Really really bad wifi

[grouchomarx]

Just spent a week on NS (Caribbean).  Trip was pretty good except wow, the wifi was woefully inadequate the entire cruise. We were desperate day two and spent the money to upgrade to the faster package but it did little to help.  I could not load basic web pages without significant waits. Things like Cruise Critic, NY post, etc. Long load times.  Forget anything involving video.  Instagram was basically unusable unless you wanted to have every video play for a few seconds, stop for a while then continue playing. For everything in my feed.  It was a problem for me because my past time on vacation is sitting with my iPad scrolling the internet for news and my favorite social media sites etc for entertainment.  I could not do that and was often bored.  Luckily it gave us enough juice to do online crossword puzzles.  It didn’t matter where we were on the ship or if in port or not.  It was always really bad. I’m just warning those like me who truly rely on it for daily entertainment perhaps bring yourself a paper book or already downloaded media on your device. If I had known I would have done so myself.  Been on many ships and never had a wifi problem quite like this.  Also note that the wifi drains your device battery like you’ve never seen.  My iPad would be at like 70% before noon when I can do hours and hours continuous of use at home and never get below that by night time.  There is a thing the wifi does where it is constantly making your device authenticate itself nonstop and that’s what causes the battery drain. I do recommend having a power brick with you, it helped us out a few times.  (My husband is a CIO and extreme IT expert so he is the one who explained to me what was happening.)

[newtocruiseinblue]

Good to know as we leave next week. Which package did you have? We do not have the all included but we're thinking of buying the Premium Internet Package. It is my understanding we can purchase the premium internet now for the same price as the basic once onboard.

 

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I'm already having anxiety about the possibility of being disconnected for a week. It's not that I don't want to relax, I want to be in contact with our daughter. 

[FlorenceItaly]

How disappointing.  We leave next Saturday on the NS.  I appreciate the warning as now we will have no expectations.  

[grouchomarx]

25 minutes ago, newtocruiseinblue said:

Good to know as we leave next week. Which package did you have? We do not have the all included but we're thinking of buying the Premium Internet Package. It is my understanding we can purchase the premium internet now for the same price as the basic once onboard.

 

I'm sorry to hear about your experience. I'm already having anxiety about the possibility of being disconnected for a week. It's not that I don't want to relax, I want to be in contact with our daughter. 

We had the suf package included in our fare and upgraded to the premium one for $30 pp.  I can only imagine how awful it would have been had we not upgraded!  Don’t have anxiety, just plan to work around it.  If you are patient, you can connect to things, I just can’t imagine spending that much time staring at a frozen screen waiting for a download to happen.  You’ll never be “disconnected”, just slowly connected.  Things may time out, you must click reload or retry to get it back.  Email was ok, I don’t recall any real problems.  Didn’t try much texting but that should be fine.  Just web content and anything streaming is the real problem.  Nav app works seamlessly at all times.  Switching devices was always very easy.

[Mosaic]

The Wi-Fi on most HAL ships is horrible.  The way they describe what you can get and the reality are in opposite directions.  I actually consider it theft. 

[Gunther1]

We were on the Koningsdam last week and it was so horrible that the captain was mentioning it during his Q and A .  
 

While filling out our after-cruise survey, my comment was something to the effect of " you shouldn't market something that you know you can't deliver". 

[Heartgrove]

This is the same on all cruise lines. We have had top tier internet packages on Holland America, Viking Ocean, and yesterday just off  MSC Yacht Club in the Mediterranean. The service is better in port than at sea but the companies all throttle the passengers usage. This because the ship uses the same communications system for conducting business. Passenger's results can vary depending on what they are attempting to access. I have trouble accessing "Marine Traffic's" site but it is easier to bring up FB for example.

[FlaMariner]

16 minutes ago, Mosaic said:

The Wi-Fi on most HAL ships is horrible.

 

Not just HAL....we were on Princess in March and I thought there was going to be a mutiny from the web needy passengers......

 

One couple left the ship before the cruise ended because they were so internet deprived.

 

(I'm so glad I do not need to check the grocery ads, my bank accounts and cruise critic when I am at sea....I have no need for it and enjoy the break)

[julia]

1 hour ago, grouchomarx said:

We had the suf package included in our fare and upgraded to the premium one for $30 pp.  I can only imagine how awful it would have been had we not upgraded!  

Thx for the info...  is that $30/pp per day or what?  Could you actually detect a difference in speed or was it just a more stable connection?

[Florida_gal_50]

15 minutes ago, FlaMariner said:

 

Not just HAL....we were on Princess in March and I thought there was going to be a mutiny from the web needy passengers......

 

One couple left the ship before the cruise ended because they were so internet deprived.

 

(I'm so glad I do not need to check the grocery ads, my bank accounts and cruise critic when I am at sea....I have no need for it and enjoy the break)

Wow just wow.  There are people that actually work.  People that have their own business, people that have to run payroll, nurses that have to book their shifts.  How very judgmental.

[grouchomarx]

33 minutes ago, julia said:

Thx for the info...  is that $30/pp per day or what?  Could you actually detect a difference in speed or was it just a more stable connection?

It was a $30 flat fee per person, not per day. Honestly, we were only a few minutes into day 2 (didn’t have time for internet on day 1, too busy learning the ship, unpacking, etc).  After a few minutes we just say let’s do it, so I can’t tell you how much worse it would have been without the upgrade.

[grouchomarx]

22 minutes ago, Florida_gal_50 said:

Wow just wow.  There are people that actually work.  People that have their own business, people that have to run payroll, nurses that have to book their shifts.  How very judgmental.

