Walt Disney World brings Aruba Wi-Fi and IoT to its 29 resort properties

The resorts will use Aruba's location-ready access points, ClearPass, AirWave, and Analytics and Location Engine to improve operations on site.

The happiest place on Earth is becoming one of the most connected. Walt Disney World Resort has already deployed Aruba Wi-Fi infrastructure and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions at five of its resorts and has plans to add it to its remaining 24 hotels by 2021, Partha Narasimhan, CTO for Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company. 

The purpose of this partnership is "connectivity, security and bringing together the digital and the physical worlds," to improve employee and guest experiences, Narasimhan said.

Aruba's Wi-Fi infrastructure will make business operations more efficient and effective for the front-end and back-end employees at Disney resorts, including the thousands of characters working in the parks, overall improving the employee experience, Narasimhan said.

The services Disney is using includes Aruba's location-ready access points, ClearPass for wireless authentication and secure access, Airwave for network management, and Aruba ALE (Analytics and Location Engine) to gain actionable insights into network, device, and application functions, the press release said.  

The resorts that already have the new features are Disney's Yacht Club Resort, Disney's Port Orleans Resort—French Quarter, Disney's Coronado Springs Resort, Disney's Pop Century Resort, and Disney's All-Star Movies Resort.

Aruba has recently moved into what they call an intelligent edge division. "What we mean by intelligent edge is where people are and the places that we find ourselves in, and the expectations around the kinds of experiences we all want to have," Narasimhan said. 

Disney's use of these applications is a prime example of what Aruba means by intelligent edge. "Think about all of the association that we all have with the Disney brand and the expectations, whether it's in the resort, in the theme park, or everything else" Narasimhan said. "It all starts with high-performance connectivity. Can I go walk into a resort and stream high quality 4K quality video, for example. That requires a network that is always available and can handle the kinds of densities that Disney expects to have in their resorts."

All of the Aruba applications used by Disney—location-ready access points, ClearPass, Airwave, and ALE—work in tandem with one another, Narasimhan said. 

"The access points are what end user devices connect to," Narasimhan said.