Cell phone reception at parks?

[Mom+4]

DH is reluctant to let our DS16 go off alone in the parks. I have assured him that it is perfectly safe and besides DS will have his cell phone and can call us if needed. The question is, how good is the cell phone service in the parks and from park to park? Specifically, we all carry Cingular phones, if that makes a difference.

TIA

 

[CDSTapisRouge]

As long as you are not inside a building (show/ride/restaurant, etc) Cell Phone service is fine in the parks. We never have an issue with our phones (we have Nextel, But we previously had T-Mobile which also worked fine).

 

[kg66]

Hi there,
We used our Nextel phones with and without the Walkie Talkie (mike) feature in all the parks without any problems.

 

[JulielovesDisney]

I have Verizon I only had a problem at certain resorts, especially Old Key West and inside a building or ride.

 

[Tricialiv]

Our only problem was hearing it. I had mine in a pocket of stroller. I should have gotten a clip to wear it. We had verison .

 

[wildzootv]

ah! A question I was going to ask as well (sprint) so thank you for asking it!

 

[ZoZo]

Just went for a week at the end of October, and all four adults in our party used cell phones.

I have Cingular service and found that (for the most part) it worked great, especially when outside (as mentioned in another post). There were a couple of "dead spots," like inside The Land at Epcot (no reception at all when standing in line for Soarin'). I was very happy with our ability to communicate - we called each other 5 or 6 times a day, since we often separated to do different things. First time I had tried to do that, and I thought it worked great!

(One tip, though - it's hard to remember to change your ring feature to "vibrate" when on a quieter attraction - but important to be courteous to others. I also kept forgetting to turn the ringer back on after having the phone on vibrate, and missed a couple of calls. Oh, well, still totally worth it to use cell phones!)

 

[disneysteve]

We just got back. We used our Cingular phones various places on property with no trouble. Only problem, as others mentioned, is hearing the phone. Even with a belt clip I still missed a couple of calls. You just don't realize how loud the ambient noise is in the parks.

 

[bdcp]

I had mine on manner mode(vibrate) and it went off a couple of weeks ago in the America Pavilion at Epcot during the show so even inside some buildings, reception is fine. It also rang at MK. My 2 DS are away at college and hardly ever call, but my 19 yr old had a "computer" emergency and called me twice. Like I could do anything about it 900 miles away from him. We have Verizon.

 

[SandrA9810]

Cingular user here. We've never had a problem any where we go. Although I was talking to my grandmother inside the Land. It was alright, but the crowd noise was too much and she couldn't hear me too well.

 

[JerseyJ]

Did anyone have experience w/ Verizon reception in CBR?

 

[byoung]

Cingular works good

 

[PIRATEGIRL007]

We have Alltel and it worked fine. Didn't use it much, but was able to get txt and such when we were in the parks.

BTW: I work for sprint (well actually its sprint/nextel now) and our traveling buddies last year brought thier sprint phones and they worked just fine in MK, Epcot, and AK. We didn't use them at all in MGM. so I don't know about that, but as far as our systesm at work are showing you should be fine there, too.

 

[Lauralee131]

We're bringing walkie-talkies with us...they should work fine and I've heard from others that they do.

I can't bring myself to bring my cell phone into "my happy place"...I could guarantee you that my job will call - almost daily - even when I tell them I'M ON VACATION! Can you believe that my boss actually called me on my cell phone when I was in freakin' ARUBA??!? No way I'm taking a chance on this one...never going to leave the hotel safe!!!!!!!!!

Lauralee131

 

[TSR6]

Nextel by far works the best, mostly due to the towers that are actually on property.