• Disney's new AI guide could make navigating Disneyland easier
• Works with Ray-Ban Metas, AirPods, and your iPhone
• Coming soon in beta for Magic Key holders through Imagineering Labs

When you're at a Disney park, or really any theme park, the idea is to be immersed in the experience, right? But there's also no sugarcoating the fact that a phone, especially one equipped with the Disneyland app, My Disney Experience for Walt Disney World, or any other park app, is pretty essential for planning and making the most of your day.

The app is essentially the brain of your visit, letting you check wait times for attractions, meet-and-greets, and other experiences, but also helping you find your way to food — I mean, we're all after a corn dog or a churro, right? — other services, and entertainment. But as we've heard from Disney Parks leaders in the past, constantly looking down at your phone can break the immersion.

Now, we're getting a glimpse at a potential alternative, and it's coming soon for a select group of Disneyland guests through a new Disney Imagineering app that's set to offer a rare peek behind the curtain.

Dubbed Imagineering Labs, the opt-in experience won't replace the main Disneyland app, but it will give guests the chance to try select experiences before they're fully developed or even guaranteed to launch. It's a pretty exciting approach, especially since feedback from guests could help shape what Imagineers ultimately bring to life.

The first experiment is an augmented reality Star Wars adventure called Secrets of the Spire, which is decidedly entertainment-focused and uses your iPhone's camera to overlay digital elements onto the environment and trigger physical reactions throughout Galaxy's Edge.

But the Disneyland Enchanted Guide is a bit more utility-focused, and it's seriously piquing my interest. It's an AI-powered assistant that lets you ask questions in natural language, like, 'Where's the nearest Dole Whip?' 'How long is the wait for Rise of the Resistance right now?' or whether you should come back later if the line is too long. It's also multimodal, meaning you can point your phone's camera at something in the park and ask about it.

Asa Kalama, Vice President and Executive Creative Director at Walt Disney Imagineering, described the thinking behind it to TechRadar: “Some of us are lucky enough to have that, you know, big Disney Parks fan as a friend, and there's no better park-going adventure than alongside them. They know all the tips, they know all the tricks, they can help you navigate your day. Well, what if we were able to provide that to every single guest that came to the park?”

And that's really the idea here. Rather than digging through menus or bouncing between different parts of an app, you can simply ask the Enchanted Guide and get an answer.

The interface is pretty neat, too. Rather than a traditional chatbot screen, the Enchanted Guide puts a familiar Disneyland map front and center, complete with attraction wait times and a glowing Mickey-shaped button at the bottom for asking questions. There are also buttons to type or use your camera, and the Guide can take into account your location, plans, and details you choose to share to make its recommendations more useful throughout the day.

It's using a combination of AI models to power the intelligence behind the Enchanted Guide, but there's been a whole host of customizations to make it feel uniquely Disney. Kalama explained that the team has worked to ensure the information comes from Disney's trusted sources, including real-time park information, and is delivered in a way that feels like the Disney voice, both literally and figuratively. From the pre-recorded preview I saw, it almost feels like chatting with a Cast Member you might stop on Main Street.

It gets even more interesting, though, when you can use another device to interact with it.

You might recall that at Meta Connect 2025, Disney Imagineering showed off an early tease of an experience at Disneyland using Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, letting guests look at their surroundings, ask questions, and hear responses through the glasses. And while that was just an early glimpse, the Disneyland Enchanted Guide is bringing that idea to life, letting you interact with Disney's new AI assistant without constantly reaching for your phone.

Essentially, you can connect the Disneyland Enchanted Guide within the Imagineering Labs app to compatible Meta smart glasses using Meta's Wearables Device Access Toolkit. Once that's enabled and you're rocking the shades, you can chat with the Guide through the glasses without necessarily needing to pull out your connected phone.

The Enchanted Guide can make use of the glasses' microphones, speakers, and cameras. That means you could look at an attraction, ask about it, and get real-time information without even knowing its name.

Speaking with TechRadar, Chris Barbour, Director, Content & Ecosystem, Meta, explained that the partnership with Disney Imagineering started with a pretty simple idea: “The best of keep me immersed, keep me not having to look down at my phone, but also give me all the advantages of the technology being present for me.”

As Chris explained, one of his favorite parts is “being able to look at an attraction and get real-time information about that,” with the Guide using what the camera sees to understand what you're asking about.

On paper, and without having tested it yet, that could be incredibly handy within the park.

For instance, Asa shared a few examples, from checking the current wait time for an attraction to something a little more useful, like getting an alert when that wait drops below a certain threshold.

