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Viking Ocean has High speed Internet


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What did you pay for Internet on the Viking Ocean

Will be interested in reply....It's included on Viking River Cruises. Looked into a Viking Ocean cruise but it was way more $$$$ than HAL, X, and NCL that I usually cruise, even considering that more things are included.

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It’s free!! Yes they are more expensive but

So much is included in the price. The best liquor is included, excursions, even air fare.

Depending on what category you want with your stateroom there are more goodies. We were going to do a cruise in 2017 but had other commitments.

It’s a nice cruise line.

Denise:)

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Hello Holland America

Could you please install High speed Internet on our ships .

And raise fares to what Viking charges?

 

Westerdam and Zuiderdam have been offering unlimited packages this year according to posters.
Yes, but it's still not high speed.
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It’s free!! Yes they are more expensive but

So much is included in the price. The best liquor is included, excursions, even air fare.

Depending on what category you want with your stateroom there are more goodies. We were going to do a cruise in 2017 but had other commitments.

It’s a nice cruise line.

Denise:)

 

I did not think air was necessarily included with Viking standard offering price, perhaps on some promo pricing? I know transfers to and from airport/ship are included IF you purchase Viking Air.

 

Oceania has 2 prices, inclusive with air, and cruise only.

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"Fast Internet", "High Speed Internet". Both are very subjective terms. Unless you run an online speed test, which will give you hard numbers, the terms Fast & High Speed mean nothing. On a recent Westerdam cruise, I had their Premiere package and I did run an Ookla speed test. (speedtest.net). I got 5.8 mb/s download and 2.9 mb/s upload. For a single device, those speeds are more than adequate for most purposes. Skype video calls work fine with that speed, I tested it. To stream a 720P HD movie, you need between 3 and 5 mb/s download bandwidth. The only problem is the ping rate. That is the round trip time for a packet of data to leave your computer, hit the destination server, and get returned back to you. Normal web browsing, e-mail, banking, does not require a good ping rate. Interactive gaming requires a ping rate below 100ms. Because the path from the ship to the land based destination requires 2 round trips to a space orbiting satellite and back, ping rates using satellites is usually very poor, usually in the range of 400 - 600 ms, and higher.

Another factor is the level of usage. Most ships have a single uplink to the satellite for passenger use, and sometimes, marine operations and hotel operations also share that channel. With 2000 - 3000 passengers, plus crew using a single satellite link, speeds can suffer during busy time periods. Next time you are on a ship and you think the internet is fast (or slow), enter www.speedtest.net into your browser and see what the results are. Please report back to CC, and that will confirm if the service is really fast, or it just seems that way.

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It’s free!! Yes they are more expensive but

So much is included in the price. The best liquor is included, excursions, even air fare.

Depending on what category you want with your stateroom there are more goodies. We were going to do a cruise in 2017 but had other commitments.

It’s a nice cruise line.

Denise:)

 

I think that beer and wine are included for everyone during lunch and dinner times. A beverage package is available for purchase which would include liquor. Also, some upper stateroom categories include complimentary liquor in the minibar.

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I think that beer and wine are included for everyone during lunch and dinner times. A beverage package is available for purchase which would include liquor. Also, some upper stateroom categories include complimentary liquor in the minibar.

 

Also the free excursions are what I would call “light”, 1/2 day highlight of the local town kind of thing. Personally I wish they did not include them and cut the price some as we would usually prefer something different then the free offers. Vikings ships are very nice but they are pricey compared to HAL particularly if you are used to inside cabins as Viking has no insides. The wine does flow freely during lunch and dinner but as pointed out, anything outside of that time frame must be purchased.

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We were on the NCL Escape in October and I had their unlimited Internet. It didn't rise to the level of my home or office Internet speeds, but it was reasonably fast. It ran ~$30/day and you have to buy it for the whole cruise. However, it worked well I, at least, felt it was worth the $210 or so for the week.

 

I did not do any streaming, just work stuff and my usual live from nonsense.

 

I know that some of HAL's systems are capable of high speeds. We were on the Nieuw Amsterdam for three weeks in 2014. One of the three weeks, it was the top HAL travel agents and all the executives. You may find this hard to believe, but the Internet was smoking fast that particular week. I'm talking stupid fast. Like nothing I've ever seen. I run speed tests every day (because I have no life) and I had to rerun them using different end point servers because I couldn't believe the numbers.

 

In non-geek news, they had some really excellent chocolate desserts and we would book the TA week in a heartbeat if we knew when it was going to be.

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"Fast Internet", "High Speed Internet". Both are very subjective terms. Unless you run an online speed test, which will give you hard numbers, the terms Fast & High Speed mean nothing.

 

Even NCL's Escape - which was plenty fast - had long ping times. There's only so much you can do with latency over the air.

 

I think that a repository of speed test results would be great. I just don't think that we, as a community, are up for it. It's a good idea though.

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I don't think faster internet is on HAL's priority, especially when it's targeted demographic (which is the older age group) would probably spend less time on their phone than the yonger generation. I doubt we will see anything until Carnival has it and is stable across all its fleet, similar to how Celebrity rolled out it's new internet service after being installed on RCL ships for a while.

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I don't think faster internet is on HAL's priority, especially when it's targeted demographic (which is the older age group) would probably spend less time on their phone than the yonger generation. I doubt we will see anything until Carnival has it and is stable across all its fleet, similar to how Celebrity rolled out it's new internet service after being installed on RCL ships for a while.

 

HAL does not have it's own internet service, it uses the Carnival satellite internet service. If you run a URL <<<iplocation.net>>> while connected to HAL's internet, you will see that you are really using internet from Carnival Corp. Miami FL . Your IP address will be a Miami FL address. If HAL is using Carnival's internet portal, then the service should be similar on all Carnival brands.

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1. Internet access is used for more than work. Most realize that, but one individual does not.

2. Nothing is "FREE". It is included in your fare, with no additional cost.

3. I think it is amazing it is even available at all. I think my cruise experience would be much different if unlimited wi-fi was included in the fare.

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The rates for HAL's unlimited internet is as follows

Social plan $8.25 per day (no browsing, only social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc).

Enhanced Plan $12.50 per day (full browsing, e-mail, banking, social, most sites)

Premiere Plan $16.60 per day. (All of the above, plus Skype audio & video calls, streaming, just about anything)

These daily rates were calculated from a 12 day segment of a cruise on the Westerdam. On longer segments, the rates do get lower, e.g. a 19 day Premiere plan is $15.25 per day. To get these rates, you must purchase the plan for the entire segment (on a collector's cruise) or the entire cruise. The plan starts when you activate it and ends on your disembarkation day. There is no prorating. For example, if you do not activate the plan until day 3 of a 7 day cruise, you still pay for the entire 7 days. They do have a 24 hour rate, but it is very expensive. Not having used it, I don't know if the 24 hours is one 24 hour block, or possibly broken up into shorter time periods, such as 24, one hour sessions. Their handout does not clarify that. They do block high bandwidth sites, adult sites and online gaming. Online games like "Words with Friends" are OK and work well. The gaming they block is the intensive, interactive games that require high bandwidth and low ping rates.

Edited by TAD2005
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