Carnival Hub App Great and the Chat Option Awesome!

My family, just sailed on the Carnival Horizon. There were 11 of us ages 10-72. We all got the App prior to sailing and as we arrived on board activated it via the ships WiFi. There is no cost for basic use of the App. Most of the group then also got the additional chat option for $5 each (cost for the entire week of use).

We all used the App to see the daily ship activities. From day 1 you could see the schedules for every day of the cruise. This made it so much easier to check what was going on at any time around the ship and not have to carry the paper ship schedule around. You also had the option to click on the activity to note you were interested in participating. When you did that it saved it in the App and placed it in your personal "planner" for the week. In addition, the rest of the people in our group could all see what things the others were interested in doing.

The Chat portion however was just the best. It was awesome to be able easily to let others in the group know where we were and what we were doing. The Horizon is a big ship but the app made it easy to keep in contact with each other, make plans and find one another any time we wanted to.

Another good feature was that your Pixels photos were also able to be seen on the app. You could purchase the photos right through the app or go to the pixels studio if you wanted to see them on a bigger screen.

Also included was your account information. I really liked this feature as well. With 4 people charging on our account it was helpful to keep track of how much we were spending each day.

My sister got the social Wifi plan added on and found it worked well for what they wanted. Anyone in their family cold use it but just one person at a time. If her daughter wanted to use it she would log out and her daughter would then login. They were able to see/use Facebook, and other social sites. She could see and receive emails but was not able to respond with this level of plan.

We were not able to go to Grand Turk due to a medical evacuation. We had planned a snorkeling excursion for that day with an outside company. I activated the higher level plan for 24 hours, cost $25, so that I could email them and tell them we would not be coming in and then also look for some options for a snorkel excursion in Puerto Rico as we had not planned anything for that stop. I was able to send and receive emails and search safari etc. during that time period. (A few days later I went to Guest Services and asked if by chance they would consider removing that charge since I only had to use it due to the port cancellation. Without any issue she removed the charge :)

Every once in awhile the app would freeze up but we found if you simply swiped up and close the app and then reopened it, it was fine again.

Overall a great new addition to cruising experience.

We loved the app as well. Used it on Splendor and Paradise, and it is very useful. Not only the chat, but we liked that we could "mark" what we wanted to do over the length of the cruise, and it would remind us as that event was approaching. So many times in the past we have been having fun or whatever, and then all of a sudden remember.. "We missed (insert event) that we wanted to do."

We sailed the Glory last week and got a lot of use out of the Hub app. It wasn't available when we were aboard the Conquest two years ago, so we looked forward to trying it and it didn't disappoint. The alert notification feature was nice when you favorite an activity, but for those who haven't used it yet, just make sure to leave the app running in the background if you want to get these alerts. I had my son and his friend linked to my S&S account, so I could see their spending. Sometimes new spending updated right away, other times it took a while. We didn't buy the chat feature since we were all using iMessage. Lots of reports of chat being hit & miss on many of the ships. The internet service was absolutely atrocious aboard Glory. So much so, we couldn't even get to Carnival's website, check emails, hardly anything. But the Hub app almost always worked. Once in a while it would put a message across the top that wifi connection was lost, but we'd just close & reopen the app, that seemed to do the trick.

How do you get the chat feature? Do you add it once on board? We sail on Sunday, and this is the one thing I haven't quite figured out yet!

yes you add it through the app once on board.

yes you add it through the app once on board.

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To activate the app, once you are onboard the ship, you enter your Portfolio number found on you sail away card. One logged in, Each person then can choose add the Chat feature. $5 is then billed to the attached account.

Thank you for your review- very helpful!

Chat can be glitchy but still beats the old days of trying to use walkie talkies and looking like idiots :D

Have used the HUB App before and plan on using it again in December. But I have not had as much success with the Chat feature. Messages sometimes appeared hours after they were sent, and some messages were never received at all!! Hopefully they have made some improvments.