Disney Widens Patent Claims for Its Drone Show System

Disney has published a new patent application for a themed aerial drone system, and it builds on a patent the company already secured in 2025. The new filing, published September 10, 2026, doesn't describe a new invention. Instead, it goes after broader legal protection for the technology behind the drone's onboard "B show" system.

Photo: WDWMAGICWalt Disney Imagineering headquarters

The new application, US 2026/0268782, is a continuation of a Disney patent application originally filed in July 2019. That original application became a granted patent, US 12,230,153, on February 18, 2025. Both list the same five inventors: Pehr Hovey, Loyal Pyczynski, Madeline Zupan, Clare Carroll, and Scott Watson.

The background, drawings, and core description are the same across both patents. What changed is the scope of what Disney is trying to claim legal ownership over.

In the version Disney was granted in 2025, the lead claim required a specific design: a drone with thematic cladding, described as an outer shell that "extends around and encloses at least a lower portion" of the drone's chassis.

The new filing drops that requirement from its main claim. Instead, it focuses on a drone with:

• One or more onboard show effect devices
• A memory storing multiple alternate show scripts
• A controller that compares the drone's real-time position and timing to a flight plan, and picks a script based on that comparison

The themed shell now only appears in a narrower, secondary claim. Disney is trying to claim the underlying system, not just drones dressed up like a spaceship or pirate ship.

Photo: DisneyPatent diagram showing a sailing ship-shaped drone (200) with quadcopter rotors integrated into the hull

The technology Disney is protecting solves a specific problem with drone shows: keeping every drone on time and on mark. Wind, launch delays, or performance differences can throw a drone off its planned flight path.

Instead of a single fixed flight plan, the system stores multiple scripts onboard. If a drone drifts off course or falls behind schedule, its onboard controller can switch to a backup script in real time, described in the patent as a "B show," so the display still looks intentional.

The system also tracks nearby drones and can block or scale back effects, such as pyrotechnics, if drones get too close to each other or to maintenance crews.

Disney has experience with a large-scale, themed drone. For the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at Walt Disney World in December 2019, Walt Disney Imagineering worked with Boeing to fly a modified Boeing CV2 Cargo Air Vehicle (CAV) over Batuu.

The Boeing CV2 Cargo Air Vehicle modified as an X-Wing drone, used during the opening of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge, on display at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

The CAV, an electric, remotely piloted aircraft with a 20.2-foot wingspan, carried an X-wing body shell lit with ultraviolet lights. From the ground, it looked like a real X-wing flying overhead.

That drone is now on permanent display at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Virginia. It's recognized as the first large remotely piloted eVTOL aircraft used in a commercial operation in the U.S.

Scott Trowbridge, senior creative executive for Walt Disney Imagineering, said at the time that the X-wing flight represented the kind of new technology Imagineers use to bring story-driven experiences to life.

This broadened patent claim suggests that Disney sees ongoing value in the underlying real-time correction technology, separate from any one themed design.

Combined with the X-wing flight already in Disney's history, this points to continued investment in large, themed drones that can self-correct mid-show, rather than a swarm of small, uniform drones following a single fixed path.