Back in November 2018, we broke the news that Disney would be replacing Disney PhotoPass photographers with automated PhotoPass cameras. In early 2019, Disney debuted the automated PhotoPass camera at the Tinker Bell meet and greet in Magic Kingdom. The results weren’t great. The angles were odd, there was no ability to capture a candid moment, and the social media backlash was swift. While the automated PhotoPass cameras weren’t a hit in pre-pandemic times, could it be time to bring them back?
As you might be aware, Disney is continuing their phased reopening with something called character “sightings”. Essentially, characters are back in their meet and greet spaces, but distanced and out of reach of guests. It’s a stopgap measure (hopefully), but is now the perfect time to bring back automated PhotoPass cameras?
With the return of the Olaf “sighting” today, it struck us that these automated PhotoPass cameras could be put to good use. Right now, at the vast majority of meet and greets, guests are instructed to use their own phones for a selfie moment. There are no PhotoPass photographers. The best solution would be to bring PhotoPass photographers to the “sightings”, but Disney has refused so far. Instead, we think that the automated PhotoPass cameras should be put to use. Here’s a look at the camera that is not in use at the Olaf sighting.
The resulting photo will certainly lack the quality that a real PhotoPass photographer would provide, but we saw more than a few families simply walk past Olaf when they were told that there wouldn’t be a PhotoPass photo. Other families were happy to snap a selfie.
As always, keep checking back with us here at BlogMickey.com as we continue to bring you the latest news, photos, and info from around the Disney Parks!
I think it would be difficult for the boxes to be able to get a decent picture. The guests are too close while the character is too far. How is the camera supposed to decide what to focus on? The original settings would probably get the character in focus but leave the guests fuzzy and out of focus.