deix15x8 Dec 18, 2015

I attended the premiere of Made With Magic in WDW when it was added to Fantasmic! back in 2013. We weren't lucky enough to get a free pair of ears, they seemed to have predetermined who they wanted to give them to (believe it was the dining package people). We still bought our own and sitting in the back center it was incredible to see all those ears changing colors with the show. The main problem with them is that purchasing them only benefits the people not paying for it. If Disney really wants this to succeed, and it should because it is really cool, they need to look at the Magic Bands for inspiration. The design of the new Disneyland 60th hats (got one of those as well!) would work perfectly with a Magic Band model. The hats currently sell for $25 and they could continue to sell more elaborate version in the usual ear hat stores, but could also give one to every guest staying at an official Disneyland Resort hotel as an added perk. Buying in greater quantities and not trying to earn a profit the costs are probably closer to $5-10 per hat. Using the Disneyland hat as inspiration they could make them all a standard color, maybe change colors each year, and then have a patch on the hat that is unique to each hotel. That gives incentive to stay at every hotel to collect all the unique patches and gives a little more pride in showing off where your staying when walking around the parks. Then using the Magic Band model they could sell all sorts of pins, patches, covers, and even embroidering to allow people to personalize their generic hats. It would give actual benefit to the hats by having so many in use each night. It would make them truly functional as they were designed to which should boost satisfaction ratings while also incentivizing people to stay on property, and most importantly adding a new revenue stream that will likely far exceed that of the few sales they currently have. Seems like it could be a win all around and when everyone in a family is wearing their mickey ears it may even make some people more likely to want to buy the minnie bow to wear instead.