How's the wifi in the parks these days?

[pigletto]

We're leaving in a week. For the first time ever, we'll be bringing our phones into the park with us. We normally put them in the safe on day one and don't take them out until we leave. I refuse to add a data plan I can use in the U.S.
I already went completely over budget for this trip for various reasons. I always bring a calling card if I need to make long distance calls, and check my emails in the evening. That's enough real world intruding on my vacation.

So, the plan is to put our phones on wifi only and use that for MDE and changing any fastpass+ reservations we need to. I was just wondering if anyone has used it in the parks recently and if it's working well? I suppose our other option is the kiosks.

 

[Ted in Halifax]

Worked well for me in July, surprisingly well.

 

[Disneylover99]

It was a bit spotty for us in August (especially AK). It was better in October though (except we never made it to AK).

 

[pigletto]

Thank you for the responses. I'm sure we'll get by with that and the service in our room.

 

[wtpfan]

Just cane back from a quick trip last week...stayed at Pop and wifi was horrible!!!! Went to MK and it was amazingly fast...even picture messaging was instant! I never would have thought MK would be better than the resort!

 

[pigletto]

Just cane back from a quick trip last week...stayed at Pop and wifi was horrible!!!! Went to MK and it was amazingly fast...even picture messaging was instant! I never would have thought MK would be better than the resort!

Thanks for the report! That is odd isn't it? We've never had too much trouble with it at the resorts since they put it in, but we haven't stayed at Pop. I wonder if it's worse because it's such a large resort and there are so many people using it?
It was pretty good at Port Orleans Riverside last winter.

 

[Ken_Breadbox]

Thanks for the report! That is odd isn't it? We've never had too much trouble with it at the resorts since they put it in, but we haven't stayed at Pop. I wonder if it's worse because it's such a large resort and there are so many people using it?
It was pretty good at Port Orleans Riverside last winter.

So, so sad.
I was last at Disney just before the wifi showed up. The overwhelming reaction was 'it's about time', which I find soul-crushingly depressing. Disney is supposedly the happiest place on earth, and apparently people can't be happy if they don't have their precious little screens...

 

[Disneylover99]

Just cane back from a quick trip last week...stayed at Pop and wifi was horrible!!!! Went to MK and it was amazingly fast...even picture messaging was instant! I never would have thought MK would be better than the resort!

Oh no! We were at Pop in August, first floor in the 60's section and the wifi in our room was excellent. It was the parks that gave us the problems.

 

[Disneylover99]

So, so sad.
I was last at Disney just before the wifi showed up. The overwhelming reaction was 'it's about time', which I find soul-crushingly depressing. Disney is supposedly the happiest place on earth, and apparently people can't be happy if they don't have their precious little screens...

It is sad, but it's the reality of Disney these days. If you want to access FP, you need good wifi.

 

[pigletto]

So, so sad.
I was last at Disney just before the wifi showed up. The overwhelming reaction was 'it's about time', which I find soul-crushingly depressing. Disney is supposedly the happiest place on earth, and apparently people can't be happy if they don't have their precious little screens...

Meh.. I am not too concerned with my own families use. We'll upload some photos to send to grandma and grandpa, email to check on the pets, and I like to be able to check my bank balance and credit card statement a few times to make sure everything is ok (have caught a few billing errors when moving hotels). I do appreciate the convenience of those things and all told that amounts to a whopping 15 minutes before bed.
Like Disneylover99 said it is unfortunate but it's now a part of Disney to be booking and changing things online with the new fastpass+ stuff. I'm not a fan and we'll continue to be device free except for a few times a day hopefully. It's not something I wish to intrude on our family time.

 

[scrappinginontario]

I've stayed at Pop a number of times and never had any trouble there.

Magic Kingdom is generally good. Epcot is so-so and DHS, AK are sketchy at best

Hope they improve it soon since it's such a major part of a Disney vacation now.

