How does Princess get away with boasting "Best WiFi at Sea"?

[JimmyVWine]

1 hour ago, CapnCrews said:

Anybody who thinks “all others are tied for first” either hasn’t actually been on “all” or just has a bone to pick.  

I think you are misreading what I posted. Invert it. If all others are tied for first, they are tied for “first worst”. 
 

Edited February 25, 2023 by JimmyVWine

[JimmyVWine]

45 minutes ago, GonzoWCS said:

Our experience is that Princess is worst at sea FULL STOP.  I would hate to experience someone worse.

 

Cheers

See post #23 above. 

[The Greater Fool]

Since I had intended to do a couple hours of work every morning on our Transatlantic in October of last year you just can't imagine my disappointment when the internet simply was not up to the task.

 

I hope our Transpacific this coming October is equally up to task, really, because having the time to myself everyday would be just so disappointing.

 

Good luck,

 

Tek

[glenc56]

It's like a kid saying, "sorry, just kidding here's you money back" .  Good luck!!!

 

[CapnCrews]

3 hours ago, GonzoWCS said:

Our experience is that Princess is worst at sea FULL STOP.  I would hate to experience someone worse.

 

Cheers

Are you going to say “full stop” everytime someone brings up Wifi?   So far this is #2.   If it weren’t for the fact you capitalized it this time I might have thought it was a pattern.  

[GonzoWCS]

1 hour ago, CapnCrews said:

Are you going to say “full stop” everytime someone brings up Wifi?   So far this is #2.   If it weren’t for the fact you capitalized it this time I might have thought it was a pattern.  

Yes

 

Cheers

[KarmaCruisers]

The problem is 200% covid blameable 

100% SES (the satellite provider) said they had issues blah blah blah

100% NOW EVERYONE wants internet (just imagine being on that fateful Diamond princess in an INTERIOR cabin with ZERO internet! NO ONE wants to POSSIBLY be in that situation EVER..so even 100 year old Grandma is on the internet package)

give it two or three more years..SES will come back to fully operational with LEO satellites and the fear of non-connection may go back (if they can raise the price of internet package high enough, not every Tom, Dick and Harry will buy it..only maybe Tom, lol)

[caribill]

15 hours ago, thunderbaycruiser said:

Best Wi-Fi at sea? What a joke!

 

 

What is not a joke is that Princess recently raised the price to experience the Best Wi-Fi at Sea by 50% for one-device at a time.

[Galesa]

15 hours ago, thunderbaycruiser said:

Even best wifi is a joke, and internet was terrible. There were simple, non-bandwidth intensive tasks that I could not do for days. This was Majestic Princess to Fiji on February 11th.

 

Latest iPhones also routinely lost wifi connections completely for no reason (meaning not even the Princess app worked). A few times it was a considerable amount of time before we could even reconnect. These Wi-Fi failures would happen in the middle of usage.

 

Best Wi-Fi at sea? What a joke!

 

I was on that cruise and yes the internet was terrible. Had to laugh though.

Went to a trivia quiz and I was using my phone to record the answers when someone said you shouldn't use a phone because you might be seen to be cheating.

Lol. Like you could successfully Google an answer in the time between questions using the ship's wifi. 

[Peira]

"The problem is 200% covid blameable   Huh?

100% SES (the satellite provider) said they had issues blah blah blah

100% NOW EVERYONE wants internet"

 

Of course everyone wants internet. A successful company figures out how to deliver goods/services its customers want, at a price that results in satisfied customers as well as profit for the company.

Princess fails to deliver internet services their customers want. And they charge an exorbitant fee for it.

[Coral]

7 hours ago, KarmaCruisers said:

The problem is 200% covid blameable 

100% SES (the satellite provider) said they had issues blah blah blah

100% NOW EVERYONE wants internet (just imagine being on that fateful Diamond princess in an INTERIOR cabin with ZERO internet! NO ONE wants to POSSIBLY be in that situation EVER..so even 100 year old Grandma is on the internet package)

give it two or three more years..SES will come back to fully operational with LEO satellites and the fear of non-connection may go back (if they can raise the price of internet package high enough, not every Tom, Dick and Harry will buy it..only maybe Tom, lol)

It was horrible before COVID.

[mowogo]

4 hours ago, caribill said:

 

What is not a joke is that Princess recently raised the price to experience the Best Wi-Fi at Sea by 50% for one-device at a time.

Wifi bandwidth is limited under these old contracts and you discourage demand by raising prices.  

 

With that said, Best wifi at sea is returning with the upcoming conversion to Starlink.  

[cptlapcat]

13 minutes ago, mowogo said:

Wifi bandwidth is limited under these old contracts and you discourage demand by raising prices.  

 

With that said, Best wifi at sea is returning with the upcoming conversion to Starlink.  

Musk to the rescue . As of February 2023, Starlink consists of over 3,580 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), which communicate with designated ground transceivers. In total, nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 42,000.

