Welcome to those of you joining me from Disney with Babies, Toddlers, & Preschoolers and those just hopping aboard! I am the 3rd stop on our Magical Blogorail loop this month. Today we are talking about our favorite Disney Apps!
I’m a trip planner, and I absolutely love spending time perfecting my daily itineraries for our Walt Disney World and Disneyland vacations. My favorite planning site is TouringPlans.com, and their app, Lines, is by far my favorite Disney App (next to Tsum Tsum which I am absolutely obsessed with). The Lines app has saved my family so much time over the last few years that I will never go to a Disney Park without it loaded to my phone!
Note: You will need an account with TouringPlans.com in order to properly utilize the Lines apps. A one year subscription for Walt Disney World is $12.95 and a one year subscription for Disneyland is $7.95. You can often bundle them together to save a couple more dollars. TouringPlans.com also has subscriptions available for Disney Cruise Line and Universal Studios Orlando. There are week-by-week subscriptions available…but you really can’t go wrong with a subscription to the website.
Disney World Lines from TouringPlans.com
LINES will help you save time and money during your Walt Disney World trip. We created Lines to help figure out where to go and what to do during your Disney vacation. No other app – even Disney’s official app – gives you as much unbiased advice about the Disney parks.
I’ve been using the Lines app for the past couple of years for our Walt Disney World vacations. Prior to MyDisneyExperience I always found it to be more accurate and more informed than other wait time apps available. Further, it is so much more than a wait times app. With Lines you can create and edit your Walt Disney World daily itinerary on the go, allowing for continual plan optimization.
Lines allows users to add wait time and ride closure data live in the parks, which helps keep the wait times accurate. It’s also fun to time your waits and add them to the app for others. You get little badges along the way as you contribute to the Lines community (I’m an Unofficial Research Apprentice).
Additionally Lines allows you to view crowd levels, premium touring plans, chat with other members and view a 10 day crowd forecast directly from the toolbar. There are even more options available from the home screen, including a crowd snapshot of the current day, link to reported wait times, ability to access your stored trips and touring plans, ability to add trips and create touring plans, browse menus by location or item, and much more. It is truly a wealth of information.
Disneyland Lines from TouringPlans.com
LINES will help you save time and money during your Disneyland trip. We created Lines to help figure out where to go and what to do during your Disney vacation. No other app – even Disney’s official app – gives you as much unbiased advice about the Disney parks.
Having completed our first Disneyland trip this past summer, we have only used the Lines app for Disneyland once, but found it to be just as helpful as the app for Walt Disney World. In fact, it was even more helpful since I wasn’t as familiar with the layout of the parks or what the different dining locations had to offer. I also found the chat section to be particularly helpful when I had a question.
Using DLR Lines we were able to navigate an unfamiliar location with relative ease, and very short wait times for all attractions. Optimizing our touring plans made it easy to still fit all of our desired attraction in when we had to adjust our schedule when we had mis-estimated how long an activity or attraction would last.
The Disneyland Lines App features the same planning functions as the Walt Disney World version, and is sure to save you time, energy and frustration while visiting Disneyland Resort
Thank you for joining me today. Your next stop on the Magical Blogorail Loop is Capturing Magical Memories. Mary will be sharing information on her favorite Disney App, Live365!
Here is the map of our Magical Blogorail should you happen to have to make a stop along the way and want to reboard:
1st Stop ~ I Am a Mommy Nerd – Disney Animation App
2nd Stop ~ Disney with Babies, Toddlers, & Preschoolers –Disney’s Frozen
3rd Stop ~ Disney Mamas – Lines by TouringPlans.com (You are here)
4th Stop ~ Capturing Magical Memories – Live365
Final Stop ~ Frugal Mouse – My Disney Experience
I didn’t even realize Touring Plans had an app – maybe because I’m new to the smartphone. LOL Sounds like I need to renew my subscription so I can get the app!
It is definitely worth it, especially with a trip coming up soon!
This is such a helpful app!! I love Touringplans!! Great post!
Thank you for covering this on your blog today – I have always wondered if a paid line app was worth it. What is the best tip you have ever gotten from using this app?
The app is free as long as you have a paid subscription to TouringPlans.com, and there are some very basic functions available to those without a subscription. I appreciate that TouringPlans.com includes the app functions with their web-based subscription rather than making you pay for both.
Best tip…I don’t know if this is a tip, but I find the wait times to be far more accurate than the ones Disney posts via MyDisneyExperience. I also like that I can update my touring plan as I go, complete with re-optimizing my itinerary to calculate with the most current information.
Touring Plans is the best! I trust it more for wait times in the parks than I do My Disney Experience, and I couldn’t live without their crowd level calendars! Do you know if they have plans to include the water parks?
They sure do Jodi! There are plans for Typhoon Lagoon and Blizzard Beach located under Disney World Touring Plans.
There is only one plan for each park that is pre-designed, and they are for adults.
This sounds like such a useful app! Will it let you look at wait times from home? If so, I would be looking at them every day wishing I was at WDW!
Yes, it totally will! Right now there is a posted 40 minute wait for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, with an expected actual wait of 38 minutes!
That’s another great thing about this app. It not only tells you the posted wait time, but also what the anticipated true wait time is!
AND… SOLD! Thanks for this awesome review! I’ve gone back and forth on splurging for this. I’ve had the free app for a while. Reading this makes me know I need to get it! Thanks!! perfect. 🙂
A subscription to TouringPlans.com is one of the best investments we make for our vacation! I love that it gives me unlimited access to all of the features of Lines.
This is one of those apps I’ve always been intrigued by. I’ve always wanted to know more about how it worked and how it updates wait times. I’ve never tried it, though.
How does it save you money?
Personally, I don’t use it for the money saving aspect, but more for a daily touring plan. That being said, it has helped me determine whether or not the dining plan is the right choice for a particular trip. They keep their menus updated with prices, and at the top of each menu it will give you the date it was last verified. We have used their reported prices to sort of add up our anticipated food expenditures.
If I wasn’t a teacher I would also be able to use the program to decide when to visit WDW, but being so locked into a schedule that isn’t a big part of it for me.
Part of the beauty of the Lines app is that as a user in the park you can add in wait times. You check-in when you get in line, and check-out when you get on the attraction, and you also report the posted wait time. The program uses that data to determine both the reported and anticipated wait times for attractions.
Talk about an app I can’t live without! As a windows phone user, I don’t get the downloadable app, but they have a mobile site that is almost as good. I recommend it to everyone, too!
I am addicted to this app too. When I am in the park I use it and love to submit wait times as I see them. While at home I sometimes check in and see what is going on at the parks.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one! Entering wait times is like a game for me!
I just love Touring Plans and this app is my favorite. Now that My Disney Experience is available, do you use it as much when touring?
I do! I find the wait times via the Lines app to be more accurate than those posted via MyDisneyExperience.com, and I love being able to edit my plans and have the app reoptimize the data!
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