luv
Well-Known Member
After having lived with this a bit, here is my non-tech person impression...
It's pretty. It looks beautiful; a combination of hip, cute and impressively techie. I love the look of the thing.
You can do a lot more with it than you could with Mobile Magic. And it is laid out pretty well. There are a few pathways (for lack of a better word) that I might make easier for getting to, but overall, it is pretty easy for a bonehead user to use. And I'm the Queen of bonehead users who make boneheaded mistakes.
The maps are probably THE BEST maps I've ever seen for WDW, if you're on a computer or iPad. I cannot say enough good things about the maps. If you were lost and carrying an iPad, you'd be all set. Much, much better than the maps they give you that people actually use. Excellent planning maps. But who wants to lug their iPad around the park?
It gets stuck a lot. Not just loading stuff, which takes a little time. I tried to check RFC at AK. I was looking for times to eat. Never got there. The thing got stuck. Not only couldn't I get there, but I couldn't get out. Tried pressing other stuff like Times Guide and Wish List...no go. Tried Back in the upper left corner. Nothing. Tried leaving the app, waiting one minute and going back. Still stuck! That was my most recent experience with being stuck, but there have been others. I don't know the technical word for stuck, though. The only way to fix it when it gets stuck is to press the button on my iPhone or iPad (you know, that one circle button that takes you to what I call the "desktop", but has a new name now) and then do other stuff or turn it off for an extended period of time (not just 20 minutes or an hour) and go back. This happens both in the park and at home in suburban Orlando, on both my iPad and iPhone. I haven't noticed that it happens more in 3G than in wi-Fi, but I didn't keep detailed notes or anything.
It is light years better than MM was and I like the idea of making dining reservations with it in theory, but not in practice. It's still generally much easier and quicker to call, press the buttons, listen to the music and have them tell me to allow 60 minutes to get to a park I'm already in. If it worked well, I'd love it for making dining reservations.
Like other people, I've noticed that it is sometimes off for wait/return times. I don't know about park hours. I always checked Lines for that, out of habit, I guess. It sometimes says things are open that have closed early, as is their schedule. It sometimes says things are closed when they're open. Lines did that to me once, too, for Backlot Tour, but this did it kind of a lot.
Because of the slowness and getting stuck thing, combined with the "sometimes it's right, sometimes it isn't" wait/return thing, I've pretty much stopped using it and have been going to Lines.
I guess I kind of figured, "If I'm going to have to check Lines to make sure the thing is right, I might as well just stick with Lines."
So, for now at least, I'm sticking with Lines.
I do wish to God they'd fix it to make it easier to make dining reservations, though. Almost all the people on the phone are nice, which helps some, but I don't love automated systems and would much rather do the work myself than press 1 and say Yes and wait on hold, etc.
...And those are my (obviously non-professional) initial impressions after trying to use for a while. FWIW (not much).
Hope it gets better.
It's pretty. It looks beautiful; a combination of hip, cute and impressively techie. I love the look of the thing.
You can do a lot more with it than you could with Mobile Magic. And it is laid out pretty well. There are a few pathways (for lack of a better word) that I might make easier for getting to, but overall, it is pretty easy for a bonehead user to use. And I'm the Queen of bonehead users who make boneheaded mistakes.
The maps are probably THE BEST maps I've ever seen for WDW, if you're on a computer or iPad. I cannot say enough good things about the maps. If you were lost and carrying an iPad, you'd be all set. Much, much better than the maps they give you that people actually use. Excellent planning maps. But who wants to lug their iPad around the park?
It gets stuck a lot. Not just loading stuff, which takes a little time. I tried to check RFC at AK. I was looking for times to eat. Never got there. The thing got stuck. Not only couldn't I get there, but I couldn't get out. Tried pressing other stuff like Times Guide and Wish List...no go. Tried Back in the upper left corner. Nothing. Tried leaving the app, waiting one minute and going back. Still stuck! That was my most recent experience with being stuck, but there have been others. I don't know the technical word for stuck, though. The only way to fix it when it gets stuck is to press the button on my iPhone or iPad (you know, that one circle button that takes you to what I call the "desktop", but has a new name now) and then do other stuff or turn it off for an extended period of time (not just 20 minutes or an hour) and go back. This happens both in the park and at home in suburban Orlando, on both my iPad and iPhone. I haven't noticed that it happens more in 3G than in wi-Fi, but I didn't keep detailed notes or anything.
It is light years better than MM was and I like the idea of making dining reservations with it in theory, but not in practice. It's still generally much easier and quicker to call, press the buttons, listen to the music and have them tell me to allow 60 minutes to get to a park I'm already in. If it worked well, I'd love it for making dining reservations.
Like other people, I've noticed that it is sometimes off for wait/return times. I don't know about park hours. I always checked Lines for that, out of habit, I guess. It sometimes says things are open that have closed early, as is their schedule. It sometimes says things are closed when they're open. Lines did that to me once, too, for Backlot Tour, but this did it kind of a lot.
Because of the slowness and getting stuck thing, combined with the "sometimes it's right, sometimes it isn't" wait/return thing, I've pretty much stopped using it and have been going to Lines.
I guess I kind of figured, "If I'm going to have to check Lines to make sure the thing is right, I might as well just stick with Lines."
So, for now at least, I'm sticking with Lines.
I do wish to God they'd fix it to make it easier to make dining reservations, though. Almost all the people on the phone are nice, which helps some, but I don't love automated systems and would much rather do the work myself than press 1 and say Yes and wait on hold, etc.
...And those are my (obviously non-professional) initial impressions after trying to use for a while. FWIW (not much).
Hope it gets better.