“Can you let me know when Dumbo the Flying Elephant has a wait time of under 10 minutes?”

The Enchanted Guide could then deliver a notification when that condition is met, leaving you free to enjoy other parts of the park in the meantime.

Imagine if it could also remind you when your next Lightning Lane reservation is coming up or if a slot opens for an attraction you want to experience. That's the kind of functionality I'd love to see. While Asa didn't confirm either capability, he did note that some features, including actually making Lightning Lane reservations, still live within the core Disneyland app. For now, the Enchanted Guide can explain how Lightning Lanes work, but will send you over to the main app when it's time to book one.

“There are certain capabilities that are on our roadmap that aren't yet currently implemented,” Kalama explained.

And while the Meta Ray-Ban integration is especially interesting, you don't necessarily need smart glasses to go hands-free with the Enchanted Guide. Bluetooth earbuds, including Apple's AirPods, will also work, letting you keep your iPhone tucked away while exploring Disneyland. AirPods won't support multi-modal on their own, as they don't have cameras ... yet.

Of course, wearing camera-equipped smart glasses in the parks could raise some privacy concerns. Meta Ray-Ban glasses have a built-in capture LED that indicates when the camera is in use, but that might not be immediately obvious to everyone around you. Guests are already accustomed to seeing phones and earbuds throughout the parks, so just be prepared for some looks.

There will even be a dedicated wake word for the Enchanted Guide, though it's still being finalized ahead of launch. That means you won't need to pull out your phone and tap the Mickey-shaped microphone button every time you want to ask a question. I'm especially curious to see what Disney lands on for the wake word.

And given that this is an AI assistant capable of understanding images and voice prompts, privacy is another important consideration. Both prompts and images are processed and then deleted, and the Enchanted Guide doesn't support video. So while it can use a camera to understand what you're looking at, it isn't designed to continuously analyze a live video feed.

Of course, this is still an experiment, and there's plenty we don't know about how well it will all work. I'm especially curious to see how quickly the Enchanted Guide responds, how accurately it understands what's happening around you, and whether it really can make navigating Disneyland easier.

And we'll have to wait a little longer to find out.

The Disneyland Enchanted Guide is still listed as coming soon within Imagineering Labs, and when it does launch, it'll initially be limited to Disneyland Magic Key holders. The experience will live within the Imagineering Labs app, where you'll sign in with your Disney account. With an eligible Magic Key linked to your profile, you'll be able to access the Guide once it's available for testing.

There will likely be some bugs, hiccups, or slowdowns along the way, but that's part of the whole Imagineering Labs approach. Rather than waiting until an experience is completely finished, Disney is opening up the development process and letting guests help shape what comes next.

A wider rollout is planned, though there's no firm date just yet, and for now, this is very much a Disneyland-focused experience.

But the goal behind it all is one that I think makes a lot of sense.

As Kalama put it, “The goal here really is to keep you invested and engaged with the physical world around you and the friends and family that you've brought to the park, to get you out of your device and back to your vacation as quickly as possible.”

And that's what has me excited about the Disneyland Enchanted Guide. Disney isn't trying to replace the magic of being in the parks with another screen or another digital experience. Instead, it's exploring how technology can help you make the most of your day without constantly having to reach for your smartphone.

There's still plenty to prove, especially when it comes to how well the AI works in a busy, sometimes unpredictable theme park environment. But if Disney can pull this off, the Enchanted Guide could become the kind of park companion you don't realize you need until you've spent a day with it.

And if it means more time enjoying Disneyland and less time staring at my iPhone, I'm all for it.

• The Imagineering Labs app lets Disneyland guests test experimental experiences
• Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge gets an AR adventure featuring Leia
• Guest feedback will help Imagineers shape future Disney Parks experiences

If you’ve ever wanted to get a peek at what Disney Parks is building next — or even help Imagineers shape new experiences — the House of Mouse is starting to open up its creative process a bit more.

We’ve already had a glimpse behind the scenes with the Disney+ series We Call It Imagineering; and now, through a new app, select guests will be able to try new experiences before they’re fully signed, sealed, and delivered.

Asa Kalama, Vice President, Executive Creative Director at Walt Disney Imagineering, told TechRadar, “rather than waiting for an experience to be fully complete and polished, we're actually offering guests the opportunity to try out new experiences, whether they be entertainment-focused or maybe more utility in nature.”

It’s a different approach, and one Kalama was quick to note is new for Disney.

At its heart is a new Disney Imagineering Labs iOS app, which will sit alongside the already-available Disneyland Resort app. An Android app is coming at a later date, but for now you'll need an iPhone.