 

[Muskrat191]

We were at the parks in November (stayed offsite). We relied on iMessage using the wifi in the parks to communicate when we separated. The wifi was good enough for that in most places (I only noticed certain areas of AK did not work). We did try to FaceTime with grandpa while waiting for rope drop at Epcot and had issues with enough bandwidth. FaceTime worked fine at MK in the middle of the day.

 

[pigletto]

I thought I should update my thread with what we experienced.
Most places were great for the app and we had no troubles. My phone (Iphone 5) continuously dropped the connection and made the app and iMessage useless in Hollywood Studios of all places.
In the other parks I might drop service in certain areas but could get it back by moving somewhere close by. But in Hollywood Studios it was unusable.
My husband had sketchy service in DHS, but nowhere near as bad as mine, so I don't know if it was my phone?

We used wifi strictly for the app (you end up checking it 20 times a day if you are me and can't remember when your reservations are) and to use blackberry messenger to communicate where we were and meet up times when we split up. My husband has a Samsung Galaxy and dd and I have Iphones, so downloading BB Messenger was the perfect way for us to text for free.

Overall, not too bad.

 

[kiford]

Your wifi experience in the parks will largely depend on crowd levels. We were there Dec 8-14 and found it much better than last year when my connection kept dropping. I only got dropped once this year but the crowd levels were quite low. I even found this year that the reception was not too bad when standing in inside queues which wasn't the case last year. But heavy crowds have been reported to impact the wifi speed and connectivity significantly.

 

[tgropp]

We have been here for the past 12 days and has been stated, HS wifi is a bit sketchy. We did FaceTime at the other parks with no problem. Family back home wanted to watch the fireworks. Overall it was very good, especially with these crowds

 

[carly138]

Can someone please tell me what I have to do with my phone to make sure I don't get any crazy charges for roaming/etc? I don't really care about using it for phone calls. All I want to be able to use it for is changing fastpass reservations at the park and/or checking my touringplan line wait times.

What is it that I have to turn off?

 

[redrosesix]

I thought I should update my thread with what we experienced.
Most places were great for the app and we had no troubles. My phone (Iphone 5) continuously dropped the connection and made the app and iMessage useless in Hollywood Studios of all places.
In the other parks I might drop service in certain areas but could get it back by moving somewhere close by. But in Hollywood Studios it was unusable.
My husband had sketchy service in DHS, but nowhere near as bad as mine, so I don't know if it was my phone?

We used wifi strictly for the app (you end up checking it 20 times a day if you are me and can't remember when your reservations are) and to use blackberry messenger to communicate where we were and meet up times when we split up. My husband has a Samsung Galaxy and dd and I have Iphones, so downloading BB Messenger was the perfect way for us to text for free.

Overall, not too bad.

we all have android phones and I was planning to add a US text package to all of them for our trip next month -- going with bbm instead. You just saved us enough money to cover a nice meal!

 

[redrosesix]

Can someone please tell me what I have to do with my phone to make sure I don't get any crazy charges for roaming/etc? I don't really care about using it for phone calls. All I want to be able to use it for is changing fastpass reservations at the park and/or checking my touringplan line wait times.

What is it that I have to turn off?

It depends on which phone you use -- for my DD's galaxy ace 2x and mine and hubbies HTCs, it's in our settings. I have to turn off mobile data and turn on WiFi separately (since they could both technically be running at the same time). But I do it regularly, like when we're home or anywhere with a rocking good wifi signal. My old blackberry curve didn't let me choose to turn off mobile data.

 

[pigletto]

Can someone please tell me what I have to do with my phone to make sure I don't get any crazy charges for roaming/etc? I don't really care about using it for phone calls. All I want to be able to use it for is changing fastpass reservations at the park and/or checking my touringplan line wait times.

What is it that I have to turn off?

And for the iPhone 5 we go into settings and turn on airplane mode, then manually select wifi and turn only that back on.

 

[msrlest8]

And for the iPhone 5 we go into settings and turn on airplane mode, then manually select wifi and turn only that back on.

We do the exact same with our iphone5's as well.

We find the wifi to be great almost everywhere! We had NO problems whatsoever finding wifi. It seemed that everytime we looked down at our phones, we were already connected! It was GREAT.