Tired of waiting in long Disney World lines? There's an app for that

By Etan Horowitz |Orlando Sentinel

Like most people, Brent Pope, of Jacksonville, gets annoyed by long lines at Walt Disney World.

So after Pope, 44, was laid off from his job at an ad agency a few months ago, he decided to do something about it. He developed "Wait Times" — an iPhone application that will tell you how long the lines are at the Magic Kingdom.

Approved for sale by Apple this week, the "app" depends on other users to supply wait-time information. They choose from a list of rides and then enter or view the wait for that ride. The more information people report, the more useful Pope's 99-cent app becomes.

"Every time I go to the parks, I walk off a ride and think, What do we do next?'" said Pope, who has four children ranging in age from 2 to 13. "The one thing that is so frustrating is you have to walk all the way across the park and when you get there, it's a 90-minute wait."

Although Disney displays wait times for rides on boards throughout its parks, the company does not post that information online. Pope is betting that iPhone-totting Disney guests are willing to pay for the app so they can instantly access wait time information on their iPhones.

He's also planning to release Wait Times apps for the other Disney parks in Orlando and California as well as for Universal Studios in Orlando and California.

Pope isn't a computer programmer, and until recently, he did not own an iPhone.

But he was able to build the app by paying a team of developers to make it for him.

Already, there are several other iPhone apps that offer wait time information for rides at Disney parks.

And later this year, Disney and Verizon Wireless plan to unveil a cell phone application that will allow Verizon customers to see official wait times, locate shows, restaurants and characters and better plan their visits.

In the past few months, lots of people like Pope have tried to cash in on the iPhone app frenzy. More than 1 billion iPhone apps have been downloaded since the App Store debuted in summer 2008.

But Pope said he doesn't expect to strike it rich. "I'd like to see a steady stream of income from this set of apps and let it be a launching board for other projects," Pope said.

For the app to be useful to Disney guests, Pope said only about a dozen people need to be entering wait times at once. To make sure it gets off to a good start, he plans to visit at least one Disney park a day for the entire summer to enter wait times into the app.

"Basically, it will be bring-your-kids-to-work day every day for me," Pope said.

Etan Horowitz can be reached at ehorowitz@orlandosentinel .com or 407-420-5447.