A (sort of FP+) question

[pad406]

As there is WiFi in the parks now, is it reliable and widely available. With the new App for FP+ I am guessing that it might get much more heavily used particularly for us from across the pond. I'll have a US sim in my phone anyway, but have found on previous visits that the mobile internet was never great in the parks.

 

[flatlandcycle]

Wifi is fair in the parks. If last week's line of thunderstorms are any indicator, none of MDE will work during high volume usage. We are waiting to see what happens during the next big weather front.

 

[redrosesix]

It isn't what we're used to at home, where there is free wifi pretty much everywhere in our city. It dropped frequently in MK -- it was kind of crowded so probably not enough band width. And most places it was very very slow. The wait times app worked ok on it, but I had trouble changing FP's or anything else.

It worked great at the resorts but there were dead spots around the pool.

 

[ParrotBill]

In the Parks, a massive rollout of a new distributed antenna system is just being completed by AT&T. I believe it is active now or will be very soon.

Hidden antennas all over the parks will increase capacity and performance by a big factor.

AT&T is a GSM system so it should be compatible with phones from across the Pond. Good idea to get a US SIM!

Before anyone asks, I have not heard if the antenna system is multi-mode and so I do not know if it will help with Verizon and Sprint performance. I would hope Disney was not short sighted and demanded a multi-carrier antenna system.

 

[lmmantini]

It was slow and hard to stay connected when we were there in December. I was glad I had all of my info printed out instead of relying on the MDE app.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

The wifi is so awful I shut it off and rely on my data plan instead.

 

[pad406]

In the Parks, a massive rollout of a new distributed antenna system is just being completed by AT&T. I believe it is active now or will be very soon.

Hidden antennas all over the parks will increase capacity and performance by a big factor.

AT&T is a GSM system so it should be compatible with phones from across the Pond. Good idea to get a US SIM!

Before anyone asks, I have not heard if the antenna system is multi-mode and so I do not know if it will help with Verizon and Sprint performance. I would hope Disney was not short sighted and demanded a multi-carrier antenna system.

SO get an AT&T sim then

The wifi is so awful I shut it off and rely on my data plan instead.

Hmm, I feared this might be an answer.

 

[MouseyMin]

I had better experiences with the WiFi than the other posters in this thread. I was there twice during the winter, but during low season. The only park where I had problems was the Magic Kingdom. The wifi in EPCOT, Studios, and Animal Kingdom was fine - fairly fast, in fact. I had no problems changing fastpasses in those 3 parks. The worst wifi by far was at the hotel (Port Orleans).

 

[ktlm]

It was horrible when we were there last fall. The MDE app would not work at all on the wifi, and we could barely access the internet with it. It was clear it was overloaded due to FP+/MDE etc. We found that we often had to manually go into our phones and shut wifi off to get the internet or MDE towork. (not that MDE worked much even that way while we were there. We found that MDE would work okay at the resorts but barely worked at all in the parks, I'm sure it was overloaded). We have AT&T and 4G worked fine to access the internet in the parks- as long as we had wifi totally disabled.

 

[kay1864]

I used MDE twice during our 5-day stay. MDE worked great (but honestly I don't remember if the signal was WiFi or 3G at the time).

Then again, I already had our FP's built in to our RideMax touring plan. No need to make lots of changes to our FP's--both changes were b/c the ride had a short standby, so we didn't need to use the FP.