WiFi Reliability - Caribbean/Panama Canal Winter 2022/23

[nymshowdown]

I've been on four Princess sailings this past year and have had mixed experiences with how fast/reliable the WiFi is on board. The two sailings in the winter/spring had great WiFi performance, but the two over the summer were utterly useless. After reading multiple threads here, it seems as if something tech-wise changed fleet wide during the Spring, and now WiFi is terrible onboard every ship? I'm just so lost....

 

I know I know: It's a vacation, who cares about internet! I am mainly curious because I find myself lucky enough to be in a position to work remotely 5 days a week. I also live in South Florida. Every time I get an email from Princess with a sale, I want to book a cruise and work remotely from the ship for a week, but I can't allow myself do it. It's simply not worth the risk of boarding a ship, finding no working WiFi connection, and then being unable to work.

 

I'm a Princess loyalist to a fault, and would much prefer to book their sailings this winter. However, I just booked my second on Royal Caribbean instead, as the Starlink-powered WiFi is much more reliable. Stop shooting yourselves in the foot, Princess. We remote workers want to give you our money, we just need the WiFi working! 

[Potstech]

Would not count on it. Something wrong happened with the Wifi during the shutdown.  Princess dos not see it as a major problem right now.

[travelin.sisters]

When I spoke to the Internet manager (whatever his title actually is) I got a whole lot of contradictory information: the ship had different info than other ships I was on earlier in the year; it's bad on all the ships; it's not actually that bad; it was the area (coast of Mexico--where I had great internet in January); the hurricane did it...anyway a lot of nothing, but the one thing he did say that I believe is true is that the provider they are using doesn't have the capacity to supply what they have promised to everyone that wants it & everyone they have sold it to & it is not possible to provide what Princess is selling with their advertising (& he gave me a refund)

[Essiesmom]

I suspect a large problem is that those who learned to work from home during the shutdown are now flooding the ships and stretching the Wi-Fi too thin.  This includes those that learned to use Wi-Fi to entertain themselves, maybe more than TV.  EM

[geoherb]

There's definitely something that happened this past spring. I did three cruises after the restart that did not have any internet problems. My last cruise in August did. It was so bad that they automatically credited everyone who purchased the internet for 10 days (out of 16), including those who had booked Plus and Premiere. 

 

I'm sailing on a Panama Canal partial on the Caribbean after Thanksgiving. I'm hoping the internet will be as good as it was last December. My hockey team will be playing road games, and I want to watch them on my laptop. If the internet is not good enough to stream, though, it's not as if I'm missing work. But I will ask for a refund for the days it doesn't live up to the Princess promise: "Access the internet everywhere on board so you can text, post photos, video chat and stream your favorite shows, movies, music and sports with ease."

[PurpleHays]

4 hours ago, geoherb said:

I'm sailing on a Panama Canal partial on the Caribbean after Thanksgiving. I'm hoping the internet will be as good as it was last December. My hockey team will be playing road games, and I want to watch them on my laptop. 

Go Canes!?!

 

We just finished a TA and the WiFi was easily my major complaint. I managed without it, but my poor DH went through TikTok withdrawal. Five *whole* days without it crossing the Atlantic. I'm hoping April in the Caribbean is better, but I'm not holding my breath. It is what it is and I plan ahead for such events.

[geoherb]

On 10/9/2022 at 8:47 PM, PurpleHays said:

Go Canes!?!

 

We just finished a TA and the WiFi was easily my major complaint. I managed without it, but my poor DH went through TikTok withdrawal. Five *whole* days without it crossing the Atlantic. I'm hoping April in the Caribbean is better, but I'm not holding my breath. It is what it is and I plan ahead for such events.

 

Did they reimburse people who had purchased internet? I do have my Kindle loaded with lots of books to read and a few videos loaded on my laptop.

 

Go Canes!