My Review of Character Locator: A Website to Help You Plan Your Next Disney Vacation
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Planning a trip to Disney World? There’s an online tool called Character Locator, which promises to help you “play more” and “wait less” during your next trip to the park!With Character Locator’s detailed park information, like character and show schedules, ride information, and more, you’ll be able to save time during your Disney World trip.
I’ll show you how the Character Locator website works. And help you decide whether you could benefit from using it on your next Disney vacation!
Disney Character Locator
Link: Disney Character Locator
Character Locator is meant to help you plan a great trip to Disney World. The site provides information like character schedules, show schedules, ride information, park hours, and more.Using the site is fairly straightforward, plus it’s desktop AND mobile friendly.
From the homepage, you can select the park you plan to visit by clicking the park’s name.
From there you’ll see a list of characters. And you can filter the information by shows, rides, and dining too.
I chose the Magic Kingdom for my search. You can see the park’s hours at the top of the page and a long list of characters below.
But if you wanted to see the dining options in the Magic Kingdom, for example, you could click the “Dining” tab.
To find character information, just click on the character you want to see. Then you’ll be able to see more detailed information, like where they’ll be, the times they’ll be available, whether you can get an autograph or picture with them, and more.
Plus, you can click on the park map from within the site that will show you where the character, show, ride, or restaurant is located. And it will tell you whether or not a ride or event is FastPass+ eligible too!
I also like that Character Locator offers a number of suggested park touring plans. That could be especially useful for folks who have never been to Disney World before. 😉
Drawbacks
The main drawback of Character Locator is that the majority of information on the site is “premium content.” So you’ll have to have a subscription to access it. But that’s not a big deal, because a year subscription is only ~$8.
Once you pay for a subscription, you’ll be able to see information for every character, ride, show, and restaurant in Disney World. And have access to information like restaurant menus and touring plans. That’s certainly worth ~$8!
Other than that, the site is a little hard to navigate and looks outdated. Especially when compared to Disney’s app (though that’s no surprise!).
Similar Websites & Apps
I’ve written about Touringplans.com, a website that helps visitors by providing park itineraries, ride wait times, projected crowds, restaurant menus and prices, and hotel reviews. And Touringplans’ app, Lines, that can help you experience more rides at the park. It also lists characters’ specific show times, dates, and show wait times. But you have to pay for the service (~$15 per year).There’s also the My Disney Experience app, for both Apple and Android devices. This seems to be the most comprehensive app of them all. Plus, it’s free!
The My Disney Experience app will show you ride wait times, show times, park hours, restroom locations, and character locations and times. And the neat thing is, you can get directions from one park location to another within the app, because there’s an interactive map built in!
More Disney Posts
Here’s a list of our Disney related posts, to help you start planning your next Disney vacation!
- 5 Nights + 2 Airline Tickets to Disney World From 2 Cards
- Your Fairytale Trip to Disney Doesn’t Have to Cost a Fortune!
- You Can Now Get a $200 Bonus With the Disney Premier Credit Card
- Save 10% at Disney World and Disneyland With Chase Debit Card
- Disney World: 5 Great Hotels to Book With Points
- Best Ways to Fly to Orlando With Miles & Points (or Small Money!)
- This Is the Time-Saving Tool Experienced Disney Vacationers Use
- Experience More Rides (and Less Waiting) at Disney With Touringplans.com Mobile App
- Is It a Good Idea to Save for Your Disney Trip Using a Disney Vacation Account?
- New Trick to Consolidate Your Disney Gift Cards!
Bottom Line
Character Locator is a mobile-friendly website built to help you plan and save time during your next trip to Disney World.It provides a lot of great information, like character locations, show schedules, ride information, and dining options. But you’ll have to pay for an ~$8 subscription to see most of the content. And Disney’s own app, My Disney Experience, is free, easier to use, and provides even more information!
Do you have a special tool or app you use when planning your trip to any of the Disney theme parks? Tell me about it in the comments!
Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)
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