Is using your phone while at the parks taking too much time?

[CherylCT]

We have a trip planned for early September and haven't been in 10-plus years. I am a little overwhelmed with how much phone usage is now involved! You have to check ride times, reservations, and tons of other stuff. I feel like I'm going to be walking around looking at my phone all day! Is this indeed the case?

 

[tobikaye]

There are a lot of things to look at, but you really do not have to look all day unless you are OCD about what you are doing every minute of your trip.

Ride times: I might check while waiting in line for another attraction or trying to decide which way to head in between. This might be a minute or two of checking at a time. I am not constantly checking times.

Dining reservations: I either make ahead of time or look when I finally decide if I want to see what might be available that day. I rarely spend more than 10 minutes during a day looking, if that.

Mobile Ordering: I think on my next trip this will be more in use than previous. Still, I can usually pick and order in about 10 minutes. It only takes this long because someone always changes their mind on an item before I place and I have to change.

Pictures: If I do not have my DSLR with me, this is where my phone gets the most use.

FP+: If/when it returns does tend to drag me in a bit. There were some days where it seemed like I was constantly on my phone for this, but that was usually if I was basically lucky enough to go from one FP line to the next. Over days/trips, I really just looked if I was interested in something or not and barely used.

Most of my other phone use is for non-WDW activities.

 

[luv2cheer92]

I would say without FP, I spend maybe 15-20 minutes on my phone in a day, if that. At least for necessary WDW-related things. I may do other non-related things (social media/email/etc).

 

[CherylCT]

There are a lot of things to look at, but you really do not have to look all day unless you are OCD about what you are doing every minute of your trip.

Ride times: I might check while waiting in line for another attraction or trying to decide which way to head in between. This might be a minute or two of checking at a time. I am not constantly checking times.

Dining reservations: I either make ahead of time or look when I finally decide if I want to see what might be available that day. I rarely spend more than 10 minutes during a day looking, if that.

Mobile Ordering: I think on my next trip this will be more in use than previous. Still, I can usually pick and order in about 10 minutes. It only takes this long because someone always changes their mind on an item before I place and I have to change.

Pictures: If I do not have my DSLR with me, this is where my phone gets the most use.

FP+: If/when it returns does tend to drag me in a bit. There were some days where it seemed like I was constantly on my phone for this, but that was usually if I was basically lucky enough to go from one FP line to the next. Over days/trips, I really just looked if I was interested in something or not and barely used.

Most of my other phone use is for non-WDW activities.

Thanks for the detailed answer! Really helped.

 

[Heather07438]

You have to check ride times, reservations, and tons of other stuff

Another way to look at it is how we did these in the past. You had to walk over to look at the boards with posted wait time, walk over to restaurants to check availability or call the dining hotline, sometimes put up with insane QS lines &/or have trouble finding a table.

Overall it’s making guest experience easier. Just different. Everything is moving in this direction tho because of the huge gains in efficiency.

 

[Tink9721]

Another way to look at it is how we did these in the past. You had to walk over to look at the boards with posted wait time

Or even worse, walk all the way to the other side of the park and discover the ride you wanted is closed and/or has a super long wait time. Much easier and faster to just check on my phone!

 

[BroadwayHermione5]

We have a trip planned for early September and haven't been in 10-plus years. I am a little overwhelmed with how much phone usage is now involved! You have to check ride times, reservations, and tons of other stuff. I feel like I'm going to be walking around looking at my phone all day! Is this indeed the case?

I would look into getting a couple of non outlet chargers like a halo to charge every night and then bring during the day to charge. Also LOW BATTERY MODE! Low battery mode is truly a life saver.

 

[Daisy7425]

I think this depends on your touring style. We were there in Jan '19 and didn't really use our phone too much. We did our three fast passes and didn't really check our phone until the three were used up. We only had one ADR each evening so I didn't worry about those until after we were done in the parks.

 

[_19disnA]

We also went before covid when FastPass was still available. We might occasionally look at the phone to verify the time of the next FastPass and someone in our party was able to find a few extra FastPasses once we used up the 3 we had each day. As I understand current practice, there is no FastPass right now due to covid, so one less thing to have to check.

We found even the posted ride times at the entrance to various rides to be all over the map. Some showed a long wait time and we just walked onto the ride, while others were the opposite. Even if you can lookup ride wait times on the phone (didn't know that was a feature), doubt they would be any more accurate then what is posted at the entrance to each ride (which we found unreliable).

Since this is a vacation to us, we spent ZERO time using phones at the park for anything not Disney related and don't think we missed out on anything. Others are far more attached to their phones, but to each their own. We made dinner reservations ahead of time, so there was never a need to check that while at the park. We never used mobile ordering, but sounds like that might be a current practice due to covid.