Universal Patent Filing Would Light a Path Straight to Your Ride Locker, With Separate Colors So Guests Do Not Collide

You know the routine. You get off a coaster, scan your ticket, and then search a wall of identical locker doors for the one holding your bag. Universal has an idea for that, and it involves lights.

A patent application titled "Locker Management Systems and Methods" was published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on October 1, 2026. The applicant is Universal City Studios LLC, and the two inventors, Scot Burklin and Gregory Paul Habiak, are both listed in Orlando. It was filed on March 31, 2025.

Figure 1 of the application: two locker banks and a kiosk beside a coaster, run by a controller with a "locker guidance module." Image: USPTO, US 2026/0301103 A1

How it would work

The application describes a bank of lockers with a "registering device," which could be a kiosk or your phone, where you request a locker. The system assigns you one, then lights up a path from the kiosk to it. Theme Park Insider summed it up as a "locker guidance module" that "activates a lighting system to direct a guest to their specific locker."

The lights could run in the gaps between lockers, across the locker doors themselves, or along nearby floors, walls, ceilings and canopies. The filing also mentions lighting up the outline of your locker once you get there.

Its main example is a set of lockers for a ride. The application says a locker bank could sit at a ride's entrance, its exit or both, and could be two-sided, with guests loading lockers on one side before riding and collecting their things from the other side afterward. It notes that a system may hold "dozens or hundreds of lockers," and that group loading and unloading can crowd the area.

The clever bits

• No collisions: If two guests are using the lockers at the same time, the system can steer their paths apart, for example running one along the top row and the other along the bottom.
• Color coding: Paths can use different colors, brightness levels or patterns, such as a solid line for one guest and a dotted line for another. Where two paths have to share a stretch, that shared segment can flash both colors or glow a mix, like purple.
• Kid height: Based on a guest profile, the path could run along a lower row of lockers for a shorter or younger guest, and a higher row for a tall one.
• Live rerouting: Paths can change in real time to work around other guests' paths, lockers that are in use (open, being locked or with guests nearby) or damaged lights.
• Making sure it is you: Before a locker opens, the application describes checking that the right person is there, using facial recognition, a signal from your phone, or a code from the kiosk.
• Screens and voices: The filing also describes screens on the locker doors that could show themed scenes, like a jungle vine stretching from the kiosk to your locker or an animated character (the filing's example is a fanciful narwhal) that leads you there, plus speakers that call out lines like "Follow me!" or "You are going the wrong way!"

Figure 4, also on the application's front page: four reserved lockers with guidance paths from the central kiosk. The dashed segment is a shared "cooperative path" where two guests' routes overlap and can blink both of their colors. Image: USPTO, US 2026/0301103 A1

Will you actually see it?

Not necessarily. This is a patent application, not a granted patent, and companies file for plenty of ideas that never reach a park. The filing does not name a park, a ride or a timeline, so there is no word on where, or whether, Universal would install it.

Theme Park Insider rounded it up with two other Universal applications published the same week: one for a linkage that lets an animated figure appear to move a prop without wearing it out, and one for RFID feedback devices that the outlet compares to the interactive wands in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Would a glowing trail to your locker make the post-ride scramble easier, or is it one more screen to stare at? Either way, it beats squinting down a long row of identical doors.

Sources

• USPTO, Patent Application Publication US 2026/0301103 A1, Locker Management Systems and Methods
• Theme Park Insider, Universal looks to improve show, via new patent applications

Image credits: U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (both patent drawings).