This trip to a Disney park was the first I made with a smart
phone. What a difference! I tested out four apps and review them here for you.
If you have an extra phone battery, bring it with you! I had to switch
batteries late in the day, and I didn’t use my phone for much more than
checking line times. An iPad would be ideal – if you have a data plan. We also
had my brother in law save his phone battery by not using it during the day
(only leaving it on if the group split up for FastPass retrieval) so he’d have
a fresh battery if mine died. If you go that route, turn off the data plan (use
airplane mode) to save on battery drain.
FYI: Disneyland DOES now have official charging station lockers.
It’s $2/hour. Here’s the scoop on charging stations at Disney. We didn’t check
it out while there, but it’s nice to know it’s available. Here’s a list of outlets at Disneyland/California Adventure.
It does not appear at present time that Disney World has the
same charging systems. Here are some places to charge your phone at Disney World and here.
I’d recommend spending time on the apps before you get there so
you know what you’ll need and where you’ll find it and won’t drain your battery
looking. There are a lot of tips and good planning information you can find
there as well, which can make time in line go faster as you share these with
your fellow travelers.
If you’re not familiar with touringplans.com, it comes from
the authors of the Unofficial Guide to Disneyland (and the Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World). It’s a fabulous book I recommend you buy. They have a touring plan that
helps save you time by helping you avoid the lines by going to the attractions
in a certain order. I’ve used it – it works.
Pros: You want
this app mainly for the Lines feature.
It gives you relatively accurate wait
times for the park lines, including the posted Disney time and the TouringPlans
estimated wait time (often less than the posted time). It also tells you the
FastPass return time if applicable. I found that the return time was often 1-2
hours later than posted on the app, but it still gives an idea, and also says
when the FastPasses are gone for the day.
Cost: The app is
free for many features including the valuable Lines data. Otherwise it costs .99
for a week use, and prices go up slightly from there if you want it for a month, six
months or year. For the paid price you get the 10 day crowd forecast of how
crowded the park will be and the best days to visit each park. That could be
helpful if you’re unsure which park to go to on which day and you are flexible.
You also get a computerized touring plans itinerary, which if you don’t have
the book or the website subscription, is great (I wasn't impressed with the website subscription). You can create your own
customized touring plans itinerary as well.
Cons: After
paying my .99 I had trouble getting it to recognize that I paid so I could log
in. I emailed customer service who thankfully responded within a few hours.
They were quite helpful. They located an account I had online from a few years
ago and reset my password. Not sure what would have happened if I didn’t have
an account, but I'm sure it would have worked out.
The Touring Plans itinerary wasn’t going to work for me this
trip because we started a bit late, and we went to each park on an early
admission day (but we weren’t given early admission). Both are a no-no for the
plan. I tried creating my own custom itinerary, which was a pain because you
had to add each attraction separately and it took forever. The nice part of the
custom plan was it gave me wait times for each ride in addition to travel time
to the next attraction. It also left me a 6 hour gap in between several
attractions (I guess I didn’t put enough attractions in). I bailed on the custom
plan. I'm not sure the paid portion really helped me based on my trip circumstances, but if you want the additional features, it's worth it.
Times feature:
The line time feature is the best thing about this app. The times are a bit of
voodoo – I believe taken from their 10 years of their historic data, along with a
mixture of reported data. They also estimate Disney’s reported waits – not sure
how they get access to those. They were pretty accurate though you couldn’t
rely on them 100%. The FastPass return times were often 1-2 hours off.
User reported times
feature: the Lines app has a feature for guests to report real time data.
Very few were using it when I went, so it was not really helpful. To be fair, I
didn’t put times in either (I didn’t want to drain my battery). I checked this
week and more were using it. So it depends on the week, I guess.
Forums: The DLR
chat forum was not helpful, and were full of people saying they were going to
Disneyland in X days – yay! Or they were making mouse shaped pancakes for their kids' breakfasts. Not interesting. You get full access to DLR chat (and
the ability to post) with a paid subscription, and people were chatting real
time with questions about the park. Again, not the app’s best feature.
Other features:
They post menus from the restaurants, which can be helpful, and also post
weather, admission times and crowd levels for the day.
Disney World version?
Yes
App is best for:
Estimating line times. This was the one app I consistently used.
Mouse
Wait 2.5
Cost: free
Pros: It clearly
posts show times, menus, park times, ride closures
Cons: The wait
time feature wasn’t working well while I was in the park. It seemed to work
fine when I wasn’t in the park though. Go figure.
Times feature: I
believe the wait times are reported by guests, and when I was there, most of
the boxes were empty so the feature was useless. I abandoned it quickly.
Forums: The Mouse
Wait lounge was not my cup of tea. People posted pictures of themselves or
things they saw at the park, which isn’t all that interesting to me and it
takes time and data to load.
Other features:
They post menus from the restaurants, which can be helpful, and also post
weather, admission times and crowd levels for the day. The resources section
looks good and I may spend some time reading that later. Lots of tips and
tidbits.
Disney World version?
Yes
App is
best for: resources section
Disney
Inside Out
Cost: free
Pros: It included
show times, menu/prices, restroom location by GPS, Disney news, and interesting
tidbits.
Cons: The ride
wait time feature was useless. It’s all user reported data and few users reported
times.
Times feature:
These are user submitted and generally incomplete.
Forums: The
discussions section is the best part of this app. Lots of great planning
information including finding hotels, dining, experiences, and more. Definitely
go here when planning your trip. It had lots of random facts too.
Disney World version?
Yes
App is best for:
the discussion section.
Disney Mobile
Magic (park’s official app)
Cost: free
Pros: it’s the
official Disney app. It’s pretty. The home page has a schedule for the next
hour or so.
Cons: For many
features you have to click through several screens only to find out the
information, which may not even be so helpful. For example, to find when a
certain character will be in the park, you have to click through several
screens, and often find out the character won’t be in the park that day. There
isn’t a listing on one page that’s easy to access with time information – you have
to click through to each character (turns out there are a LOT of them). The
Disney World app does a great job of posting the character times and locations, by
the way. There seems to be a lot on the Disneyland app, but it’s mostly show and little
substance.
Times feature:
Rather than give you times, it says things like “see now,” “moderate” or “high
demand.” That’s helpful, but only vaguely. The app download page says the app
has the official wait time and FastPass return times but I couldn’t find it,
even under the “wait time” section. The featured screen on the app page is not
the same as on my app.
FYI - The Disney
World app (picture on left) also does apparently provide official wait times, but you have to sign
into the app to get access, according to my phone – I downloaded that app as
well.
Forums: none
Features: there’s
a Disney trivia game I’m going to try.
Disney World version?
Yes – and it’s much better than this one. It's called My Disney Experience.
App is best for:
not really sure. The weather section?
What are your favorite Disney park apps?
Coming soon in the Disney series:
Cars Land Review
Hidden Mickeys at Disney
Hidden Mickeys at Disney
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