Walt Disney World: It's Not Just for Kids

This post is part of the Disney Blog
Carnival. Go check it out! Based upon the awesome Betamouse Podcast, I thought I’d discuss the techier side of Universal Orlando.  Universal Orlando recently took down their mobile site, so I found that the Android App Ridehopper to be my only option.  I’ll review RideHopper more in a later post, but I found it pretty meh.  Henry from Betamouse had said he wasn’t impressed with it, but as he isn’t exactly a neutral source, I wanted to try it for myself.  I paid for the paid version, which had what was probably my favorite feature:  park hours, whenever I needed to find out Universal Orlando or Islands of Adventure I could just fire up the Android Futurebox and find them out.  The wait times app was a mixed bag-while it did ok on general crowd info, I would often findthat wait times were off by a good 15-20 minutes.

This was my first trip with a future box.  I studied up on the Betamouse Episode on bringing your Smartphone in the parks.  I set up one of my HTC Sense home screens to be switches to allow me to turn airplane mode, mobile internet, and gps on and off with a touch.  I turned airplane mode on when I went on a dark ride, especially if it meant I was storing my bag in a locker.  I also reduced my screen’s brightness.  I picked up the Duracell Instant Power Charger for USB Compatible Devices, which was a nice external power source that fit easily in my park bag.

I found that the Royal Pacific felt much more tech savvy that the on-site Disney resorts.  While in-room internet connectivity does cost an arm and a leg, RPR had wifi as well as corded Internet access.  Also, RPR and Portofino Bay have free wifi in their lobbies, and plenty of plugs to charge your electronics.  There is even lounge area with cards encouraging you to stay and surf in the Internet at RPR.  Also, my hotel bill was e-mailed to me automatically after check out.  Finding outlets in my hotel room was do-able but not great-I really wish all hotels would switch to having the lamps with plugs on them or other easily accessible outlets.

The big techy thing that was anticipated in my trip was the tech in Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey.  Truth be told, it’s a great ride, but I honestly wouldn’t claim it to be a game-changer.  In the queue, they have Harry, Ron and Hermione talking to you in Musion Eyeliner technology.  Musion Eyeliner is seriously cool technology-it really and truly looks like they are there in 3-D.  However, outside of that, the technology did not seem much more complicated than in the Amazing Adventures of Spiderman-the blending of video and audio anamatronics is cool, but not new.

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