I saw some people trying to conduct business on their laptops and I felt really bad for them, it must have been painfully slow.  My husband usually conducts huge amounts of business while traveling because he has no choice and this time thankfully he didn’t….had he needed to, we would have been in serious trouble.

[grouchomarx]

53 minutes ago, Heartgrove said:

This is the same on all cruise lines. We have had top tier internet packages on Holland America, Viking Ocean, and yesterday just off  MSC Yacht Club in the Mediterranean. The service is better in port than at sea but the companies all throttle the passengers usage. This because the ship uses the same communications system for conducting business. Passenger's results can vary depending on what they are attempting to access. I have trouble accessing "Marine Traffic's" site but it is easier to bring up FB for example.

HAL is the first cruise line I’ve experience this bad of wifi.  I have been able to scroll internet, including Instagram, Reddit, all news outlets with no issues on every other cruise in recent times.  On Celebrity Edge in Feb there were a few hiccups but it was by far the exception not the rule.

ETA:  Princess, Royal, Celebrity, and NCL are past lines

Edited October 30, 2022 by grouchomarx

[Iamthesea]

Do both passengers in a stateroom have to purchase the "upgrade"?  My DH does nothing on the Internet when we travel, and I do very little, but do like to check email and message my children.  My daughter will send photos of the grandchildren.  Sometimes videos that I will not even bother trying to upload.

[DaveOKC]

Just back from a Panama Canal cruise on Eurodam - LOTS of people complaining about the poor wifi.

 

 

[Mary229]

Unless you get up very early in the morning forget it.   When I was working while cruising I would be up at 4 am to manage my correspondence.  I find my cellular data is very good in port in the Caribbean so I don’t buy it from the ship. 

[Crew News]

32 minutes ago, Iamthesea said:

Do both passengers in a stateroom have to purchase the "upgrade"?  My DH does nothing on the Internet when we travel, and I do very little, but do like to check email and message my children.  My daughter will send photos of the grandchildren.  Sometimes videos that I will not even bother trying to upload.

Unless you have the "HIA" package, there is only one internet account per stateroom.  If you have more than one account per stateroom, you can just upgrade one account.

[grouchomarx]

38 minutes ago, Iamthesea said:

Do both passengers in a stateroom have to purchase the "upgrade"?  My DH does nothing on the Internet when we travel, and I do very little, but do like to check email and message my children.  My daughter will send photos of the grandchildren.  Sometimes videos that I will not even bother trying to upload.

It prompted both of us separately on our apps with the choice to upgrade, no indication it was for everyone in the cabin.  Once my spouse did it, it didn’t automatically upgrade me so you should be fine with just one upgrade.

[Crew News]

The worst place to get internet speed is in your metal-walled stateroom although some Neptune Suites have their own repeaters on the ceiling.  If you are on a HAL ship that uses waiter tablets for the MDR, reconsider using the internet during dinnertime.

 

In my experience, the best places for speed are near repeaters in the Internet Cafe and Deck 9 indoor pool.  With reduced passengers last year on Nieuw Amsterdam, a tablet was being passed around a Deck 9 hot tub so that family members could wave to their grandparents back home.  The Deck 10 balcony above the indoor pool on Pinnacle-class ships is a good working place for internet speed.

 

Sitting in the open doorway of your stateroom or doing important internet tasks when most passengers are asleep, gets better internet speed.  Another good time for internet speed is the first few hours in port when most passengers are away from the ship.

[FlaMariner]

2 hours ago, Florida_gal_50 said:

 There are people that actually work.

 

My experience is you cannot rely on ship internet no matter what they say.....If you choose to rely on ship internet for work, you are making a very bad decision, IMO.

 

 

[Sherry H]

We've had both "surf" and "premium" did not notice any difference between the two.

We are early risers and it seemed to move along nicely at that time.

[crystalspin]

I have read (repeatedly) that the three plans are the same speed -- or lack of speed -- only fewer sites and apps are blocked the more you pay.

[Florida_gal_50]

15 minutes ago, FlaMariner said:

 

My experience is you cannot rely on ship internet no matter what they say.....If you choose to rely on ship internet for work, you are making a very bad decision, IMO.

 

 

My point was that you don’t need to assume people are looking a grocery store flyers, cruise critic or whatever.  It’s just like assuming people are standing in the club orange line at the front desk to ask the time and to hold others up 🙄.  There should be working internet if hal has that as part of a package.  I have had working internet on the ship before.  It shouldn’t be a foreign concept.  Clearly many people on this board have been retired for decades or are trust fund babies that don’t actually work so can’t remember what it’s like.

[IPB4IGO]

There is no difference in speed between the three levels of Internet sold by HAL, only differences in sites and capabilities you can access.

 

Regarding location, on our last cruise, because the Internet service was so bad, I walked around the ship with a Wi-Fi sniffer app. I found only minor differences in signal strength. The problem was not getting a good Wi-Fi signal on our devices. The problem was the capacity of the ship's satellite Internet service, shared with 2,400 of our closest friends. It was mostly unusable.

 

Once connected to the Internet, ping times were 950-1150 ms. With latency like that, web pages would seldom load. 

[*Miss G*]

The internet on the Oosterdam Greek Odyssey cruise, last week, worked great.  Video uploads slowed near the end of the cruise as more people logged on to check their post-cruise plans.

 

The ships rely on satellite service which is affected by weather and location, among other things.  There are so many factors affecting internet access on ships that you can’t actually pin it to one specific thing unless you’re the onboard IT department and you’ve successfully done the troubleshooting.  The worst internet I ever had, or didn’t have as it were, was on Princess.

 

Edited October 30, 2022 by *Miss G*