[Steelers36]

19 hours ago, spyro1952 said:

But I thought I read somewhere where they are also getting Starlink as RC and Celebrity are getting.

Even then, they won't have the best internet at sea - they will just be in a tie.  (BTW, PCL most often claims they have the "best Wifi at sea" and that is technically a whole different beast than the WWW internet.  "Best Wifi" could refer to the access point network and the ease of a good connection and maintaining that connection as move about the ship.

[beg3yrs]

16 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

... BTW, PCL most often claims they have the "best Wifi at sea" and that is technically a whole different beast than the WWW internet.  "Best Wifi" could refer to the access point network and the ease of a good connection and maintaining that connection as move about the ship.

Yes I've considered that as well. However the subsequent text describing Zoom calls, streaming videos, fast downloads and so on makes it clear they're referring to Internet access.

[Steelers36]

42 minutes ago, cptlapcat said:

Musk to the rescue . As of February 2023, Starlink consists of over 3,580 mass-produced small satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO), which communicate with designated ground transceivers. In total, nearly 12,000 satellites are planned to be deployed, with a possible later extension to 42,000.

They need one of these things to run around and clean up all the other space junk up there:

 

[CapnCrews]

2 hours ago, mowogo said:

Wifi bandwidth is limited under these old contracts and you discourage demand by raising prices.  

 

With that said, Best wifi at sea is returning with the upcoming conversion to Starlink.  

Musk will never get a penny of my hard earned, American money.  

[cruzin4us]

I've sailed twice to Hawaii (Ruby and Diamond) in the past year and the wi-fi worked extremely well.

 

I've also cruised the Mexican Riviera and CA Coastal on the Discovery and it was PATHETIC at best.

 

So, it's a crap shoot on the Wi-Fi.    Where I expected it to work it didn't and where I least expected it the Wi-Fi worked like a charm.

 

[mowogo]

2 hours ago, CapnCrews said:

Musk will never get a penny of my hard earned, American money.  

Sadly because the competing products are so bad right (bandwidth, business development, coverage) now, everyone is moving to Starlink.

[californiagirl]

We are currently on Discovery, boarded yesterday.  The Wi-Fi has improved dramatically since I was on this same cruise last year.  I didn’t bother purchasing it when I went to Alaska last September. I was able to stream YouTube videos around 11:00 pm last night!  The cost is a mystery to me though.  I purchased the 4 device plan pre-cruise for $140 for seven days.  The info said that was a 50% discount as I am elite.  It listed full price as $280.  When we boarded yesterday I had a $70 credit for medallionnet.  So it ended up costing us $10/day for 4 devices.  That works out to $5/day per person as there are two of us and two devices each is plenty.  I think that is what we paid right after the restart in 2021.  Did we get a bargain or is that what it should have cost us?

[caribill]

1 hour ago, californiagirl said:

I purchased the 4 device plan pre-cruise for $140 for seven days.  The info said that was a 50% discount as I am elite.  It listed full price as $280.  When we boarded yesterday I had a $70 credit for medallionnet.  So it ended up costing us $10/day for 4 devices.  That works out to $5/day per person as there are two of us and two devices each is plenty.  I think that is what we paid right after the restart in 2021.  Did we get a bargain or is that what it should have cost us?

 

It is what it should have cost you under the pricing plan when you purchased it.

 

At that time the regular price was $10 day for one person for one device at a time. So for two people with that plan, it would be $70 each (total $140) for a seven day cruise. With platinum/elite discount of 50%, the cost would be $35 each, a total of $70.

 

At that time, a package with up to four devices at a time was $20/day, the same as buying two single use packages.

 

And that is what you bought, $20/day for up to four devices. For seven days that would $140 total and with the 50% discount (rebate in your case when you got on board) would be $70 for the week.

 

Since then the price has increased and what you would now end up paying for a four device package would be significantly more.

[cr8tiv1]

I wonder how the bean counters sleep at night?  

 

How does the staff know who paid what when?  Poor bar keeper.  Poor coffee barista.  Poor Internet Manager.  Poor Customer Service Agent.  This is truly a nightmare.  Make sure you bring your printed sales receipts with you.  

 

 

[newportbeachgirl]

On 2/24/2023 at 5:46 AM, Mini BMG said:

Am I the only one who feels this way?

Internet was AWFUL! You are right on my money. We took our first Princess Cruise recently. Just a short one to see if working remotely would be feasible so we could add future cruises to our travel plans. It was almost unbearable. Kept kicking us off. Forget about streaming anything. Couldn’t see our Ring camera feed even from port. We’d love to get back on the Discovery but they need to solve the unreliable internet issue. 

Edited February 27, 2023 by newportbeachgirl

[cr8tiv1]

Am I missing something or is it only the Discovery that is having internet issues.  You don't here Diamond, Crown, Royal, Emerald (all doing Pacific Ocean) complaining.  

[californiagirl]

Caribill thank you for the explanation.  The only thing is that I bought the plan about a week ago well after the price increase.