Disney to offer ride wait-time updates via cellphone
My friend and colleague Dawn Chmielewski reports that starting next year, visitors to Disney theme parks will be able to use their cellphones to check ride wait times, locate restaurants and find characters as well as receive admission discounts and merchandise deals.
Disneyland and Walt Disney World visitors would have to download an application to their Verizon Wireless phones to access the information. Some information would be available regardless of your wireless company.
Back in January, Disneyland tested a similar program using a standard Nintendo DS portable videogame player that let theme park visitors check ride wait times, locate walk-around characters and plot a time-efficient strategy for visiting the most popular attractions.
In 2007, Disney applied for a patent that imagined a day when theme park visitors could use cellphones to book a FastPass, the theme park giant’s ride reservation system that allows visitors to return at a designated time and enter via a shorter line.
— Brady MacDonald, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
[Photo: Disney]
6 Comments on “Disney to offer ride wait-time updates via cellphone”
Leave a Comment
If you are under 13 years of age you may read this blog, but you may not participate. Here's the full legal spiel.
Comments are moderated, and will not appear on this blog until the author has approved them.
All fields are required
Advertisement
SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG
Click the logo below to subscribe to news from this blog:
Or add this feed to your favorite RSS reader:
more
Or add this feed to your favorite RSS reader:
more
Advertisement
November 12th, 2008 at 11:28 am
do you that california is the 6th USA market for Swim with dolphin interactive programs ??? “the experience of a life time “… and 1st place for dolphins programs in hawaii ???
can i send you some of our stadistics ??? if you need additional information/visit, do not hesitate to contact me.
November 13th, 2008 at 6:36 am
This seems quite a contradiction for a company with such close ties to Steve Jobs and Apple, whose iPhone is only available through AT&T wireless. There are going to be a whole lot of Disney fans with iPhones very, very upset. It won’t make them switch, but it will make them very unhappy with Disney.
April 16th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
CoasterQ already provides this service free of charge to ALL cell phone carriers. It works on almost all mobile browsers and is great on the iphone.
Go to http://www.coasterq.com/
CoasterQ has a list of all of the theme park rides AND the best part is, CQ provides the attraction wait times for all lines in the park. You can create an itinerary of rides and watch the wait times for all of them. CoasterQ works off of user inputs of times, so the more people that use it, the more accurate the times will be. They currently have all Disney parks and Universal parks, and every week are expanding to include more parks. You can use the web browser on your phone to find and enter line wait times. CoasterQ works well on almost all browswers and works great on the iphone.
April 18th, 2009 at 9:55 am
CoasterQ is not working !!
April 20th, 2009 at 1:44 pm
Anthony - I went to CoasterQ’s site over the weekend on both saturday and Sunday and it was working both days fro me - I just checked it on my iPhone, Motorola Q 9c, and the internet and it worked great on all of them - what type of phone do you have and where are you located? It could be that when you checked CQ the parks were closed in which case the wait times would not be displayed they would instead say “closed”. I hope you are able to resolve this problem - I have used CQ and so have quite a few friends of mine and we have had great experiences and are very excited for the release of more parks on the site.
September 2nd, 2009 at 7:28 am
CoasterQ does not seem to work on windows mobile 6.1 internet explorer… it just says “Loading…” on all the pages.