In a recent interview, Jeff Goldman spoke with Dan Mattox of the Walt Disney World Resort's Information Services department, and found there's a lot more wireless behind Mickey Mouse than you might expect.

Next time you visit Florida's Walt Disney World Resort, you may want to take a closer look at the landscaping that surrounds you: that tree just might have a wireless antenna concealed in its branches. In fact, Disney's been using wireless technology for almost 15 years.

In various locations throughout Disney's parks and resorts, a wireless network provides connectivity for everything from mobile food carts to warehouse logistics. In a recent interview, Dan Mattox, vice president of client services for Corporate Information Services at the Walt Disney World Resort, said the park's use of wireless technology dates back to 1988, when they started using 900MHz for point-of-sale systems.

"Some of our point-of-sale carts in the theme park environment are mobile, and you can't provide wired connections wherever you need them," Mattox said. "We move the food carts around based on demand, so the fundamental business need is mobility."

The focus of the technology, Mattox explains, has always been on improving the guest experience. "The guiding principle, for us, is using technology in ways that delight and surprise our guests," he said. "We're not a company that's focused on technology for technology's sake; we're focused on making a visit to our theme parks the best experience it can be."

In 1998, during an upgrade to their point-of-sale infrastructure, the company took the opportunity to switch from 900MHz to 2.4GHz. "It was a more mature technology, and we felt like that was the direction the industry was going in," Mattox said. "While we were upgrading to 100Mbps Ethernet on the wired side, to go ahead and upgrade to 802.11b was just a better long-term decision."

In many ways, wireless technology is now an integral part of the guest experience at Disney, though the guests themselves rarely have any idea that it's being used.

Eating on the Move
The primary implementation of wireless at Disney is for food carts in the theme parks, enabling credit card sales without a wired Ethernet connection. Still, Mattox cautions, even that use is relatively limited. "We use wired networking for fixed locations," he said. "The predominant use of wireless technology in the context of point of sale is for the difficult-to-reach locations, mobile carts, that sort of thing."

Before the first wireless network was implemented, Mattox recalls, everything at the food carts was handled manually, and that made credit card authorizations impossible. "From a convenience standpoint, the wireless network simply makes the guest experience better, and improves our processes internally," he said.

Special events are a perfect environment for these improvements. At Epcot's International Food & Wine Festival every October, wines from around the world are available for tasting as guests explore the pavilions. Last year, Mattox says, the Festival allowed guests to use credit cards at mobile carts for the first time. The response, from both guests and employees (called cast members), was extremely positive.

"We received a number of compliments from guests, who sent us letters commenting specifically about that service," Mattox said. "And our cast members, who had worked this event year after year, recognized the value of it as well. It made their jobs easier, and accepting credit cards also improved our sales for that event."

Making the Most of It
Mattox explains that, in the park setting, Disney works to get the maximum possible productivity out of each wireless implementation. "We seek to understand all the requirements for wireless connectivity, and then we plot on our property where that requirement is needed," he said. "If we initially put an 802.11 infrastructure in place for point of sale, it's not going to be solely for point of sale."

Other uses for that same infrastructure include guest surveys: park employees use wireless PDAs to record feedback from visitors on their experiences at the park, then send that information directly back to a central database. "For the guest surveys, we're leveraging our investment in wireless technology for point of sale, because those locations typically are close to where the surveys are taken," Mattox said.

In an environment as carefully designed as the Walt Disney World Resort, however, extra care is taken that the wireless equipment is kept out of sight. "Hiding antennas from our guests so that they simply are not aware that they are there is extremely important to us from a theming standpoint," Mattox said. "It's a significant design consideration for us."

And wireless also has applications behind the scenes. "We've been using wireless technology in our warehouses for quite some time," Mattox said. "The carts that the warehouse staff use to travel down the aisles are equipped with wireless technology, so when they pick up an item from a certain row and a certain shelf, it immediately guides them to the closest location for the next inventory pull."

Last October, Disney added another implementation of wireless technology with benefits for foreign guests. Free headset units are available at a number of park attractions, providing simultaneous translation into French, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Spanish. Infrared beacons in the ride or show trigger the headsets, ensuring that the translation is synchronized precisely with the show the guest is watching.

The Challenges Involved
A number of issues inevitably come up when planning a wireless network: the most prominent concern, of course, is security. Mattox explains that Disney has always made security a primary consideration in planning wireless implementations, but he's quick to add that there's a lot more to keep in mind than just an encrypted connection.

"Security is a matter of technology, standards, processes, and procedures," Mattox said. "It's not just about an encryption standard. We're thinking of security in an end-to-end sense, from the mobile device all the way through the wireless connection, through our wired network, back to the target application. Looking at every component in that path from a security standpoint is critical."

In a business as large as Disney, Mattox adds, frequency management has been an equally challenging issue. The groups within Disney that design and implement the park's rides and performances need to make sure that their equipment, from backstage headsets to ride controls, won't cause interference with Disney's own growing wireless network.

"We've been looking at organizational roles and responsibilities for frequency management, frequency planning, and wireless network design, in order that everything is coordinated," Mattox said. "There are other groups that have very valuable ideas, and we need to coordinate those efforts. There's obviously a lot of uses for wireless technology; this is a major asset, and it needs to be managed that way."

Looking Ahead
In the future, Mattox says, Disney will continue to look at ways to make the most of the wireless networks they put in place. "We're looking at guest use of our wireless infrastructure; we've not made any final decisions on that," he said. "This investment is in a common infrastructure supporting multiple applications, and point of sale is just the forefront of that."

Similarly, a Web portal that Disney employees use to access information about products and services is currently being assessed as a possible wireless offering for cast members within the parks. "We're looking at the possibility of putting PDA devices in the hands of our cast members, in order for them to have on-the-spot access to a wealth of information about our products and services," Mattox said.

One application that they're still ambivalent about is the idea of using wireless in the office buildings that support the parks. "We're trying to understand the business value of that," Mattox said. "Some of our conference rooms have a wired Ethernet hub; you can pull out a retractable cord, plug your PC in, and be connected to the wired network. So the question is, how is a wireless infrastructure more economical?"

Still, Mattox notes, a wireless infrastructure might make a lot of sense as PDAs become more pervasive. "In one of our major buildings here, we do have a wireless LAN implemented in support of e-mail," he said. "It's interesting to walk in and see different cast members sitting in the lobby, catching up on their e-mail while they wait for a meeting. They're made a lot more productive by having access to that."

A Growing Network
It's all but inevitable, Mattox explains, that the use of wireless technology at the Walt Disney World Resort will continue to increase. "If you look at the combination of PDA technology with cellphone technology, the density of use of those devices is going to make a more complete use of wireless infrastructure a more attractive business opportunity, and a better experience for our guests," he said.

As that increase occurs, the challenges will lie in ensuring that all paths of communication remain open within the organization. "When you're looking at applying leading edge or newer technologies, it takes a stronger partnership between business leaders and technology leaders within a company to fully understand how to leverage the opportunity," Mattox said.

Regardless of the issues ahead, Mattox says, wireless technology is now essential, not only to Disney, but to any large organization. "Whether they have a new technology department, or this is something that their network team can investigate, every large company ought to be making an investment, at a minimum, in understanding how wireless technology can be leveraged for them," he said.