Walt Disney World adds Gemini-powered AI booking chatbot in beta

Using AI to plan a vacation is not new — travelers have been turning to ChatGPT, Copilot, Booking.com and TripAdvisor for years. What is different here is that Disney is putting its own AI engine behind its booking site and app rather than leaving the conversation to outside tools. The feature is being built with Google Cloud and uses Google's Gemini, but Disney says the chatbot will only scrape official Disney data rather than the broader internet, a choice aimed at keeping answers grounded in what Disney itself publishes.

The scope is deliberately narrow at the start. Disney says the beta will go only to randomly selected guests in Canada and the US, and that AI summaries and bookings will not extend to Lightning Lane or dining reservations at launch. Disney is also testing AI summaries with cast members to check that the tool pulls accurate information from official sources.

How far the tool spreads may depend on whether those randomly selected guests find the recommendations useful and accurate enough for Disney to move ahead with a wider phased launch. For travelers, the near-term question is whether a Disney-only data set produces better answers than the general-purpose chatbots they already use.