Wifi quality/speed in the parks?

[AlexFrost]

I'm going to be spending a fair bit of time on property in the near future and thought it would be nice to bring a laptop to get some work done. I was planning on going to the resorts to do this, but if the quality is decent enough in the parks I can plan to spend some time in the phone charging areas too, lol.

 

[SeilerBird]

Wifi speed varies depending on how many people are in the park using the Wifi.

 

[Crystal824]

Not sure if it has improved in the last 2 years (hopefully it has with MDX), but it was hard to hold a connection when we stayed at BWV two years ago. I finally went to the lounge at BWI late at night and was able to get it to work to get a few things that had to be done finished.

 

[Robo]

D+ in mid-Jan.

 

[wisblue]

On our recent trip, the wifi in the parks was not at all reliable. If I really wanted to check something I usually had to turn on my data (which in my case is not unlimited).

But, in our room at the Wilderness Lodge Villas it was quite good. I was able to watch baseball games through the MLB At Bat app on my iPad with no problems.

 

[dsdeleon]

The only way you could work out of the parks is to tether to your phone, it's that bad. We just got back. I have one kid who is hard on bandwidth (we have to upgrade at Universal) and things were decent at AKL.

 

[itchin2go]

For November 2014 trip, we used our data plan instead of park wi-fi because it was so bad.

 

[Doug M]

I was planning on going to the resorts to do this, but if the quality is decent enough in the parks I can plan to spend some time in the phone charging areas too, lol.

Phone charging areas?

 

[CAS239]

The wifi in the parks on my iPhone is fine.

The MDE app normally always loads slow within the park. But everything else loads pretty quickly. Only spots where it doesn't work good is inside some rides.

 

[AlexFrost]

Phone charging areas?

It's been about a year since I've been. But if I recall correctly there is a charging area by Rapunzel. Its a semi-closed in area with lots of outlets and seating.

 

[Doug M]

Cool, we had been asking around last June and were told there wasnt an area, but if we found wall outlets we were welcome to use them. Only was able to find them in EPCOT. This year we bought those portable chargers from Amazon for 20 bucks so that will take care of that issue.

 

[BudgieMama]

We found it surprisingly decent when we were there last summer. We were expecting it to be awful, but as long as we could see a network (some spots we couldn't), we could connect and it was reasonable.

I don't know if we were both so pleasantly surprised by how problem free it was because we'd read that it was awful and it would be really difficult to connect to, but we never had a problem. (I'm always the one whose phone won't connect to anything - including frequently dropping my home network, so was fully prepared to not see the internet for a week.)

 

[Doug M]

We found it to be very good in the hotel, and spotty in the parks. Some areas good, others wouldn't connect, and other times i turned wifi off because it was too slow.

 

[JanaDee]

It's been about a year since I've been. But if I recall correctly there is a charging area by Rapunzel. Its a semi-closed in area with lots of outlets and seating.

It isn't covered and IIRC, there is very little shade in that area.

 

[richmo]

My experience in Jan. 2015.

In the parks, barely usable and spotty.
I switched back and forth between my data plan and wifi many times a day ...

I tend to agree. Where I thought it had been steadily improving over the past year or two, I found it to be worse this last trip (in March 2015). Could be because many more are hitting it. Even when I could get a connection, it would often disconnect because the connection was not reliable or the speed was too slow. Between that and my regular data plan bouncing, I've found battery drain at Disney to be especially bad. I wound up leaving the phone in airplane mode most of the time, or just shutting it off entirely when I didn't need it.

 

[jtowntoflorida]

On our recent trip, the wifi in the parks was not at all reliable. If I really wanted to check something I usually had to turn on my data (which in my case is not unlimited).

But, in our room at the Wilderness Lodge Villas it was quite good. I was able to watch baseball games through the MLB At Bat app on my iPad with no problems.

This was our experience in December as well. I switch off wifi in the parks....the constant drops, searches for a signal, and re-connections seem to drain the battery pretty quickly. At VWL wifi worked fine. I wonder if it's because it's a smaller building and thus not as many people are sharing?

 

[grecorj]

There is anecdotal evidence on other websites that in park speed had increased > March 27 upgrade announcement. I believe a few folks on DisBoards reported this as well, but I can't search for links at the moment.

That said, I do believe in order to leverage MB and MDE that Disney needs solid in park Wi-Fi /wireless networks. Esp. if they truly intend to add more features to MDE such as a bus times app. So it's a work in progress, as others have said.

 

[CAS239]

I'm at AK right now on the wifi and it's working like any home wifi.

I think MDE just gets bogged down sometimes with so many people on the same wifi signal accessing the same app

 

[d-train]

On our trip two weeks ago, wifi was good in most areas in the park. Spotty in some areas where there was alot of interference -AHA cement/steel buildings... But in those areas, cell service was also weak or non-existent too.

Much better than our trip 2 years ago. in 2013, wifi at All Star Movies was great. no slow issues in the room at all.

MDE got bogged down now and then, but there are tens of thousands of people on it at the same time...

 

[richmo]

...Where I thought it had been steadily improving over the past year or two, I found it to be worse this last trip (in March 2015)....

There is anecdotal evidence on other websites that in park speed had increased > March 27 upgrade announcement. I believe a few folks on DisBoards reported this as well, but I can't search for links at the moment....

Interesting. The trip I referenced above ended on March 25, so maybe it has improved since...