You May Want to Avoid These Disney Attractions If You’ve Got the Newest iPhone

Bringing your smart phone along for a day in Walt Disney World is a must. While you can technically have a great time in Disney Parks without relying on your phone, having it with you makes it easier to take advantage of the My Disney Experience app, including Lightning Lane and Genie+.

But what if we told you some phones are more welcome in theme parks than others? As it turns out, the newest iPhone has been causing some headaches for theme parks, thanks to one of its new high-tech features.

RELATED: How to Keep Your Phone Charged at Walt Disney World

The iPhone 14 launched last month, following Apple’s marketing campaigns showcasing all of the new features users could come to enjoy with the new phone. Among these features were enhanced safety offerings, specifically the phone’s ability to call 9-1-1 and deliver an automated message if its owner had been involved in a crash.

In theory, this is an excellent feature to have. Apple’s ads focused on incidents where customers could be involved in car accidents, and the phone’s ability to call 9-1-1 automatically in these instances could get emergency crews on the scene faster, treating injuries sooner, and possibly saving more lives.

Now that the phone has been released for almost one month, however, this feature is already causing some headaches when it comes to Guests riding certain theme park attractions.

Multiple theme parks have reported instances of false alarms dialed into 9-1-1 caused by Guests riding roller coasters with the new phones. The Wall Street Journal even reported that one day earlier this month, Kings Island in Mason, OH, had emergency responders arrive on the scene six times due to false alarms from Guests’ phones.

Apple’s description of the crash detection feature reads:

Crash Detection is designed to detect severe car crashes—such as front-impact, side-impact, and rear-end collisions, and rollovers—involving sedans, minivans, SUVs, pickup trucks, and other passenger cars.

When a severe car crash is detected, your iPhone or Apple Watch sounds an alarm and displays an alert1.

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We have to admit, when we first learned about the crash detection feature we immediately thought of Test Track, and how the original version of this EPCOT attraction quite literally put Guests through an experience that simulated the testing that crash test dummies go through.

While we have not heard of specific incidents involving  these phones or Apple Watches at Disney Parks, they are beginning to become problematic at other parks around the country, prompting some locations to create signage warning Guests of the feature’s issue on select attractions:

Apple Watch users, has this happened to you on a coaster? pic.twitter.com/GzfqnmjZ2J

— Coaster101.com (@Coaster101) September 28, 2022

If the phones and watches are reporting “car accident-like” movement on roller coasters, we would caution Guests who plan to ride select Disney World thrill rides, like Space Mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, Splash Mountain, Test Track, Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, Rock ‘n’ Rollercoaster, and Expedition Everest: Legend of the Forbidden Mountain.

Thankfully, there is another solution for Guests who have the latest iPhone other than leaving it in a locker or at home. Like the sign above mentions, putting your phone on Airplane Mode (ie: no service) would prevent a 9-1-1 call from being made on your behalf. Another solution would be to go into your phone’s settings and turn off the crash detection feature altogether (at least for the week that you know you’ll be visiting a theme park.) Apple lists instructions for how to turn off crash detection here.