Are you planning a trip to the happiest place on earth? If so, you’ll want to use technology to your advantage so you can maximize your time spent having fun at the park. By utilizing a few well-chosen apps, you can eliminate many of the hassles that might otherwise come with a visit to an 85-acre amusement park that receives an average of 45,000 visitors every day.
Disneyland Resort Official
The official app from Disneyland Resort is the first app you should check out for your visit to the park. You can use it to check wait times at various attractions, make dining reservations, and locate when and where your favorite characters are appearing in the park. One of the best features is the ability to upload your park tickets into the app so that you can skip the ticket lines. The app is free to download for iOS and Android devices.
Virtual Plaid
If you’ve been to a Disney park before, you might have seen tour guides wearing plaid vests. They are VIP tour guides and provide a very special experience for guests who choose one of the park’s premium VIP tour packages. However, those special packages can cost upwards of $400 per hour. Luckily, there’s now an app for that. Virtual Plaid’s free iOS app acts as your very own VIP tour guide while you’re in the park. The app can remind you when a show or parade is about to start and send you alerts for Fastpass return times. It can even ping you when wait times drop below your threshold for a particular attraction you want to experience.
Hidden Mickeys: Disneyland
Fans of Disney theme parks know that there are “Hidden Mickeys” concealed throughout the parks. A Hidden Mickey is any image related to Mickey Mouse hidden within the park. It could be a silhouette of Mickey hidden in the design of a ride, a picture of one of his gloves on the menu board of a restaurant, or even just his name covertly written in an unexpected place. The Hidden Mickeys: Disneyland app for iOS and Android gives detailed descriptions of all the park’s Hidden Mickeys and helps you on your scavenger hunt to find them all. The app costs $7.99 for iOS and 99 cents for Android.
Virtual Private Network
While the Disneyland Resort’s in-park WiFi availability isn’t up to snuff with Walt Disney World’s, the Resort hotels along with other locations such as Starbucks do offer WiFi. With many other visitors also accessing the free WiFi, you’ll want to protect your devices from anyone who might be trying to use that connection to monitor your browsing activity and steal your personal information. A Virtual Private Network app will protect your browsing and keep your personal data hidden from prying eyes. There are several VPN apps on the market that will help you safeguard your information while browsing with an unencrypted WiFi signal. You can check out the review page at Secure Thoughts to compare the options and choose the one that’s right for you.
My Car Locator
After a long day spent walking around the amusement park, you don’t want to spend hours wandering around the massive parking lots searching for your car. The My Car Locator app provides a very simple solution. The app uses the GPS on your phone to mark your parking spot. When you’re ready to go home, the app will guide you directly back to your car with just the touch of a button. You won’t have to try to remember anything about where you parked because the app takes care of all of that for you. My Car Locator is available for free on iOS and Android devices.
Family Tracker
Theme parks are huge places, crowded with thousands of people. It can be alarmingly easy to be separated from your group and very difficult to reunite with them if you don’t have a plan. The Family Tracker app can put your mind at ease. As long as each person has his or her mobile device turned on and access to the internet, you can locate each other using the app. For just $5.99 for the iOS version and $4.99 for the Android version, it’s a small price to pay for peace of mind.
Apps like these will enhance your experience at Disneyland Resort, and you won’t have to be constantly staring at your phone to search for what you need. These apps will put all of the information directly at your fingertips, so you can focus on what matters most: making memories with your loved ones.