The My Disney Experience App: Your Disney Vacation Starts Before You Get to the Parks
If you're planning your first Walt Disney World vacation, there's an app you're going to want to get familiar with before you go — the My Disney Experience app. Once you're actually at Disney World, it becomes almost indispensable. You'll use it to check wait times, manage Lightning Lanes, look at park maps, check showtimes, make or change dining reservations, Mobile Order food and probably a dozen other things I'm forgetting.
But here's something you may not realize if this is your first trip: you can start using My Disney Experience before you ever get to Disney World.
You Can Check Into Your Resort Before You Get There
If you're staying at a Disney Resort, you can use My Disney Experience to complete Online Check-In before your trip. You can add a credit card for room charges, make certain room requests and even let Disney know approximately what time you expect to arrive.
Then, on arrival day, you may not have to go to the front desk at all. This is one of those things that really does feel a little like Disney magic. As you're arriving, you'll get a notification on your phone. If your room isn't ready yet, they'll let you know. Go get something to eat, explore the resort, head to Disney Springs or, if you're going to a park that day, start your Disney vacation. When the room is ready, you'll get another notification with your room number.
And sometimes the timing is almost perfect.
Here's What Happened to Us
The last time we drove to Walt Disney World, we got there pretty early and our room wasn't ready yet. No big deal. We were planning to head over to Magic Kingdom for a little while anyway, but I had one thing I needed to take care of first.
I'm diabetic and travel with insulin that needs to stay refrigerated. Since we didn't have a room yet, I was going to stop at Bell Services and have them keep it refrigerated for me until our room was ready. I was literally on my way to Bell Services when my phone went off.3
Your room is ready.
And there was our room number. Well, never mind then. I turned around, went straight to our room, put my insulin in the refrigerator and we headed to Magic Kingdom.
No front desk, no waiting around for the room and no coming back later to pick up the insulin. Disney had already taken care of it.
Oh, and Your Phone Can Open the Door
Here's another cool part. Once your room is assigned, you can use your phone and the My Disney Experience app to unlock your Disney Resort room door. So you really can arrive at your resort, get your room number on your phone, walk straight to your room and unlock the door without ever stopping at the front desk.
Of course, if you need something, the Cast Members at the front desk are there to help. But after you've been in the car all day or just gotten off a plane, it's pretty nice not to have one more line to stand in before your vacation can begin.
And Then You Get to the Parks...
That's when My Disney Experience really gets a workout. Wait times, Lightning Lanes, Mobile Ordering, dining reservations, maps, showtimes and your plans for the day — you're going to use this app a lot.
Which is why I recommend that first-time visitors download it and start playing around with it before the trip. Open the park maps. Look at wait times from home. See where your dining reservations show up. Find your resort reservation. Click around and see what's there.
You don't have to know everything the app can do. Trust me, there is a lot in there. You just don't want the first time you really explore My Disney Experience to be when you're standing in the middle of Magic Kingdom with your family looking at you and asking, "Okay, what are we doing next?"
That's Part of the Planning Too
That's also part of what I do when I help families plan their Walt Disney World vacations. Yes, we'll talk about the big stuff — where to stay, which parks to visit, dining, Lightning Lanes and how to put together a plan that works for your family. But sometimes as we talk, I'll think of things you didn't even know you needed to know.
And sometimes it's something as simple as, "Hey, before you go, let's make sure you know how to use this app."
Because when you're at Walt Disney World, knowing some of those little things ahead of time can make a pretty big difference.
The Plans Behind the Magic.
Magical Destinations by Tim
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