Are you planning on traveling to France anytime soon?  How about Paris?  As you well know, there are plenty of other attractions around the city, other than the Eiffel Tower, including a theme park based around a certain cartoon mouse known the world over.  Opened in 1992, Disneyland Paris sees over fifteen million visitors every year.  So wouldn’t it seem logical that at least a few of those folks might be iPhone owners?  To address this previously neglected audience, the geniuses behind the biggest tourist attraction in all of Europe are once again proving, “there’s an app for that.”

The newly introduced Disneyland Paris app is designed to be your guide to both of the Disney theme parks housed within the resort, as well as your one-stop solution for any questions you could ever possibly have.  Among the key features are interactive maps that can point out places of interest in the parks, through your 3GS or iPhone 4′s actual camera, augmented reality style.  This in itself would be awesome enough, but that is merely the tip of the iceberg.

Along with the obvious benefits of an app like this, Disney has went above and beyond, providing features such as the ability to take a live look in on the expected wait time for any attraction in real-time. You can even go as far as to use the app to schedule a daily plan for each park, complete with push notifications if you just so happen to break your schedule.

Whoever came up with the idea for this software needs a hefty pat on the back.  It would be impossible to compute the sheer number of hours spent waiting in line for a ride, when a simple check of this app could tell you that three other rides nearby have no wait time at all.  This is a must-have for any traveler destined to don the magical mouse ears.

FREE!

Disneyland Paris

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-11-03 :: Category: Travel

While there are hundreds of travel and city guide apps for iPhone, it looks like mTrip will blow them away with its unique spin on the traditional tour guide app.

While mTrip offers users the default sightseeing tips and direction tools for a location, it goes one step further helping users plan their trip itinerary. Better than that, the app can even create an itinerary for you based on your preferences, trip duration and accommodations. Daily schedules can be edited at the user’s discretion and the app is even intelligent enough to list attractions based on their opening hours and proximity to the user.

Once you arrive at your destination you can make use of augmented reality to see where sites are in relation to your current location as well as point out restaurants, bars, hotels and other points of interest. Travelers can also swap tips on locations via the app by adding notes and viewing those of others.

All of these features make mTrip a very useful and fully featured tool but its ability to function offline is the real jewel in its crown. Your itinerary can be customized and reworked without an internet connection and augmented reality also functions in the absence of a network. Pretty much the only feature that requires the internet is the fun little postcard tool that allows users to send messages to friends from their vacation via email or Facebook.

mTrip travel guides are currently available for London, Paris, Amsterdan, Berlin, Rome, Barcelona, New York, San Francisco and Chicago in a choice of five languages. Many more locations are also planned with more information available here.

If you’re heading to one of the above locations, tack another $5.99 on to the cost of your trip for the ultimate travel experience and do it quickly before the app returns to its regular price of $9.99

$5.99

Barcelona Guide - mTrip

iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2010-06-21 :: Category: Travel

Economists call it a positive externality, we just call it cool. Lonely Planet, the accredited travel and information guide, is offering thirteen of its city guides for free on the App Store due to the Icelandic volcano. The applications, which offer you offline maps, geo-coded points of interest and location-based navigation, usually cost between $10 and $15. Hurry, the offer ends on 22nd April and we can be pretty sure that it won’t happen again soon. Then again, none of us are volcanologists.

Cities available: Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Istanbul, London, Moscow, Munich, Paris, Rome, Stockholm and Vienna.

[via MacWorld]