My Disney Experience
My Disney Experience is the official trip-planning platform of the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, consisting of a website and a mobile app of the same name. Through a single Disney account it brings together the elements of a Walt Disney World holiday — park tickets, hotel reservations, restaurant bookings, ride reservations and photographs — so that they can be arranged before a trip and managed during it. The platform is free to use, although several products booked through it, including Lightning Lane passes and the Memory Maker photo package, are paid extras. My Disney Experience applies only to Walt Disney World; the Disneyland Resort in California has a separate, similarly structured Disneyland app.
Origins
My Disney Experience grew out of Disney's earlier mobile efforts, notably the Mobile Magic app launched with Verizon in 2009, which offered wait times and park information to guests in the parks. A first version of the My Disney Experience app appeared in August 2012, with maps, wait times and dining information for Walt Disney World.
The platform became strategically important on January 7, 2013, when Disney announced MyMagic+, a resort-wide programme — widely reported to have cost around one billion dollars — built from three connected parts: My Disney Experience as the planning interface, FastPass+ as a system for booking ride times in advance, and the MagicBand wristband as the physical key linking a guest to their plans. The website and app rolled out to the general public through 2013, and by early 2014 FastPass+ booking through My Disney Experience had replaced the old paper FastPass system across Walt Disney World.
Accounts and linking
Use of the platform centres on a Disney account. Within it, a guest builds a party using the Family and Friends list, linking the accounts of travelling companions — or managing profiles for children — so that reservations can be made for the whole group at once. Tickets, hotel stays and annual passes are linked to these profiles by confirmation number or by scanning, and it is this linked record that a MagicBand, card or phone reads when a guest enters a park, opens a hotel room door or arrives for a ride reservation.
Features
The functions of My Disney Experience have accumulated steadily:
- Planning and information. Interactive maps of the four theme parks, Disney Springs and the resort hotels, with live wait times, park hours, show schedules and directions between locations.
- Dining. Restaurant reservations, menus, mobile check-in at table-service restaurants, and mobile ordering at many counter-service locations — a feature introduced in 2017 at Satu'li Canteen in Pandora – The World of Avatar and expanded across the resort in the following years.
- Ride reservations. Originally FastPass+ bookings; since October 2021, the Disney Genie planning tools and the purchase and management of Lightning Lane passes, including the advance selections introduced in 2024.
- Hotel functions. Online check-in before arrival, estimated resort bus arrival times (added in 2018), and a digital key that can unlock a hotel room door from a phone, alongside the MagicBand and a plastic Key to the World card.
- Photographs. Viewing, downloading and sharing of Disney PhotoPass pictures, including those linked automatically by MagicBand on some rides, and management of the Memory Maker package.
- In-park services. Mobile merchandise checkout, introduced in 2020, letting guests scan and pay for goods in some shops without using a till; a car locator tool, added in 2022; and, from 2020 to 2024, management of the theme park reservations most guests needed under the Park Pass system.
Role in the modern visit
Because dining reservations, ride selections, hotel functions and park information all sit in the same account, My Disney Experience has become close to essential infrastructure for a Walt Disney World holiday rather than an optional extra. That centrality has also made it a recurring subject of complaint: the app is frequently criticised for glitches on high-demand booking days, for the complexity of its overlapping systems, and for the degree to which a park day now has to be organised in advance through a phone. Disney has continued to revise it, folding new products such as Lightning Lane into the same interface rather than replacing it.