Walt Disney World and Disneyland soon will offer a new way help you find your car at the end of the day.
If you're like me, you might take a photo of the nearest parking lot character sign as soon as you step out of your car after arriving at Disney. That way, all you have to do is look on your camera roll at the end of the day to know where you parked.
The downsides to that are 1) having to scroll past all those photos and videos you probably took that day to find that one, lonely photo from the parking lot. And 2) you still need to figure out how to get back from the theme park exit to that sign you photographed.
Disney's new solution is to add a car locator function to the Disneyland app and Walt Disney World's My Disney Experience app. The new function will be sponsored by State Farm because, why not? The function will launch at Walt Disney World this summer and then at Disneyland sometime after that, later this year.
Once you arrive, just open the My Disney Experience or Disneyland app, then tap the car locator card that will appear on the app's home screen. If you enable Bluetooth on your phone and location services on the app, Disney said that the app will note your parking location automatically so that it can help direct you to it at the end of the day. (And if you don't enable all that, you can fill in the information manually.)
Will this help more Disney guests find their cars more easily at the end of the day? For experienced visitors who have the parking lots and garages memorized, probably not. But for new visitors, this new function might help.
But what Disney really wants here is to use the promise of this function to get more new visitors to open their My Disney Experience or Disneyland app first thing, just as soon as they park their car. Don't open that camera or Notes app - just go straight to the My Disney Experience or Disneyland app, where Disney then can direct you toward the Genie day planner, as well as the various Lightning Lane upgrades that the app sells.
Like every other app developer, Disney wants its theme park apps to be sticky - something that users want to open and keep using throughout the day. By starting with guests' arrival, Disney is hoping that offering a car locator will provide one more reason for its fans to use its official theme park apps.
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I can’t imagine that this feature would be a remote improvement to taking a pic or dropping a pin on your favorite map app.
This will certainly be appreciated at Epcot, which is tied with SeaWorld Orlando for most easily forgettable parking lot names at all theme parks.
Dammit, Russell, you beat me to it!
Just text your location to a member in your party. Also, Universal has had a feature like this in their app for years.
I nearly always take a photo, but if I'm visiting a new park, I just turn on the GPS tracking. Simple really.
I can't see this taking off, but if it does I'll miss all those beeping cars at the end of a day ... LOL
I'm too dense to remember where I parked my car but I'm supposed to remember there's a service on a smart phone app that will remember it for me?
Derp, derp!
this will become obsolete when brightline service begins operation!
too soon? :)
Dropping a pin might work at Walt Disney World, but it’s pretty much useless in the Disneyland parking garages. Someday, we will have mapping that considers three dimensions!
I've always used a pin on google maps and take a picture of which floor we are on at Universal. Disney definitely needs to rename 2 of their lots Itchy and Scratchy though! That would be amazing.
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Or just park in the Itchy Lot and recognize that you'll never see your car again.