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Carnival Magic WiFi?


jetteh22
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Hi, there. Has anybody who has recently cruised on the Carnival Magic purchased the wifi package?

 

We own a business and need to be available even during vacations to handle emergencies and in the past on other Carnival ships it has worked decently (not great but not horrible) but we just got back from the Miracle and the internet was virtually useless. We paid for the best plan and it wouldn't even load emails 90% of the time. Front Desk was no help and basically just apologized and offered a discounted rate.

 

We're planning a cruise in September on the Magic but would like a heads up as to whether the internet is usable. Previously we haven't had any horrible experiences with the WiFi on Carnival but this experience on the Miracle really has us worried about not being able to respond to clients over the course of 7 days, etc.

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You will probably find the same problem on Magic that you had on Miracle. Most times we often had to wait 2 or 3 minutes just to check email. Off peak was better but still slow. It really discouraged us from trying do do anything else online. We had the middle tier internet package (April 28th cruise).

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Was on the Magic this last feb and the WiFi was hit or miss for us too. The biggest issue was that it is VERY slow.

 

I remember it being decent on the Victory even on the medium speed plan. I couldn't get signal in my room but when I was downstairs it worked well enough for me to get some work done. Here on the Miracle it didn't work at all most of the time. When I went to the front desk I brought my laptop with me and showed them how I couldn't even load my email or Facebook or anything. It would literally take 10+ minutes, if at all, that it would load.

 

I don't mind waiting 30 seconds or so for a page to load. And I understand we're in the middle of the ocean but if some ships have decent WiFi and with people needing internet access more and more these days I'd expect they would ensure it works a bit better than it did for me. Especially when you're paying $80+ for 7 days.

 

In your experience when you say VERY SLOW are you talking like 30 seconds to load a page or 5, 10+ minutes like I experienced on the Miracle?

 

EDIT: I'd also like to say that the Norwegian Sky had pretty good internet from what I remember. I don't remember having any issues with them. The Vista also was pretty good. Maybe it's just the older Carnival ships?

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I was on the Magic in May and it was hit or miss. It worked best for me on the aft Lido deck. Forget opening any grahics that came with emails - just didn't have the umphhh. It was enough for basic email and FB if you weren't in a hurry, but that was about it.

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We sailed last October/November on the Magic. I prepaid for the Premium plan and thought it worked fine. I didn't have a computer, just a couple of tablets and a couple of smart phones but I didn't have any issues.

 

The most amazing thing was that half way through the cruise, my text messages started coming thru via WiFi (Verizon, didn't work the first half - came home, researched and found that it happens frequently but not reliably). Yes, it was work who was texting me and boy was I surprised!

 

I used news sites, CC, email, social media, even downloaded new Kindle books with no issues. Basically I just continued my online life onboard and didn't notice many issues at all. I will say that I have never tried just the Social or the Value packages, only the Premium on both of our last several cruises.

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Horizon and Vista have the new upgraded WiFi with supposedly faster speeds and better coverage on the ship. Carnival did say in a news press a couple months ago it was going to have all ships upgraded to the new WiFi speeds by end of this summer. Not sure how thats going though. I havent seen anyone posting about other ships having faster or better WiFi speeds then usual.

 

 

 

Edit, here's that news press from February.

https://cruisefever.net/carnival-cruise-line-rolling-faster-internet-every-cruise-ship-fleet/

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Which plan must you have to have text messaging
It depends on what you mean by text messaging. The Social plan covers some of the more popular messaging apps, like WhatsApp, FB Messenger and SnapChat. Those are messaging services that work over wifi. iMessage on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad) work over wifi as well, but Carnival doesn't technically support iMessage on the Social plan. There's reports of it working, though.

 

If you're talking about normal text messages (SMS), those go through your cellular provider. They typically don't work over wifi. But if your provider offers Wifi Calling and your phone allows it, you can turn that on and get normal text (SMS) messages using the ship's wifi. Not sure if that would work on the Social plan, but can confirm it works on the Value plan (middle tier). Some providers offer temporary cruise plans that allow you to connect to the ship's cellular service, called Cellular At Sea. If you don't have one of those special plans, though, connecting to that service can be very expensive, so be aware.

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Horizon and Vista have the new upgraded WiFi with supposedly faster speeds and better coverage on the ship. Carnival did say in a news press a couple months ago it was going to have all ships upgraded to the new WiFi speeds by end of this summer. Not sure how thats going though. I havent seen anyone posting about other ships having faster or better WiFi speeds then usual.

 

 

 

Edit, here's that news press from February.

https://cruisefever.net/carnival-cruise-line-rolling-faster-internet-every-cruise-ship-fleet/

 

Oh man I hope so! If it actually rolls out fleet-wide by then it should be hopefully on the Magic and I won't have anything to worry about.

 

We sailed last October/November on the Magic. I prepaid for the Premium plan and thought it worked fine. I didn't have a computer, just a couple of tablets and a couple of smart phones but I didn't have any issues.

 

The most amazing thing was that half way through the cruise, my text messages started coming thru via WiFi (Verizon, didn't work the first half - came home, researched and found that it happens frequently but not reliably). Yes, it was work who was texting me and boy was I surprised!

 

I used news sites, CC, email, social media, even downloaded new Kindle books with no issues. Basically I just continued my online life onboard and didn't notice many issues at all. I will say that I have never tried just the Social or the Value packages, only the Premium on both of our last several cruises.

 

Thank you! We definitely do the premium plans. Hopefully nothing to worry about.

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  • 1 month later...
Oh man I hope so! If it actually rolls out fleet-wide by then it should be hopefully on the Magic and I won't have anything to worry about.

 

 

 

Thank you! We definitely do the premium plans. Hopefully nothing to worry about.

wanted to find out from those that recently were on the magic what internet package you would recommend to purchase. I know there have been issues with the service and trying to determine if I should purchase the premium package or not. any suggestions would be great.
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wanted to find out from those that recently were on the magic what internet package you would recommend to purchase. I know there have been issues with the service and trying to determine if I should purchase the premium package or not. any suggestions would be great.

 

We had the Value pkg that costs about $75 prepaid. For the little that we use internet it really isn't worth paying more, but from reading some comments around the board it seems that you get more dependable service with premium.

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