If you’ve ever tapped a MagicBand to walk into the parks, open your hotel room door, or grab a Mickey Premium Bar without digging for your wallet, you’ve experienced the work of one inventor in particular.

Now, John Padgett is launching a new venture called Spaxial, an AI-powered platform designed to make visits to theme parks, cruise ships, resorts, casinos, and stadiums feel more personal. Padgett says the goal is to give front-line employees helpful cues so they can spend more time with guests, not to replace them. So what does that mean for your next vacation?

Now, keep in mind that Padgett’s new tech, Spaxial, isn’t a Disney product, and as of now, there’s no reason to believe that it would be coming to Disney Parks anytime soon. Still, it’s a new type of technology that could eventually be rolled out in theme parks, according to Forbes.

Padgett spent 18 years at Disney, eventually becoming the “head of game-changer experience development”. His contributions include FastPass+ (the predecessor to today’s Lightning Lanes), Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, and the Be Our Guest restaurant — in addition to the development of MagicBands.

Later, he developed Carnival’s Ocean Medallion, another piece of wearable tech, and then started working on a new platform that can be applied to everything from cruise lines to casinos, theme parks, and stadiums — Spaxial.

The sensors and locators in this new tech form what is known as an Internet of Things (IoT) — a network of systems that enables them to collect and exchange data. AI is integrated into the platform that manages the data and enables staff to improve guest experiences based on their movements, interactions, and preferences. According to Forbes, this has never been done before in experiential environments, and Spaxial is the world’s first experiential AI platform.

“The leisure travel and entertainment industry is infusing AI into the call centers and the back office, and that certainly helps with cost efficiencies, but true topline value is created in front of the guest via better service delivery. That’s where Spaxial is focused,” says Padgett.

Spaxial eliminates barriers in similar technology through a patent-pending combo of secure identity, precision location services, and proprietary AI models. The Experiential AI Platform is designed to work on top of an operator’s existing systems, which would give employees the context they need in front of a guest.

Hospitality has historically relied on separate systems for reservations, guest apps, team apps, data, and payments, but Spaxial would bring all of this together in one unified platform that not only recognizes the guest, but understands the context and can orchestrate a response.

The platform is being developed at Padgett’s SpaxialWorks, and while they haven’t revealed which companies it’s targeting, reports indicate that an obvious candidate is Miral, the government-funded operator of theme parks on Yas Island in Abu Dhabi. Miral is investing heavily in AI, so it’s possible we could see this tech come to theme parks over there — which could eventually include Disney’s Abu Dhabi theme park.

We’ll be on the lookout for even more tech updates that could impact your future theme park trips. In the meantime, make sure you stay tuned to the Disney Food Blog for the latest Disney news — and check out our video below on 20 things we ALWAYS do on every Disney World trip!

Do you wear MagicBands at Disney World? Let us know in the comments below.