My experience with the high speed internet access at All-Star Movies:
The access was available while I was visiting on my last trip. I am very happy to see that they include a reasonable length of cable. They also put the cable through a nice paper weight to keep it up on the table between the beds. If you are not familiar with how to use high speed internet, simply just plug that cable into your laptop in the jack that is roughly twice the width of the phone jack. Honestly, I have run into so many people now that use wireless 802.11x for their home laptop that they don't know what an ethernet jack looks like. My cousin was a great example.
Now that we have the connection out of the way, let us look at the actual speeds achieved. Using DSL reports, I did several speed tests. I noticed that the max download was 512 kbps and upload was 128 kbps. If you want to upload video or audio right from WDW, that 128k upload is not going to make you very happy. It will get the job done, but you won't want to sit there and watch it.
To me, high speed internet is a minimum of 768/128. There were times when I was getting speeds slower than dialup. I used it to post questions here at wdwmagic.com. I also noticed that the access is being provided by a 3rd party, and is not set up to do a nice reverse dns lookup. Sad, because it would be nice to at least identify properly where the ips are connecting from. Example, if I made a site like wdwmagic.com, it would be great to see how many people surfed my site from WDW property. I hope that they do something like ip-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx-resort.wdw.go.com or something like that as the reverse. I can't remember the company, but if someone goes to their DOS prompt and types in the ip they were given "nslookup xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" it will show the current isp.
For those of you who just don't care about that stuff, just know that the access has many port restrictions. Good luck playing any online games easily. Also, VOIP and Skype are terrible from that connection. I did try it at 4 in the morning, and it was still very slow.
If they were smart, they would provide the ability to enjoy on-demand premo content while in the rooms. They could have a special edition of VMK for those who love it. Also, if they allowed hotel guests to access specific sites for free, or provided a special guest intranet, the possibilities are endless.
* Reservations from the hotel internet access only for hotel guests. Would allow those with laptops or PDAs to view their reservations in case they forgot. It would be nice for those with very early morning breakfast reservations.
* Exclusive Disney Shopping. Why not get that Figment you forgot by having it charged to your room, and sent to the gift shop. Impulse buyers would easily get hooked on it. Sad but true.
* Photo Pass. Why not let people view those photos right after leaving the parks. Why wait til ya get home? You could skip the lines at the photo processing locations, and just get them delivered to your hotel gift shop.
* Web cams, look ahead at the lines for popular attractions.
* Online guest relations chatrooms. Allow people to chat with a Disney rep to get the info they need.
* Transaction viewing. Look at your bill to make sure you don't go over budget. Also, know how many meal credits you have left. It would be great to see where you ate at, and keep that list for the future. Even allow you to keep comments about the restaurants and a "favorites" list.
To me, it can be much more than the internet access itself. This is Disney, they've always had a goal of being on the bleeding edge.
As another interesting note, wouldn't it be great if they could text message you reminders about reservations, show times, and fast pass times that are about to come up? So many people use sms now, it would be a great way to "plus" the already amazing service.
Ryan
