Top Three Favorite Things About The ‘My Disney Experience’ App
The My Disney Experience app is a newly developed tool for guests to navigate the parks with GPS-enabled maps, attractions and wait time information, dining information including maps and reservation-making capability and more. Designed to be used with the website, guests can store plans, wish list items and more, all integrated with the My Disney Experience website (review here).
Although the website and app share similar content, after exploring both, the app was definitely my favorite. Though both platforms share similar content, the streamlined feel and faster loading speed won me over – not to mention the fact that I’m much more likely to be visiting the parks with my phone or tablet than my laptop computer! Along with that reason, I thought I’d compile my favorite things about the My Disney Experience app:
#3: The Characters Today Locator
One of the coolest features that I enjoyed working with was the Characters Today locator, that allows guests to search parks for their favorite characters either by name, or by location.
For this example, I searched for ‘Cinderella’ at Magic Kingdom. On the ‘Name’ sort option, I was able to see that she was greeting that day from 9 AM to 10:30 PM at the Town Square Theater. If a guest read that, however, and was not sure where that meet and greet location was, they could switch over to map view and see it plotted out, making this app great for users who are not very familiar with park layout. From there, they could click the locator plot points to see who else is greeting nearby.
Of course, this feature is not perfect either since Wait Times are posted only for attractions – and a wide range of times is nice for the big picture of planning the day, but not quite for those with a more meticulous agenda. It stands to reason then, that someone interested in more details like these would have to download a second third-party app like Lines to retrieve that data.
#2: The Plan and Manage capabilities
One look at my day planner will tell you one thing: I am a bit old school. I write down ALL reservation numbers, confirmation codes, times and details for trips – but if I lost those notes, I’d be truly lost. With the “My Reservations” tab in the Plan and Manage section, I have everything I need right there – including ticket and pass numbers, dining reservations. Talk about organized!
Note: if you did not book your vacation on waltdisneyworld.com, your reservations may not automatically show up in the app, but as long as you have the confirmation number and last name handy, you can manually enter it into this screen. Ticket media and annual passes may also be manually added via ID numbers or with the built-in app scanner.
#1: The Here & Now tool
Now this is not for me personally, since I cannot count how many times I have visited the Walt Disney World Resort…but for many guests, it’s their first visit – or maybe the first in a long while, so the Here & Now tool is extremely helpful! Enabled only while on property, Here & Now uses GPS technology to share the closest attractions, dining locations and more – perfect for those that might be struggling to navigate the park map, otherwise…and since there’s in-park Wifi, it’s relatively quick and easy to connect and access the app while taking a quick break or waiting in a queue.
So there you have it – my top three favorite things about the My Disney Experience app! I’d definitely recommend giving it a look, especially while features are still being rolled out. It is available for Apple devices via the Apple App store, as well as for Android users at Google Play and Amazon Apps.
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Do you use apps for planning or navigating your Disney Parks days? What features are most important to you?
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I wholeheartedly agree with the praise for their “My Reservations” tab – it’s nice to have all of those ADRs in one place!
I’m interested to see how their wait times will differ from those posted in Lines, too. I assume Disney would base it on what they’re actually posting in the parks, but I don’t know for sure.
Michael – as far as I know, the wait times are based on algorithms and visuals, and *should* reflect the same thing you see on wait time signs, but in my personal experience in which I ran both this and the Lines app on a recent visit to WDW, it still needs work since actual observed waits do not seem to be loaded efficiently.
But, yes, changing the subject back…having all the ADRs together is certainly nice to keep things organized!
The ability to change your FastPass+ reservations on the fly is pretty great too! Really makes the app useful.
That’s definitely something I am interested in trying!
I don’t know if it’s my older Android phone, but the app is really slow on my Motorola Droid X. It’s slow on my wifi at home, but it’s so slow on the park wifi that I hardly ever bother with MyDisneyExperience while I’m there. I do like the website since I can book dining reservations quickly and easily, and it’s nice that the information can be accessed on my phone later. (Sometimes MUCH later – depending on the response time.)
I’m hoping that a combination of a new phone (someday) and improved park wifi will improve my app experience in the future. Once the FastPass+ starts being rolled out to AP holders, I’m going to need this app much more than I do now.
” Once the FastPass+ starts being rolled out to AP holders, I’m going to need this app much more than I do now.”
SO agree!
I’ve been trying to add my reservations to my app for months via the confirmation number and name. It has never worked. I wish I could have my reservations on my phone but I guess not. I’ve called Disney twice with no fix. 🙁
Aw darn! That must be frustrating 😛
My fav feature is checking Dining menus and managing ADRs from the app!
But- and I am not just saying this- for wait times, I like the Lines app so much better!!
Obvious bias aside – I definitely agree, Lines is much more useful as an in-park app, but I am glad that Disney is finally taking the initiative to create a product like this, so I too am interested to see how it grows and improves!
I bet this is a swell app, but unfortunately, they have not developed it to be compatible for all/many/most android users. I have a newer Acer 7″ tablet running 4.1.2 and cannot get the app, which is disappointing.
If you want the app, I can provide it to you. It wasn’t available for my Toshiba Thrive tablet running ICS, and I was able to install it, and it works flawlessly. No idea why they are excluding tablets, but, honestly, there’s no reason it wouldn’t work.
Sadly, it’s pretty much useless at this point because I can’t get the app to sync with the online version of My Disney Experience, which contains my hotel stays (DVC), dining reservations, annual pass #, etc. I can’t figure out why the same email & password won’t cause the two to sync.
Yes Jan totally! That’s my problem too!
Would be nice if they created apps for non iphone/android people. There are still people out there with Blackberry and Windows phones.
Yesterday I found out that we will be getting MagicBands when we check in on Monday. So, I decided to give the FastPass+ system a try, and load up my favorite FP attractions. But I am having trouble getting the FPs to work with my Touring Plans and Lines on my iPhone. The times on my FPs are all wrong for my personal plans. For example, when I go to AK, I either ride Kilimanjaro Safari or Expedition Everest first thing in the morning. After trying 3 times, I was able to get a 9:00am FP for the Safari, but then would have ended up criss-crossing the park at other times for Everest and Primeval Whirl. I’m going to keep playing with it to see if I can customize the times to stay on my Lines plan. So far, having a MagicBand for an experienced planner is not so much fun. When the current FP system goes away, we are all going to have to figure out this stuff all over again.
OK, I figured out how to change the FP times. It’s on the app on the mobile device! Not too bad!