HAL Internet

[richwmn]

Several discussions have been here recently about wireless / cafe minutes and the offered e-mail address that I emailed the internet manager on the Zaandam, whom I met last May.

1. On the question of different groups of minutes for wireless or internet cafe use, his response was -
You did ask me about wireless / cafe minutes, well we do not separate wireless and cafe minutes. Honestly, we did before, and some ships with old system still have this separation, but all of them will be upgraded soon. Here on Zaandam and as well as all HAL ships have new system, without separation. You are buying the Block of the minutes or just paying as you go, for system it doesn't matter you are on laptop or Cafe PC user.

2. I also asked him about cruise e-mails (eg room number at Zaandam)
What about the CruisEmail, this is our registered trademark. We are not supporting delivering Incoming Emails to the Guests cabins. If passenger wishes to use this kind of service he/she has to be online. User has charge for time online plus additional charge for using CruisEmail service. Every outcoming message is $3.95.

Hope this helps everyone

Rich

[Pam in CA]

2. I also asked him about cruise e-mails (eg room number at Zaandam)
[/FONT]What about the CruisEmail, this is our registered trademark. We are not supporting delivering Incoming Emails to the Guests cabins. If passenger wishes to use this kind of service he/she has to be online. User has charge for time online plus additional charge for using CruisEmail service. Every outcoming message is $3.95. This is interesting. My experience is mostly with Princess (with a HAL cruise booked for next summer) and if you have a family emergency or need to be contacted, you can send an email to their cabin via the ship's email system <shipname@princesscruises.com>. There are no guarantees that a personal email will be delivered.

Just over a year ago, I was on a 21-day cruise from Manaus to Rome and 2/3 of the way through, I received an email in my cabin via the ship's email system from my daughter to say that my Dad had been diagnosed with an extremely aggressive cancer and that I should plan to head home as soon as I could to say, "Good bye." If this service weren't available, I wouldn't have received the message since we were in the the Atlantic approaching Senegal and the internet cafe was down. As soon as it was back up, I was able to contact my daughter and make our plans. Thankfully, we got to see him but it was just a matter of days. :(

[richwmn]

I was reading another discussion which asked the question about cruise emails being delivered to the stateroom, and since I had the Internet Managers email I asked him. As always, different lines handle it differently. By searching the forums I found this thread

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=82268

which indicates that Princess might not deliver to staterooms any more either.

Rich

[richwmn]

Pam - In reading your post again, I find we are talking about two different things. HAL uses a contractor for their internet access (Digital Seas). They provide a service called "Cruisemail" which allows you to recieve emails addressed to <cabin number>@zaandam.something (i dont remember the rest and can't locate it at the moment).

An email addressed to <shipname>@princess.com would go to ships staff, who would have contacted you due to the nature of the message.

Rich

[Jim Gallup]

Anyone who has any sort of emergency at home need not worry about getting informed. Anyone, anytime, can contact the cruise line's head office and request that they send an urgent message to a passenger on one of their ships.
This happens on my ship at least 5 times every day. It costs nothing to send or recieve the message. The Reception Desk sends a note and a voice mail to the passenger to ensure that they receive the message.