App Smart: Guides to Legoland, Disney, Madame Tussauds and More - App Smart

In the digital era, your smartphone is the solution to theme park woes. If you are a habitual theme-parkgoer and based in the United States or Britain, you will probably love the Thrill Seeker app for iOS ($4.99). It offers detailed information on numerous parks in Florida, including Adventure Island in Tampa and Walt Disney World and Wet ’n Wild in Orlando, as well as major British parks.

The app is simple and list-based. You start by picking a theme park; some of the bigger parks have subsections showing their different services. Tapping one of these takes you to a list of the park’s features and services, like roller coasters, sideshow stalls and restrooms. To make it easier to navigate, you can filter this list so you see, for example, only rides or bathrooms. Each feature has its own page with a brief description, and sometimes a photo to help you identify it. There are also written histories for some rides, which may help you while away the minutes in line.

Coaster fans will appreciate the detailed specifications, like height, speed and cost, given for some rides. There is even information about the engineers who built the rides. One section shows restrictions like those on rider height, and another offers some details, like whether the ride takes a photo of you or lacks disabled access. The app includes written directions and maps to help you get to your chosen ride or service, and you can use the “nearby” button to get a full list of what is close to your current position.

Thrill Seeker is a powerful app. For some parks, it even has alerts for long wait times at individual rides, and you can command your iPhone to tell you when the wait time drops.

The one criticism you could make of this app is that it is a little unexciting — too list-based to enthrall the younger members of your group.If you prefer a more visual and, perhaps, theme-parklike experience in an app, the numerous apps for Merlin Entertainments are all similar and fun. Merlin, the world’s second-largest theme park operator after Disney, contracted a small company to create the official apps for many of its parks, including Legoland in Florida and Germany, Alton Towers in Britain and various Madame Tussauds locations.

These apps are much more graphical than Thrill Seeker. Their home pages are filled with icons for sections that tell you about rides, park services, special events and offers, and local weather conditions. There are also some simple games, which should keep your children amused if you have to wait.

For navigation, the apps have satellite-style maps with pinned points of interest and cute, graphical maps from the theme parks’ own printed material. These are easier to use than paper copies because you can reveal the locations of destinations like cafes or stores at the push of a button. Some of the apps offer an augmented-reality view, which may help you identify the direction and distance to the rides or services you are looking for.

The apps are free and available on both iPhones and phones running the Android operating system (although the list of parks is more restricted on Android), and your children may find them more fun to use than the sober Thrill Seeker.

There are many more theme parks than are listed here, and more roller coasters than can fit in this column. If you are a coaster fan and simply want detailed information, check out the free Rides! app for the iPhone, which claims to have details on over 4,000 coasters around the world, including 32 in Africa. Organized by nation, the app provides many detailed specifications, including user-submitted photos, and can help you find information on rides in your vicinity.

The company behind Rides! also makes a roller-coaster diary app, CoasterCounter ($1.99). It includes the same information but also lets you log and rate every ride you take, and it connects to an online community where you can share your stats and photos.

Quick Call

The Weather Channel bestowed special attention on Nokia’s Lumia Windows phones this week with the newest version of its app, which will be available exclusively on Lumia phones for a while. The app has more languages and features, like personalized lifestyle-sensitive alerts and augmented reality. There is even a dash of social media: you can see what weather your friends are experiencing and chat with them. You can also submit your photos of the weather to appear in the augmented-reality section.