mobile / cell phones on disney property?

[alisonbestford]

Can anyone help me out here please?
We're travelling to Florida from the UK in Jan 2005 and need to have some way of keeping in touch with each other whilst we're there (DH is registered disabled and often stays in the room or in restaurants whilst DD 6 and I race around the parks or mall )
We took our tri-band phones (which use a roaming system) with us last year which worked pretty well 90 % of the time - except for the day DD and I went to Chef Mickeys for breakfast, leaving DH to have a wander!
There seemed to be no reception unless we went to stand in the middle of the pool We're spending part of Jan vacation at CSR - are we likely to have the same problem do you think?
My question is, would cell phones purchased from Walmart etc or Walkie Talkies be better and , if so, what would we best buying?
Alternatively, should we just stick to our own mobiles and get our feet wet now and then?
Thanks.
Alison

 

[captJack88]

We had nokia tracfones, and had decent to good reception everywhere we went. Sometimes it was a little fuzzy, but you could still hear. We stayed at POR and sometimes had to go outside our room to pick up a signal, but we didn't have to wander far, as soon as we stepped outside we had almost a full bar. It might work better for you, the prices are coming down now too, you can get one of the older style phones for around $50.00 now, when they first came out they were around $80.00, and you can find the pre-paid minutes cards in more locations too. We saw cards in a 7-11 store down there. Hope this helps! And good luck

 

[kristen821]

We use T-mobile cell service, with the free phone they give you we had no problems at all. We are on the family plan and didn't have to pay anything to talk to eachother it was great! I am from Chicago and the phone was fine in Orlando no extra charges

 

[catnik]

Alison:
We also use T-mobile for our cell phones and have great reception/service. The only problem might be that in order to get the free phone, you would need to sign a service agreement for a year (an expensive option for use only during vacation). Another option with T-mobile is the pay as you go phone (buy the phone, get a certain number of minutes and you are ready). It sounds like you would need to buy 2 phones: check out the link below:

http://www.t-mobile.com/prepaid/starterkits.asp

We have also used the Trac phones for our kids (usually available in the convenience stores like 7-11, etc) but had some quality issues with dropped calls, etc, so we ended up adding them to our T-mobile family plan. Walkie-talkies would be okay for being in the parks when your husband is at the resort, etc but if you plan to go to DD or one of the outlet malls, I think you would be out of range with them. HTH and have a great time!

 

[captJack88]

Wow, I am surprised to hear you had those problems with tracfone, we've never had a dropped call or anything like that. We drove down from Michigan along I-75 and we had good reception all the way down, that really even surprised me! Anyway back to the original poster, Catnik is right about the walkie-talkies. They most likely will not work for you (unless they are the cell-phone type i.e nextell) most of the other have a 2 mile or so range, so if DH is back at the hotel, you most likely will not be able to contact him. Those do work well if you're both in a park and split up, or at a mall together or something, but I think cell phones are your best bet.

 

[alisonbestford]

Mmmm, I'm beginning to think we should stick with the phones we have and carry the direct number to the room 'just in case'.
I guess, looking back, we only really had the problem of getting in touch once when we were at Chef Mickeys and, now we're aware, we can make emergency plans It took us almost 2 hours on that one occasion to find each other!
In the parks we stuck to texting so that if DD and myself were on a ride when DH came to find us, we could pick up the text when we came out.
Thanks for all your help.
Alison

 

[safetymom]

I didn't find the reception for cell phones very good at CSR. I was there for a convention and you could tell where the good reception was by the crowds of people standing in certain places. Even the coverage in the room was very good.