Has the internet gotten better?

[kwahl1]

New to RCL, coming over from Princess and NCL. I haven't cruised in 2 years, but I swore on the past three to five cruises to never ever get internet packages on-board. I could not believe how slow service was "in those days". I thought that technology had left the cruising industry in the dark. It was like the old "dial up" days of the 90s, when we cruised in 2006-2015. I couldn't believe there wasn't an industry wide boycott, as the log jam of bandwidth was sometimes twenty minutes just to log on! Maybe it was just the terminals in the computer rooms? I found the best places were on shore at coffee shops or computer labs in foreign countries. Tell me the internet is better and I will be delighted with it when I cross the Pacific in October in our first Transpacific cruise. I'll accept some techie talk in this thread too. Thanks all.

[Janet524]

I think it depends on the ship. Had great internet experience on Allure, not so much on Grandeur. But Grandeur is an older ship and will be going into dry dock soon, so it may be upgraded on her then.

[Clarea]

The internet on Explorer has not been updated, so I would expect the typical high latency and limited bandwidth.

[crewsweeper]

Connection speed is going to depend upon the equipment, network protocol in place and usage at any time. Given that ships get their signals from satellites versus towers, connection will be slow even with new ship equipment. Also there's a lot of interference on board a ship and if there's a large number of people on board using the system it will be even slower. RCL was piloting a system called O3B which worked in combination with advanced satellites, port wifi connections and land based antenna. Whether that's beyond the pilot tests or not I don't know, but cost will most likely rise as it gets implemented fleet wide.

[mike123abc]

The larger ships in the Caribbean have great internet. They use low orbiting satellites to improve latency. No it is not you 100mbit/sec home connection, but it works rather well. It would be nice if they rolled it out to the smaller ships.

 

O3bMaritime has already provided four of Royal Caribbean’s largest ships (Oasis of the Seas, Allure of the Seas, Quantum of the Seas and Anthem of the Seas), each with more bandwidth than the rest of the cruise industry combined. https://www.o3bnetworks.com/o3b-connects-royal-caribbean-smart-ship-anthem-of-the-seas-in-the-mediterranean/

[ATC cruiser]

I just got off Anthem. I heard great things about the internet. Well I got to tell you, was I disappointed. It is better than the internet on the older ships, but still wasn't very fast. I did not buy a package before hand, and I'm really glad I didn't. I used my two diamond coupons to get free internet for two 24 hour periods. 1 was surf, 1 was surf and stream. I really didn't notice any difference between the 2. I used it in the solarium and my cabin, which was 11214, midship balcony. On the balcony with the door closed, it was useless. In the cabin I did a speed test, it was a whopping .223mps. That's right, point 223mps, and that was surf and stream. Maybe there are other areas on the ship where it's better, but I didn't look for them. It did seem to speed up around dinner time, so maybe since it was spring break week the system was just overwhelmed.

 

 

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[kwahl1]

I think it depends on the ship. Had great internet experience on Allure, not so much on Grandeur. But Grandeur is an older ship and will be going into dry dock soon, so it may be upgraded on her then.

 

 

We'll be sailing on the Explorer of the Seas. There's some good tech talk here. Keep it up.

[Psycho and Barb]

We were on the Oasis two weeks ago and we had no problem with the speed or connection. We faced time many times all over the ship with no problems

 

 

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[FLCruiseFan]

Just off the Jewel OTS and it was hit or miss. During peak times it was basically worthless. Other times it worked great. I would still get the package but don't expect it to be like your high speed at home.

[Clarea]

We'll be sailing on the Explorer of the Seas. There's some good tech talk here. Keep it up.

Explorer is still on the old geosync sats.

[perditax]

Does anyone have a list of which ships have the updated tech and which don't? (Besides the obvious ... I assume like the five newest ships all have it.)

 

I'm not a RCI cruiser (yet) but I'm pretty sure my next NCL cruise will be my last, so I'm sure I'll try RC at some point, and connectivity matters to me.

[tomatecerise]

On Allure we had problems just when we at Port in the stateroom. But in those days we are not very long time in the stateroom! We share internet for 2 devices and it was perfect. You can choose your langage to log in.

[Clarea]

Does anyone have a list of which ships have the updated tech and which don't? (Besides the obvious ... I assume like the five newest ships all have it.)

