WIFI issues at Disneyland Resort Parks?

[DLRExpert]

Anyone else having issues with the FREE WIFI at the Disneyland Parks the past few days?
It seems to connect but not give an internet connection.

 

[mel2014]

Anyone else having issues with the FREE WIFI at the Disneyland Parks the past few days?
It seems to connect but not give an internet connection.

I couldn't get it to work on either of our Android devices from Friday to Sunday. It said the security certificate was invalid, would ask if I wanted to "continue in browser" and then would give me the "connected no internet" message. My daughter said it was working fine on her iPhone though.

 

[disneylover102]

I had that issue a couple weeks ago, I had it forget the network and then reconnected. You need the page where you agree to terms and conditions to come up

 

[MonocularVision]

Here is my Way Too Much Information Post on mobile devices and WiFi. When a phone connects to WiFi it needs to determine if you are on a “captive” network. This means that you don’t have full network access until you agree or do something in their captive webpage. This might be agreeing to some T&C’s or logging in.

To detect that, they connect to a known address over HTTP (very explicitly NOT HTTPS). For Apple it is http://captive.apple.com. Google has something similar. If they are able to connect successfully, then they know they have a “good” connection. If they instead get redirected elsewhere, they know they need to pull up a browser pointing to the page they were redirected to.

Sometimes this process fails for whatever reason. Sometimes WiFi networks are dumb and they let those connections through. Or maybe the phone accidentally loads a cached copy. Who knows. Regardless, the phone thinks it has an Internet connection and stays connected to WiFi but traffic isn’t going anywhere.

My fix for these situations is to have a NON-HTTPS address bookmarked. Most sites these days not only use HTTPS but even if you try to go the HTTP version you will get redirected to HTTPS. My preferred site ishttp://neverssl.com/. If you open a browser and go there, the WiFi network should properly route you to their page for logging in or continuing or whatever nonsense they want you to perform.

Note that this may not have been your problem at all (Disneyland WiFi is notoriously awful), but it can help in determining if you have a real connection or not.

 

[gelatoni fan]

Here is my Way Too Much Information Post on mobile devices and WiFi. When a phone connects to WiFi it needs to determine if you are on a “captive” network. This means that you don’t have full network access until you agree or do something in their captive webpage. This might be agreeing to some T&C’s or logging in.

To detect that, they connect to a known address over HTTP (very explicitly NOT HTTPS). For Apple it is http://captive.apple.com. Google has something similar. If they are able to connect successfully, then they know they have a “good” connection. If they instead get redirected elsewhere, they know they need to pull up a browser pointing to the page they were redirected to.

Sometimes this process fails for whatever reason. Sometimes WiFi networks are dumb and they let those connections through. Or maybe the phone accidentally loads a cached copy. Who knows. Regardless, the phone thinks it has an Internet connection and stays connected to WiFi but traffic isn’t going anywhere.

My fix for these situations is to have a NON-HTTPS address bookmarked. Most sites these days not only use HTTPS but even if you try to go the HTTP version you will get redirected to HTTPS. My preferred site ishttp://neverssl.com/. If you open a browser and go there, the WiFi network should properly route you to their page for logging in or continuing or whatever nonsense they want you to perform.

Note that this may not have been your problem at all (Disneyland WiFi is notoriously awful), but it can help in determining if you have a real connection or not.

I use various other webpages at hotels, airports and other public wifi but http://neverssl.com seems like a good one to keep if they're dedicated to this purpose. Thanks.

One other step to add to your detailed explanation is that sometimes you need to clear the internet history before doing this to prevent the browser from pulling the page from cache instead of attempting to pull up the page and get directed to the captive portal.

 

[MonocularVision]

I use various other webpages at hotels, airports and other public wifi but http://neverssl.com seems like a good one to keep if they're dedicated to this purpose. Thanks.

One other step to add to your detailed explanation is that sometimes you need to clear the internet history before doing this to prevent the browser from pulling the page from cache instead of attempting to pull up the page and get directed to the captive portal.

NeverSSL already redirects to a page with a randomly generated URL to avoid browser caching.

 

[DLRExpert]

I couldn't get it to work on either of our Android devices from Friday to Sunday. It said the security certificate was invalid, would ask if I wanted to "continue in browser" and then would give me the "connected no internet" message. My daughter said it was working fine on her iPhone though.

Yep same issue with my Pixel Android phone.

 

[starlite_]

Mom and I couldn't get it to work either (both on android) but my sister's iphone worked perfectly the whole time.

 

[LukeJ]

Thank You. I thought it was just my gadgets. WHEW! Glad the money for a new phone wasn't wasted.

 

[DLRExpert]

The Free WiFi at the Disneyland Resort seems to be working for Android Phones now.