You’ll need to sign in with your Disney account, and initial access to the experiments within Imagineering Labs will be reserved for Disneyland Magic Key holders — essentially the resort’s annual passholders and some of its biggest fans. A broader rollout to other Disneyland guests is “coming soon,” though there’s no exact timeframe just yet.

The idea is that new experiences, or parts of them, will be available for guests to test while they're still in development. It's certainly exciting, especially for someone like me who's fascinated by how Imagineering blends technology and storytelling.

As Kalama explained, “We love this because it allows designers and project teams to get meaningful feedback while the paint is still wet.” It gives Imagineers the chance to make important decisions about what ultimately gets developed, shipped, or potentially scrapped. It’s also clear these aren’t finished experiences, and within the app you’ll get a sense of each project's phase, with labels ranging from 'Early development' to 'Taking shape' and 'Nearly complete.'

And while Disney isn't committing to a regular schedule of new experiments or updates, guest feedback will help Imagineers decide whether an idea is worth pursuing further, or if it's time to move on to something else.

A new Star Wars adventure

So, what's first? Well, we're heading to a galaxy far, far away, and an experience that seems pretty well thought-out. It also sees Disney heading back down the road of AR. Secrets of the Spire is a new augmented-reality experience that will take place inside Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland, specifically Black Spire Outpost, home to the Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run attraction and the TIE Echelon.

And if you've ever used the original Star Wars Datapad or enjoyed Batuu Bounty Hunters, this might sound familiar. Kalama even described it as “a spiritual successor to the Datapad experience that used to exist within the land,” calling it “the next chapter” of that adventure.

This time around, you'll receive a transmission from Leia Organa, who needs your help supporting the Rebellion. Your iPhone effectively becomes a pair of Star Wars quadnoculars (aka space binoculars), letting you track down signals across Black Spire Outpost, scan your surroundings, and slice into systems — essentially the Star Wars equivalent of hacking.

Rather than just standing and scanning with your phone, the experience is testing a more involved AR gameplay mechanic. Once you reach a location, your quadnoculars activate a scan mode that creates a grid-like mesh over the real-world environment, helping you hone in on the source of a transmission. From there, you'll reposition your device to locate the signal and begin slicing into a system, whether that's connected to a ship or a droid on land.

And there's a real-world ending here, too. As Kalama explained, “each of these slicing moments is then connected to a physical effect, so there's a physical payoff for that interaction.” In the preview I saw, successfully slicing into a droid brought it to life, with its head spinning in response.

You’ll play Spires of the Outpost in six locations throughout the land, potentially bridging classic attractions, shopping, or chatting with roaming characters. I like the notion of bridging digital and physical further in an already themed land, though.

And, in a particularly fun twist, you'll eventually get to decide whether to remain loyal to Leia and the Rebellion or betray her and side with the Empire. Depending on your choice, the experience culminates near either the Millennium Falcon or the TIE Echelon.

There is an important distinction here, though. Secrets of the Spire isn't a full-fledged adventure just yet. Disney describes this initial release as more of a prologue, designed to test a specific AR gameplay mechanic and learn how guests interact with it.

And the feedback Disney is looking for goes beyond whether you enjoyed the adventure. Kalama raised questions like, “Does it feel like there's too much plot? Is there not enough plot?” Imagineers are also interested in the difficulty and duration of the interactions, with those insights helping to inform subsequent versions of the experience.

There are also some requirements and expectations here. Disney says it's designed for daytime use and requires an iPhone 14 or newer. To its credit, Disney is upfront about what you're getting — you might encounter more errors than usual, and functionality, gameplay, or features could change or even be removed.

Hopefully just the beginning

Even so, this is an exciting development for Imagineering, and Disney at large. It's another rare look into the creative process, and rather than simply stumbling onto a potential play-test inside the park, Disney is deploying a dedicated app and giving guests a chance to try new experiences while they're still being developed.

It makes sense that Disney is starting with a select group, and arguably some of the biggest fans of the parks, in Disneyland Magic Key holders. But I do hope we see a wider release sooner rather than later. After all, part of the excitement here is getting a look at what Imagineers are dreaming up, even if some of those ideas never ship.

There's also the question of where Imagineering Labs goes next. For now, the focus is firmly on Disneyland, and with Secrets of the Spire, that makes sense. Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at Disneyland has seen its timeline reworked to make room for classic characters, including Leia Organa. Still, as someone who's spent plenty of time exploring Galaxy's Edge on both coasts, I'd love to see experiments like this eventually make their way to Disney World, too.