 

I'm not a RCI cruiser (yet) but I'm pretty sure my next NCL cruise will be my last, so I'm sure I'll try RC at some point, and connectivity matters to me.

All of Oasis and Quantum class. Freedom, Majesty, and possibly Empress, but not sure about that one.

[perditax]

All of Oasis and Quantum class. Freedom, Majesty, and possibly Empress, but not sure about that one.

 

Thanks, this is a good starting point for me. I'm slightly wary of the Oasis ships but I've been intrigued by Freedom.

[Tatka]

Allure and Anthem had great wifi . Speed and quality.

I was able to have skype conferences.

 

I hope it will be updated on Grandeur too!

[ellenw]

We'll be sailing on the Explorer of the Seas. There's some good tech talk here. Keep it up.

 

Have you joined our roll call for the October TransPacific? If not, come on over!

 

I purchased the surf and stream package only because of the World Series! We did a TransAtlantic in October 2016, and we had no idea what was going on in the world of baseball. This was a big deal for my husband. So, hopefully, we can keep upon it this year, and watch games even if they are at odd times.

[Biker19]

Does anyone have a list of which ships have the updated tech and which don't? (Besides the obvious ... I assume like the five newest ships all have it.)

We try to keep it updated at this thread:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2351143&page=15&highlight=voom+roll+call

[Biker19]

I used my two diamond coupons to get free internet for two 24 hour periods. 1 was surf, 1 was surf and stream. I really didn't notice any difference between the 2.

How do you know which tier you had and if you did have Stream, how did you get that with the D coupon?

[Biker19]

All of Oasis and Quantum class. Freedom, Majesty, and possibly Empress, but not sure about that one.

Not on Empress, but it does have a much smaller crowd to use the BW.

[Rogueperson]

I've done Anthem and Granduer in the last 7 months and got the Streaming package for both. It was noticeably faster on Anthem as they do have the newer system, but its a pale comparison to your home network. Can you stream stuff and surf the web, yes. But be prepared with some frustration, especially on the older ships like Grandeur.

 

That being said, it is also a SIGNIFICANT improvement from 5 years ago. 5 years ago, streaming video was not possible as the stream was way too slow and at the same time, not worth the price per minute. On both ships, I was able to watch videos from my streaming services, but there were more frustrations on Grandeur than Anthem. Anthem had fewer speed problems, but had other issues. Example, I would attempt to stream from any service, and the video would not start. It would continue to show the loading symbol, however, if i tried to scrub the video (go to another part) the data was there, but it wouldn't play. I took my complaint to IT who replicated on their end on a different device, and they essentially reset the whole system. It happened several times.

[ATC cruiser]

How do you know which tier you had and if you did have Stream, how did you get that with the D coupon?

 

 

My wife and I are both Diamond so when you go to sign up for Internet it gives you all the different packages that are available 1 day, 1 device, or 2 days, 2 devices, surf or surf and stream...etc. 1 day, 1 device is $19.99 for surf. That's what your Diamond coupon is worth, so if you want to use your coupon, they deduct $19.99 from the cost of the package. So my wife had a coupon and so did I. If you have any kids they will get one 60 minute slot of time free, and also they receive 10% off the price of any package. If you plan on being online a lot, I would preorder the package, if you plan on using it just a little, use the coupons. I don't remember the full list of onboard prices, but I think an ultimate drink package was cheaper than a 5 device, 7 day internet package. We got the 1 device, 1 day surf package, which goes for 19.99 for free and then we got a surf and stream, which goes for 27.99 for $8. The prices change every day depending on how many days are left, but they still give you $19.99 off the price. Hope this explanation wasn't to confusing, I'd be glad to answer any other questions.

 

 

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[Biker19]

We got the 1 device, 1 day surf package, which goes for 19.99 for free and then we got a surf and stream, which goes for 27.99 for $8.

Got it - the initial post made is sound like to got Stream free with the coupon.

 

BTW, we have had reports from Anthem with speeds of 5 Mps with Stream (about the norm), so getting 1/20th of that is certainly an anomaly.

[ATC cruiser]

I'm thinking it was a bandwidth issue do to the fact there were a lot of kids with it being spring break. Or maybe it was seadog67 hogging it with his great, live, review of the same cruise[emoji41].

 

 

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