Today I’m excited to announce that we’ve shipped a brand new app for the Walt Disney World version of RideMax!
The app lets you access the plans you’ve created with the web version of RideMax, and you can also create your RideMax plans with the app and access them with the web version. (This might be handy for printing your plans or just viewing them on a larger desktop computer).
I’ll describe the app here in this post, but if you just want to install it and check it out, you can download the iOS version from Apple’s App Store by following this link. The app isn’t available in the Google Play Store just yet, but Android customers willing to take our beta version for a spin will find it here. (And RideMax for Disneyland customers, don’t worry — we’re working on it. 🙂 )
Just by way of disclaimer, I should note that to get any practical use of the app you’ll need to be a RideMax member, but it does support a free “guest mode” with a couple of trivial sample plans if you just want to check out the app’s features.
I show the login screen here just to point out that you would normally come into the app as a RideMax member, having purchased your membership from the RideMax website.
You can also purchase a membership from within the app, but App Store policy doesn’t allow us to offer our normal 30-day money-back guarantee, so if that’s important to you, I recommend using the website to sign up.
When you create your RideMax plan, once you’ve chosen your visit date, you next choose the park you want to visit. As you can see in the image above, the park selection screen also contains our recommendation for which park to visit on that specific date. In the web version of RideMax this recommendation info is a bit buried in the “Tips & Hints” pages, but in the app it’s surfaced directly now as part of the normal plan creation flow.
In creating your RideMax plan, you basically work through the three sections shown above: Attractions, Breaks, and Plan Options. (If FastPass+ ever makes a return, that will be included as a fourth section, as will a “FastPass” section in the Disneyland version of the app.)
Choosing your attractions is easy — just click the “plus” sign for the number of times you want a specific ride included in your plan. You can sort this list either alphabetically, by “star rating,” or by park area.
The app allows you to schedule up to five “breaks” in your day, for meals or other “non-attraction” activities, just as the web version does.
All of the normal RideMax plan options are available in the app, including the plan name, the time at which you want to start and end your day, your touring speed, and whether you prefer to do any “water rides” during the warmer time of the day.
Just for the sake of completeness, the above shows what the FastPass+ options screen looks like. Although not available in the app currently while Disney has the FP+ system offline, the RideMax code is ready to go if/when Disney decides to reactivate the system.
The plans themselves are designed to be easy to read while visiting the park, including our wait estimates highlighted with the large font.
The plans also contain tips which we hope you’ll find useful as you make your way through the park, including our arrival time and/or arrival strategy recommendations, and tips for specific attractions, as shown above for Buzz Lightyear.
One of the things I’m most excited about with the app is RideMax Chat, something ONLY available in the app version of RideMax. And one of the coolest features of Chat is the ability to share plans in the chat discussions, as shown in FlyingTink’s post above.
If you see a plan you like that someone else posted in Chat, you also have the option of copying the plan to your own plan list, as shown above.
One reason I’m excited about this “plan sharing” ability is because it gives RideMax members the chance to help each other out.
We’re lucky enough to have many “Disney touring experts” in our membership base, but there are also a lot of folks who may be visiting a Disney park for the first time. In cases where one of our “newbie” members may be struggling, I’m hoping this sharing feature will allow some of the more expert users to chime in with suggestions to help — or even to take the “newbie plan” as a starting point, modify it according to the more advanced user’s experience level, and post the resulting plan back to the chat group for copying, etc.
I’m also very happy with the fact that the app will run on devices with all sorts of screen sizes, from devices like the iPad, shown above, through the various standard phone sizes…
…all the way down to tiny devices, such as the 3.3″Â Palm Phone PVG100, where although the section of “visible plan” might be limited, the lightweight nature of the device might be considered a valid trade-off for some users.
Of course, with this initial release of the app we’re NOT finished! In fact, I’d see this first app version as a sort of starting point for a new, refreshed RideMax experience.
If you have features you’d like to see us add, be sure to drop a note in RideMax chat!
Again, those app download links are:
Enjoy!
