Is wifi good enough now to not get a sim card?

[london75]

I need to be connected a good portion of every day for work reasons (it's my own business so it's in my interest) and every year I normally buy an AT&T sim card from the auction site and top up a bit of credit for a data plan. That's worked really well but the restrictions are getting silly now and the amount you have to top up is going up and up.

Bearing in mind we're staying at Pop Century and most of our time will be in Disney parks, is wifi good enough for keeping email up to date, checking a few apps like weather and ride times/lines or should I stick to a data plan?

 

[hunty]

YES

 

[laura_<3]

It worked fine for us at Riverside last September. Only MK and Epcot had wifi at the time but I had a perfect connection in both parks on my iPhone

 

[london75]

Thanks for the replies, might just risk it then.

Alternatively I could get the sim for £6 here and just buy vouchers if wifi is rubbish so only lost £6 then.

Hmmm, decisions decisions.

 

[MrRomance]

I found the Wifi good enough to do what I needed to do in August last year.

 

[chmurf]

wifi at POP was good in October/November.

There are 2 networks. One is for guest rooms, one is for the rest of the resort.
So if one network seems too slow (inside your room for example) you could still go to the pool and try the other network

When I say it was good, it was good enough to read emails, forums, and upload a few pictures on imageshack.
Still it was not really fast enough to do anything too "intensive". Don't expect to be videoconferencing for example

 

[orangetiggs]

I run a business while away too and found it fine for emails and ctahing up woth team etc

 

[Elise79]

The resorts are better than the parks however we still used our AT&T SIMs for data. This was April.

We generally head off site quite a bit too so we need them then however neither DH or I wanted to rely on the Wifi for working.

I think it all depends on your tolerance levels too - ours are not that high for wanting to do something now!!

 

[wayneg]

Depends what you are used to and how much you use it.

We found speeds slower than when it was wired, had to ring the help line as it kept dropping connection but we are used to 60mb/s at home so its very slow for us. Plus we connect 3 laptops, upload lots of photos & videos etc.

If you just want to check emails & read a few web pages then its fine.

 

[Elise79]

We found speeds slower than when it was wired, had to ring the help line as it kept dropping connection but we are used to 60mb/s at home so its very slow for us. Plus we connect 3 laptops, upload lots of photos & videos etc.

There is my biggest issue - we used the old wired connection with our own router so a good in room connection.

Now you connection depends on where you are in the resort and is defiantly slower.

We have called the 'helpline' more than once to get then to reset the router!

 

[london75]

The resorts are better than the parks however we still used our AT&T SIMs for data. This was April.

We generally head off site quite a bit too so we need them then however neither DH or I wanted to rely on the Wifi for working.

I think it all depends on your tolerance levels too - ours are not that high for wanting to do something now!!

Being a geek by trade and with a truly belting 120mb broadband at home it'll probably annoy me. OKW wifi was pretty terrible last year but I thought since they rolled out to parks it might have got better but I suppose it's only logical that with 100,000 people with a good third having smartphones now the wifi is never going to be stellar.

There is a small chance I need to remote control equipment back here in emergencies so I think I'll go for a SIM again this year just to be safe but maybe get a smaller data plan and use wifi if available.

Thanks for the updates.

 

[Ffiharri]

Didn't find it brilliant in OKW on an iPAD. Slow and kept losing connection. DD's found Facebook/Skype etc with their phones and had no problems (sadly). Never tried in the Parks.

 

[OhanaSam]

We're here now and it works amazingly pretty much everywhere other that a few spots in Animal Kingdom and Epcot. They even have it in Downtown Disney but as soon as you step on the boat if disappears lol

 

[wayneg]

We're here now and it works amazingly pretty much everywhere other that a few spots in Animal Kingdom and Epcot. They even have it in Downtown Disney but as soon as you step on the boat if disappears lol

Which resort you staying in? we found the parks OK it was OKW that we struggled with.

 

[duffdo]

I think it is a bit much to expect decent wifi, given the number of users that will be on it. I plan on using my iPhone this year, for my photos, video and using the My Disney Experience App. I just hope the WiFi is fast enough to cope with the app and backing up my phone to iCloud at night. I think 1-2mbps would be sufficient which I don't think is unreasonable. Does anybody remember 15 years ago when people were starting to get home broadband connections and we thought 512kbps was fast? What on earth did we do before then?

 

[edinburghlass]

Which resort you staying in? we found the parks OK it was OKW that we struggled with.

Daughter doesn't seem to have any problems with her phone anywhere whereas I find it wifi difficult on my iPad at the resort and great at the parks. Wifi near lobby, food court etc better than in the bedroom

 

[wayneg]

I think 1-2mbps would be sufficient which I don't think is unreasonable. Does anybody remember 15 years ago when people were starting to get home broadband connections and we thought 512kbps was fast? What on earth did we do before then? &#55357;&#56881;

Daughter doesn't seem to have any problems with her phone anywhere whereas I find it wifi difficult on my iPad at the resort and great at the parks. Wifi near lobby, food court etc better than in the bedroom

If I remember correctly we were getting 0.5mb/s in room very hit & miss by Millers Rd pool, 4mb/s in MK.

 

[OhanaSam]

Which resort you staying in? we found the parks OK it was OKW that we struggled with.

We're at French Quarter, it works everywhere except the bus stop and boat dock. It's really handy for checking wait times on the Disney Experience app instead of trekking all the way to the ride

 

[edinburghlass]

We're at French Quarter, it works everywhere except the bus stop and boat dock. It's really handy for checking wait times on the Disney Experience app instead of trekking all the way to the ride

So are we! Daughter has no problems at bus top or the dock, or at least she is always on her phone! Have I been chatting to you? Room 4213

 

[MrsTigger]

We are here now too at CSR and I've been really impressed with the wifi so far. As others have said we had a few problems at the bus stops and DTD but other than that its been great.