I’ll be heading down to Walt Disney World late tonight in order to spend a couple of days at Star Wars Weekends.  I hope to gather info about character locations and schedules to help you guys have an even better experience at SWW.  (If you are interested in helping, just ask a CM when you get in line what time the next set(s) are for your favorite character.  You can Tweet me, respond to this thread or KtP Facebook me.

So, here’s the deal…I won’t be wearing my usual Character Locator shirt because I want Star Wars character photos wearing a Star Wars shirt.  IF you can locate me at Hollywood Studios (or any other park), I will have some special Limited Time KtP Magic to share with you.

In addition, keep an eye on www.characterlocator.com  (bookmark it) as we will be doing a Soft Opening for the general public this weekend.  There may still be a few wrinkles to iron out, but it’s pretty close to being finished.  The Soft Opening preview will be totally free, but you’ll need to register to view all the data and help us test the registration system on a larger scale.

Locate KtP for a free gift this weekend!

Don’t worry, my actual house is in its usual messy state.  Well, except for the areas my wife cleaned today.  That reminds me that I need to tell my oldest daughter to clean her room.  I wonder if she’ll read this on Twitter

I’ve been working on adding a great deal of addition information to the blog.  I began the blog with the intention of helping people locate characters at Walt Disney World, then many of my friends began requesting the weekly entertainment

schedules, so I started doing that and updating every Saturday night.  Then friends asked if we could turn our character schedules into an app.  I really wanted to put show schedules in that app, but it wouldn’t work, so we started all over and made it killer instead!  Time has come to add more data to the Blogola.  One of the reasons that I chose a new theme was to allow more links on the top bar and prominently feature other items that are most used on the top left.

I’ve added new links across the top to make it easy to find what you’ll need to plan your visit to Walt Disney World and I’m working on adding the content to those areas.

Here’s some of what I’m up to:

• ATTRACTIONS - I’ll be adding descriptions and information about all the attractions in Disney World.  Nothing is there currently, but will be filled in soon.
• CHARACTERS
  • You’ll find all the same great character schedules, the master list and interaction tips.  I recently added possible locations for characters at Disneyland and I added the Water Park characters to the drop down to make them easy to find.  I added top menus to help with navigation.
• DEALS
  • In this area you’ll find great deals like free dining, room discounts and in the future I’ll add Disneyland and Cruise Line deals.
• DINING
  • Phase one is to get all the menus from the four parks, then add all the other counter service and table service restaurants.  I have no intention of adding carts, too much work for little benefit to people.  In the future I probably won’t add beverages because it takes a lot of time to tell you there’s coke, coffee, water etc…at every restaurant.  I’m sure you’ll find something to drink
  • I also moved the character meals information from Characters to Dining.
• ENTERTAINMENT
  • Renamed this area, but it’s the same great content.  I still need to add reviews for different shows and I’ll be changing the layout.
• EVENTS
  • I currently have placed Star Wars Weekends here to make it easy to find and navigate and soon I’ll add the other event info for things like Flower and Garden, Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party, Mickey’s Very Merry Christmas Party and the like.  I’m turning them all into mini-sites to aid navigation.  I’m doing away with the icons that I used on the old site and moving to a cleaner link them with site colors.
• HOTELS
  • Soon I’ll have information on all the hotels, so you can choose which hotel is best for your family.
• HOURS
  • I added Park Hours for all 4 major parks.  I’ll work on water parks later, but that one is pretty easy because they don’t change much.
• TICKETS
  • I added all the ticket prices for Walt Disney World Tickets.
• TOURING
  • Soon I’ll be adding my Touring Plans.  I’ll be re-writing the existing character ones based on current schedules and adding plans that offer characters and rides!

Did I miss anything that you’ll need to find easily to plan a GREAT Walt Disney World trip?

We’ve made the decision for now to include the Counter Service and Table Service restaurants with their appetizers, entrees, desserts and regular drinks.  In a later release we will offer Food Carts and look into ways to expand outside the four parks, but this should suffice for now for those trekking through the four main parks.  Next time, I’ve considered adding links that easily separate Counter, Table and Carts, but not in this release.

Epcot Dining locations at a glance. I’ve failed to mention in the last two posts that you can easily change the sort from “By Name” to “By Land.” The “By Next Time” feature works well for characters and shows, but is pretty useless in dining

Dining defaults to the menu for each location. You can see an image and a map too! (Who needs GPS and Auto Location, we have a MAP!  All GPS does is eat battery faster than Wifi, then 4G would be next. We’d like to have your battery charged so you can use the app!)

All your favorite gastronomic choices only a thumb tap away.!

DDP snacks are listed with a little icon, spiffy huh?

Yesterday I introduced you to the some of the new features for the Characters area of the new Character Locator app that will be released to the Android market on Saturday, May 4th.  (We are also working on a Mobile Site that will help with the iThing, Blackberry, Windows phones and other assorted stuff.  While we work on iThing native app, this should fill the bill for a while.)  I’ll write more about the Mobile Site later this week.

Today, let’s look at the “Shows.”  After choosing Magic Kingdom, you merely click Shows on the bottom bar and you will receive the “At a glance” view of the current shows.  It was 10:23 a.m., so you can see what’s available at that time.

At a glance will show you all the current and upcoming shows in any park.

Show schedule in detail.  Of course, I chose a pirate photo.  Arrrr!  (Do you like my new right side icon???

Details about the show and best times to see.  I corrected the spelling issue.

The Shows section will also offer the I SAW, Wait, Share and Camera features that I introduced yesterday.  With this app you’ll be able to track every attraction you experience on your trip or merely see every accurate schedule at a finger tip’s touch.

Show schedules updated every Saturday night when WDW releases them.