And while Secrets of the Spire is the first experiment, it won't be the only one. It's very much focused on storytelling and immersion, effectively turning your iPhone into a Star Wars gadget that you can use while exploring Batuu. It's additive to the experience, giving you another way to interact with Galaxy's Edge if you choose so.

But Disney Imagineering is also exploring something more utility-focused; and interestingly, something that could help you spend less time looking at your phone while visiting the parks.

You might recall that at Meta Connect 2025, Disney Imagineering and Meta teased the possibility of using Meta Ray-Ban glasses within Disney Parks. And this next experiment does take advantage of wearable technology in a pretty similar fashion.

Dubbed the Disneyland Enchanted Guide, it's an AI-powered assistant designed to help you navigate Disneyland, check attraction wait times, get recommendations, and more. You can talk to it or type questions on your iPhone, and it's multimodal, meaning it can also understand images. But perhaps most interestingly, you can interact with it hands-free through devices like Meta Ray-Ban smart glasses or Bluetooth earbuds, such as AirPods.

It's a pretty interesting contrast to Secrets of the Spire. One encourages you to pull out your iPhone and immerse yourself even further in the world of Star Wars, while the other aims to help you put it away and get back to enjoying the parks.

And I think that's what makes Imagineering Labs so interesting. We're getting a look at two very different approaches to technology in Disney Parks. I'm especially curious to see what Imagineering dreams up next — and hopefully, more of us will get the chance to try these experiments for ourselves soon.

Even as a tech journalist who spends all day, (almost) every day playing around with gadgets and apps, there's still plenty that I miss: like, for example, the ability to view how much time you've been spending on YouTube from inside the mobile app.

It works like Digital Wellbeing (on Android) or Screen Time (on iOS), but specifically for YouTube. You can dig into how much time you've spent on YouTube today and over the past week, with an average for the last seven days.

This has actually been around for years, and it's available whether or not you're signed up for YouTube Premium — though when I checked up on my stats, I was glad that I've been paying the monthly fee, if only to avoid hours and hours of ads.

First step — turning on Watch History

The 'time watched' statistics we're talking about here will only appear if you've got YouTube Watch History turned on. You can check this inside the mobile app by tapping your profile picture (bottom right), then the cog icon, then Manage all history (you can find the same settings on the web here).

To see what you've watched most recently, you can tap your profile picture then History in the mobile app, or choose History from the left-hand navigation menu on the web. There are tools here for searching through your history, deleting the entire record of everything you've ever watched, and putting your Watch History on pause.

It is of course entirely up to you whether or not you enable Watch History. The downsides are Google knows more about you, and it can be hard to get out of recommendation rabbit holes; on the plus side, you will get served videos to watch that might be at least vaguely related to your interests (it's great for discovering new music, for example).

More of your Watch History can be got at through the comprehensive Google Takeout service, which you can find on the web here. Select the YouTube entry, and Google will gladly give you a CSV file detailing every single video you've ever watched on the platform, as long as you've always had Watch History turned on.

Note that the 'time watched' stats don't include videos you've deleted from your Watch History, or that you've watched in incognito mode. However, they do include the YouTube viewing you've done across all your devices (as long as you were signed in), except for inside the YouTube Music apps and on the YouTube TV platform.

Finding your own stats

You can find your viewing stats inside the YouTube mobile app for Android or iOS by tapping your profile avatar (bottom right), then tapping on the cog icon (top right), and choosing Time management. You can't get these stats through YouTube on the web at the moment, which seems a bit of an oversight.

There's not much in the way of a breakdown of what you've been watching, but you can see your running totals and average for the past seven days. There's also a stat about how your viewing compares to the week prior, so you can see if your spending more or less time on the platform week-to-week.

I was honestly surprised by my stats: almost five hours a day on average at the moment. Okay, I do play a lot of lo-fi music videos while I'm working, but that's still an awful lot of content compared to hours in the day — and it extends to tech reviews, explainer videos, and of course all the podcasts that have recently shifted to video.

I've written before about how essential I find YouTube Premium, and the revelation of how much time I actually spend on the site and in the app has more than justified the monthly outlay for me personally — I can't imagine the number of ads I'd have had to sit through otherwise. In fact, YouTube Premium tells you how many ad-free videos you've watched on this page (570 hours and counting for me).

You'll see the time management screen also gives you some controls if you want to limit the amount of clips you're watching day to day. There are toggle switches for setting up reminders around bedtime and taking breaks, and for putting a limit on how much time you spend watching YouTube Shorts each day.