At August’s 2026 D23 Ultimate Fan Event, Disney released a slew of information on multiple in-progress and planned theme park projects, including Piston Peak, Monstropolis, Tropical Americas, Villains Land, Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, the return of Dreamfinder to EPCOT, and more.

However, during the same period, Disney also filed some patents that may point to future projects beyond even everything that’s under construction now!

A New Dark Ride Illusion?

In one of the latest patents Disney filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the company touted technology that would create the illusion of a ride vehicle rising or falling. The ride vehicle stays on its flat track, but elements in the ride’s set design around it are used to create the illusion. The idea is to use walls and set elements that are angled, so it SEEMS like a ride is rising or falling, making it feel like the ride vehicle is going up or down. Conceptually, it’s an evolution of an illusion used in Universal’s Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man attraction. Interestingly, the concept art associated with the patent looks like it belongs with the upcoming Encanto attraction, though there are several Disney projects in the pipeline that seem like they would use this technology.

A Personalized Ride Experience

Another new patent filed by the Walt Disney Company will seemingly help guests tailor rides based on their preferences. The patent, titled “Personalized Notification of Attractions Including User Preferences or Aversions,” was granted on August 20th, 2026. The system features a processor and memory that store software and a user’s preferences, which would include at least one of the user’s likes or dislikes.

The system’s processors would run software to receive data about an attraction, compare it with user preferences, and determine if the experience matches the user’s likes or dislikes. Guests would be able to input their preferences in the My Disney Experience app. Disney recommends noting specific ride features like dark or scary scenes, flashing lights, sharp turns and drops, tight spaces, blood and gore, screams, profanity, smells, water effects, snakes and spiders, vibrations, and sound levels in this new system. Also considered are speed, acceleration, a vehicle’s roll, pitch, or yaw, and quick drops and rises.

The system would alert guests via visual, audio, or haptic alerts on devices such as phones or smartwatches when a ride matches their preferences or aversions. The alerts could even occur during the ride, warning people of an upcoming potential trigger. In addition, the patent also includes the ability to assign intensity ratings on a scale of one to ten and even includes the ability to make real-time adjustments to an attraction, such as removing problematic elements or highlighting preferred features.

Advanced Character Interaction

Finally, Disney also applied for a patent that describes new Animatronics that guests could actually have conversations with! For example, guests would be able to ask a character a question, and that Animatronic would pull from a memory bank to respond, all while staying in character.

In the past, conversations with characters of this type have been pre-scripted, and responses have been available in a dialogue tree format. This new technology would allow for a more natural flow of conversation, bringing the characters to life in a new way. The Animatronics would combine the use of a “memory bank” for the character and large language models (LLMs) to create conversations that make sense within the worlds Disney has built, while feeling natural to the guest speaking with the character.

Even as Disney is in the midst of several massive construction projects, the company is still filing patents for new and ever-advancing technology that gives a glimpse into the potential future of Disney Imagineering. Stay tuned to DFB for more on Disney’s future!