Using the Carnival Hub App on Spirit

Hi Folks!

This is my first post, so please be nice! This is also my first cruise.

I am going on the Spirit for the 8 day Pacific cruise in October, with my significant other (wife) and two teenagerish daughters. While we want some family time, we also want to time out a bit, but in this day and age, we do want to be able to be in contact with each other.

I have noticed that the Carnival Hub App is now available on Spirit and for $9 per person per trip, it can be used for chat. Sounds good to me and a far better alternative to using hand held UHF radios which we were looking into.

Anyhow, I can see that on US departures, the network connectivity is via the On-board free WiFi. Can anyone confirm that this is the case on the Spirit departing from Sydney?

Cheers

Yes that is the case and have a great cruise, been on the Spirit twice and had a great cruise both times.

Great! Thanks for the reply. Call me skeptical, but I'm always looking for the hidden and extra costs, especially "Australian Taxes" (I.E., the bits and pieces we have to pay and/or pay extra for, just because we are Australian).

Cheers

The App works great - and you can get your account in real time on it so will help with keeping an eye on the spend. While we didn't use it for chatting we used it extensively on the five devices we took (for the two of us). You can download the app prior or on the ship and then turn on flight mode then log in to the ship wifi. You can't log in to the app till you have your sign and sail card as you need your folio number.

They are very up front with any charges, so you shouldn't be surprised. We found we got by the cruise without having to spend anything extra unless we choose to do so.

Have a great trip, I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for replying. Great to know that it works well. I'll definitely make sure that we all download it prior. (I am assuming that you have used it on either the Spirit or the Legend?)

BTW, is there anything else offered via the ships "free" WiFi?

Cheers

Just got off Carnival Spirit and purchased the Chat feature on Carnival Hub for $9.00 per person. When it works it is great, however, there were numerous occasions on our 3 night cruise when messages were not received at all.

OK, thanks for the feedback. Generally, as a whole, it worked OK?

We've just returned from 8 nights on the Spirit and the chat feature was very useful. We had a large group split over several cabins and used chat to coordinate meeting for meals, keeping track of who was going where and when - it was definitely worth the $9 each. The Hub app also shows all activities, dining times, specialty dining hours etc so we used it rather than the daily printed Fun Times. The only problems we found with chat were due to Wifi problems in general. Wifi reception in some cabins wasn't great so occasionally you wouldn't receive the chat messages until you left the cabin or hit a spot with better reception.

The free Wifi only allows you to use the Hub app, for any other internet you need to purchase a package and we found them quite pricey.

We sailed last November before it was rolled out, and we're pleased to see it's there for our next trip! re: hidden costs, I'm exactly like you and am always looking for the extra charges that might sneak in. That's part of why I booked with Carnival, there seemed to be fewer extra costs that might sneak up (as opposed to some lines where the water slides, kids clubs, gratuities etc all cost you more once on board). But yes, with the hub app you only need to pay the $9 and no additional wifi costs. We did ok without it as our family of 4 and I probably wouldn't bother if it was just the 4 of us in one cabin again, but next trip we'll be a group of 9 across 3 cabins so the hub app will be fantastic.

If you're all in the same cabin, you can also go with sticky notes if you have days the app isn't working. We had a bit of a rainbow notepad going most days, but it was handy to keep track of where we were going to be or plans that might change. Our two kids were a bit older like yours, and they're great at following the rules and doing the right thing, so we trusted them to move around and do the right thing as long as they let us know where to find them. We just had a bunch of sticky notes and everyone would put them up on the mirror saying 'going to lunch at guys burgers then going to kids club' or 'mini golfing at 3 if anyone wants to join' or 'meet in the cabin by 5 to get ready for dinner.' That way the kids always knew were to find us and we always knew where to find them. We also kept a copy of the kids club program in the cabin so we knew where kids club actually was (the older groups travel around to the night club, comedy shows, mini golf, etc)