Complimentary Wi-Fi available in guest rooms at select resorts.

[Oglet]

Yeah Disney is in a separate boat though compared to other hotels, because they essentially have all the hotels on site, and their hotels even the "budget" ones do offer substantial perks over the $30/night no-tell motel right outside the resort grounds. So they can get away with not giving the perk of free wifi (or internet mind you) with the value resorts

They are going to roll it out to the values eventually, all they are doing right now is looking after their higher profit guests first. They are simply starting at the top and working their way down the food chain.

 

[mom2rtk]

Maybe Disney finally realized it's now the 21st century!

Too bad the values are still in the dark ages!

 

[TheBigFig]

it's about time!

 

[BoSoxin10]

Hopefully over time this will expand property wide and you will be able to access Wi-fi everywhere. But I'll take this as a start!

 

[ChloroFiend]

Going to WiFi vs. making the hardwired ports free is actually a good forward thinking move; tablets like the iPad need wireless in order to get network access.

As far as wireless dead spots go, that all depends on how many access points are deployed and where they put them in. Fully saturating a building is a pretty easy activity, as long as you design, scope, and implement it properly.

 

[rodkenrich]

.

 

[brunette8706]

Hello All!

I think this is a great idea. I'm wondering, though, why Disney is all of the sudden giving their guests FREE WI FI? Is it to attract more people to their resorts?

Brunette

 

[Polydweller]

Using it here at the Poly and noticed the first oddity. They seem to be blocking YouTube. Imbedded video in Facebook always shows as blocked because it's r rated, I guess shame on NASA and the PGA Tour. A little too zealous there Disney.

If you try to go directly to YouTube it never connects.

 

[ChloroFiend]

Using it here at the Poly and noticed the first oddity. They seem to be blocking YouTube. Imbedded video in Facebook always shows as blocked because it's r rated, I guess shame on NASA and the PGA Tour. A little too zealous there Disney.

While I'd definitely throw a flag on content filtering due to possible rating issues, I can see a reason TO block it. Bandwidth conservation. If you're got everyone streaming media such as video, audio, etc, the connection can easily be saturated...especially in a densely-populated area such as a hotel.

 

[pilferk]

The night before we left AKV (Kidani), a WDW-GUEST unsecured, wireless connection suddenly appeared on my laptop.

I didn't test it but it looked legit.

One word of warning:

IF the connection was legit, and IF it's really unsecured, going forward.....be careful what you choose to access across that network. It would be relatively easy to deploy a packet sniffer and start ferretting out traffic. Just be careful. Making sure you have a software firewall installed (as well as anti-spyware measures and an anti-virus application) would be the MINIMUM I would suggest to help protect you. Even with that, I'd stay away from the personal financial information while on the wireless connection.

 

[ChloroFiend]

IF the connection was legit, and IF it's really unsecured, going forward.....be careful what you choose to access across that network. It would be relatively easy to deploy a packet sniffer and start ferretting out traffic. Just be careful. Making sure you have a software firewall installed (as well as anti-spyware measures and an anti-virus application) would be the MINIMUM I would suggest to help protect you. Even with that, I'd stay away from the personal financial information while on the wireless connection.

Quoted for emphasis. Packet sniffing a wireless network is trivially easy. I do not recommend (as a computer security professional) considering any network with less than WPA2 security as secure. When connecting to a network, it should tell you what type of security mechanism is present (none, WEP, WPA, or WPA2).

When using any wireless network, it's of paramount importance to ensure that you are using SSL (ie, sites that start with https) for anything requesting a password.

Firewalls and antivirus may provide protection for your own computer, but do nothing to safeguard anything shipped across the network....but yes, they're still a good idea.

 

[Polydweller]

YouTube is now working at the Poly as of 4:00 pm. Probably part of the testing process. It hadn't worked up til now. Speeds on YouTube seem quite good.

 

[Figment632]

About time about 10 years late but better late than never .

Next step WIFI in the parks and rapid cell phone recharge stations.

 

[skier_pete]

I also file this under "It's about time!" I am shocked that hotels charging guests $400+ a night have the guts to then charge $10 a day for land-based network access in 2011. And I am very much a "leave technology at home" type of guy, but I also live in the real world.

 

[MrsRapunzelRider]

All resorts will need this as WDW moves to the next generation reservation system.

What's this? I did a search but nothing relevant came up.

 

[Oglet]

About time about 10 years late but better late than never .

Next step WIFI in the parks and rapid cell phone recharge stations.

WIFI Is available in certain parts of some parks on a very limited, probably unintentional for the most part. I can think of several locations at DAK where its possible to hookup on wifi.