking about what is the next step that disney's going to take to expand voice tech to make make-believe more fun disney is not the first to put amazon echoes in hotel rooms disney is just joining in on a program that's been out since 2018 it's called alexa for hospitality and it lets hotels pick and choose what they want the assistant to control and voice recordings are not saved for guest privacy maybe you've come across it already at a marriott hotel earlier this year the legoland resort in florida put echo dots inside their pirate island hotel and guests use their voice to play a legoland themed radio station or get a pirate narrated bedtime story or pirate jokes or start an in-room treasure hunt the echo dots have a little note that says ahoy matey i'm alexa but disney of course does everything in its own way which is why it made a separate hey disney experience and you may see other companies do this soon amazon has a new program called alexa custom assistant and it lets companies make their own assistance tailored to a brand personality or special customer need but behind the scenes the voice recognition and the ai tech it's all from amazon some automakers have been looking into using this so when you get in your car you can have special voice controls that are just tailored to commands for your particular vehicle on top of the normal alexa voice commands but disney is the first to make its own assistant so maybe as the years go on we're gonna be talking to a few branded assistants on amazon devices but we're only at the real early stages here so how does this help disney now to have all this technology in the room well for the hotel at least the back end work is going to be smoother when you have alexa handling the automation of letting the team know who needs more towels and who needs baggage help compared to having someone man the phone lines for requests and now guests don't have to pick up the phone so that's also a plus for saving time disney could in the future add more features to this assistant it all just depends on how guests respond so what are your first thoughts about a disney voice assistant at home and at hotels would you use it what would you want it to do or what would you want it to sound like and if it's at home i wonder how much folks are willing to pay for it let me know in the comments and thanks for watching you know with this being a disney report i just had the urge to break out in song and sing about the news it's a whole new assistant a new fantastic voice to talk to is it alexa no it's in your echo and it answers to hey disney a whole new voice it's a man's voice a downloaded skill i never knew disney's characters appear and will sound crystal clear with jokes and greetings for you should i keep going unbelievable deals no it's not about shopping because that would be cringy unlike my singings it's not cringy at all\n"