Back Up Your Disney Photos During Your Trip

One phone, years of planning

A Disney trip is the kind of vacation people plan for years, and the photos and videos are most of what you bring home. The first look at the castle. A toddler meeting a character. The fireworks you filmed with the whole family in frame. None of it can be shot again.

Most of it also lives on one device, in one pocket, all day. So here is the question worth asking before you leave: if this phone disappeared on day three, what would we still have?

The answer depends on one thing you do before the trip. Set up an automatic cloud backup at home, and it will run on its own during the trip, copying your photos and videos off the phone while you are busy with the parks.

What a park day does to a phone

A park day is hard on a phone. It comes out of your pocket constantly, gets handed to a stranger for a family photo, rides in a bag through a Florida downpour, and sits on a table at lunch while you wrangle trays. Any of those can end with a phone left behind, dropped, soaked or cracked.

Even a phone that turns up at a lost and found is not the same as photos that are safe. A damaged phone may not power on, and a stolen one is simply gone. The worst version of this story is the one where the trip is already over and the only copy of the memories went with the phone.

Why a cloud backup beats the usual plans

Most people’s backup plan is one of three things: nothing, a promise to copy photos to a laptop when they get home, or a hope that the phone will be fine. The first and third fail the moment something goes wrong. The second fails when the laptop is at home, or in a hotel room, or simply forgotten about after a long travel day.

A cloud backup works because the copy lives somewhere else. If the phone is lost, you sign in on a replacement and your photos are there. The feature that matters most is that it runs on its own. A backup that depends on remembering at the end of a long park day is a backup that will not happen. The only part that needs you is the setup, and that happens before you go.

To be clear, any automatic cloud backup beats none. Apple and Google both offer their own, and plenty of other services exist. The point is to have one running before you leave.

What we use

We use IDrive on an iPhone. What earned it a place on the phone is Auto Camera Upload, which backs up your photos and videos automatically once you turn it on, so there is nothing to remember at the end of a long park day. After the first full backup, IDrive says only new or changed photos and videos are uploaded, which keeps each later backup small.

IDrive also sells other products. Its partner program covers online backup, onsite disk image backup, Google Workspace backup and Microsoft Office 365 backup. For a family phone, the standard online backup is the one that matters.

Before the trip: set it up in five steps

1. Pick a backup service and sign up. Do this at home, weeks before the trip, not in the hotel.
2. Install the app on every phone that will take photos and sign in.
3. Turn on automatic photo upload. In the IDrive iPhone app it is called Auto Camera Upload, and IDrive’s own FAQ says it is off by default. Tap Backup under Cloud Backup, then tap Auto Camera Upload.
4. Let the first backup finish at home. IDrive recommends keeping the app open and the phone on a charger for large batches, and a big photo library can take a while.
5. Check that it worked. Open the app and look under My iPhone Backup, then Photos, to confirm your recent pictures are there.

Then add one line to your packing list: backup done.

During the trip: let it run

Once the setup is done, the trip itself asks nothing of you. Your photos and videos are backed up automatically while you ride, eat and watch fireworks, so a phone lost or broken on day three costs you the phone, not the pictures.

If you want peace of mind, open the app once partway through the trip and confirm your recent photos are showing up. IDrive’s FAQ says that when uploads fail, the usual things to check are a weak connection, a low battery, and whether the app still has its permissions.

Try IDrive before your trip

If you want to try what we use, you can sign up for IDrive here. Offers change, so check the current price and terms on the signup page before you commit.

Disclosure: FOB Ventures LLC is an IDrive partner. If you sign up through the link above, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.