It seems to be the season of patents for Disney World, as we’ve started to see more and more of them pop up in recent months.

Patents are basically a company taking ownership of something, whether it be a new piece of technology, a ride system, or something similar, so that any time it’s used in the future, it’s clear who came up with that idea. Patents don’t have to be for things that exist just yet, and in fact, most of the time, they aren’t. Or, they’re based on something under secure testing; that way, no one learns what they’re working on and files a patent before they do. In this case, Disney has filed two new patents, but they couldn’t be MORE different from each other.

The first patent was filed on October 1st, 2026, and is US 2026/0298443 A1. This is a system for generating collimated non-coherent bright light using a plurality of optical elements. That’s a lot of words, we know, but thankfully, the patent breaks it down a bit. The abstract description is that a system includes a first array of lasers, a first linear polarizer, a second array of lasers, and a phosphor assembly. The first array of lasers is configured to emit a first light, and then the first linear polarizer receives it. The second array of lasers will then emit a second light, and the phosphor assembly is positioned to receive both the first light from the first array of lasers and the second light from the second array of lasers. Together, they’ll create a non-coherent light based on the combination of both the first and second lights. All in all — basically taking the lights of two lasers and seamlessly forming them into one. 

The second patent was also filed on October 1st, 2026, and is US 2026/0300277 A1. This is a completely different type of patent, as it’s for domain-specific intelligence using natural language. If that sounds like AI, you’re correct, but instead of using the words artificial intelligence, this patent uses the words “machine learning” a lot, which is a subset of AI techniques. The abstract describes this as being techniques for generating a result for a search query — think about what you type into Google when you need the answer to a question. While artificial intelligence isn’t mentioned in the abstract of the patent, it is mentioned further in the description, stating, “With the rapid emergence of sophisticated chat-based artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) models, many users now expect to ask natural language questions and receive back coherent detailed answers.” While the public domain has a growing number of ML-based Large Language Models (LLMs) that provide this, they aren’t very successful with proprietary data or data with a real-time component.

All in all, this second patent is basically looking at getting better search results when the user is using natural language, instead of language geared specifically for a computer to understand. The patent describes using “two parameters, dividing the complex search query into one or more components and determining an intent for each of the one or more components using machine learning (ML), the ML including at least one of: a large language model (LLM) or a natural language processing (NLP) neural network.” Could this be something we see implemented in the My Disney Experience App, since Disney has already mentioned AI changes are on the way? It’s certainly possible, but there’s no way to know for sure.

We’ll be sure to keep you updated on all the latest Disney news, both inside and outside of the parks, so stay tuned to DFB.

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How do you feel about these patents? Tell us in the comments!