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I got a smart phone for my birthday, when all I asked for is an mp3 player. Don’t get me wrong: it’s an awesome present, but sometimes I don’t know what to do with it. I disabled data, because I spend enough time online as it is. Although I downloaded one or two, I’m wary of most apps: I don’t want them cluttering up my phone.
If you have smart phone, however, and you’re planning a Disney vacation, there are a few apps you should look into getting. Most of them are free, which is just icing on the cake. If you’re a Verizon Wireless customer, then the top app to check out is Disney Mobile Magic. It’s totally free and it’s fantastic.
Disney Mobile Magic is the official app of the Disney Parks. It offers wait times for rides, GPS-enabled park maps that locate your favorite characters (or are helpful if you get a bit turned around), FASTPASS return times, a dining guide with the ability to make reservations, and Disney trivia/games. It has interactive guides for most of the areas within the domestic Disney parks, and the ability to create a tip board/schedule of your Disney vacation.
If you don’t have Verizon but you do have an Android, you can still get access to this app. Google Play has an app called My Disney Experience that is also free, and is basically the same as Disney Mobile Magic.
If you have an iPhone and you’d like to further customize it for a Disney vacation, you have additional options. The Apple App Store has a variety of parks-related apps, though most of them aren’t free. The only one that’s free is the Disney World Wait Times. It’s user-generated, meaning that people at the parks upload the wait times for the rides. This one seems a little pointless, given that Mobile Magic exists, is also free, and has the official Disney Parks announced wait times. If you’re only interested in wait times without all the other stuff, though, this is your app.
For 99 cents you can get the Walt Disney World Park hours. Depending on the time of year the opening times for the various parks can change, and this will help you stay up to date. This is another one that seems a bit superfluous given the existence of Mobile Magic, especially because you have to pay for it. But hey, if that’s your thing, it exists.
Of the paid user-generated Disney iPhone apps, this following is the one that seems the most appealing: Disney World Dining. It’s $1.99, and it’ll help you choose where to eat at Disney World. It locates all Disney restaurants closest to your location and has one-touch dialing for restaurants, but the real stand-out is that it has full menus for all 160 restaurants. Mobile Magic says that it has restaurant menus, but it’s not clear whether or not those are full for all restaurants. If you check out Mobile Magic and it doesn’t offer that, and you’re a real Disney foodie, then Disney World Dining is perfect.
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*(The above image by blakespot is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)