Internet on Valiant Lady

[RBCal]

I won't make many comments just post my personal data from using the free and 'premium' WiFi services on Valiant Lady

 

Free Internet  speed is <4Mbps 

'Premium' Internet speed is <8Mbps

Over 3 year old Pixel 6 Google Fi personal hotspot Internet speed is <1Gps

 

So the $150 per week 'premium' wifi is only twice as fast as the free wifi but my 3yo cell phone is over 100X faster as a hotspot than Virgin's server.  My cell phone could provide wifi service to over 100 people at a cost of $1 each per month.

 

I won't be flying on Virgin Galactic anytime soon.  Their technology is basically stone age.

[RBCal]

I forgot to declare that I have zero financial interests in Google besides being an owner of mutual funds which buy their stock.  

[_tacocat_]

The premium internet isn’t supposed to be any faster, they just unblock the streaming ports.  It’s been fast enough for me to work remotely from 13 voyages (the only reason I’ve been able to go on so many).  Teams calls with video, zoom, file sharing, etc.

[jon81uk]

And the technology has nothing to do with Virgin Galactic, the ships use Starlink and/or SLS satellites for the internet connection.

[RBCal]

 Cool. I love to pay 100x over cost.  Sir Richard

sure needs the money

[cantgetin]

We had no problem doing everything we wanted to, including streaming, on Valiant with premium wifi.  No problems with lag or unstable connections.  This included the April TA crossing....worked well all the way across.

[Tyler414]

Virgin uses Starlink for internet.  On a Med cruise in June I upgraded after day 2 and didn't really have any issues.  It did cost me $125 but I was willing and prepared to upgrade...

[RBCal]

It's $30 a day which is the only amount I purchased.  I had to have faster speed for an international call.  At a maximum speed of 8 Mbps the premium wifi is outrageously overpriced IMHO.  

 

Any data intensive needs I use my cell phone as a hot spot in the ports.  The TV selections are extremely limited and the signal drops in and out.  The Virgin App crashes repeatedly.  VV needs to upgrade their wifi and recode the app.  Everyone complains about the app crashing repeatedly.  

 

If you are satisfied with the poor service it will never improve.

[FFMilesJunkie]

8 minutes ago, RBCal said:

It's $30 a day which is the only amount I purchased.  I had to have faster speed for an international call.  At a maximum speed of 8 Mbps the premium wifi is outrageously overpriced IMHO.  

 

Any data intensive needs I use my cell phone as a hot spot in the ports.  The TV selections are extremely limited and the signal drops in and out.  The Virgin App crashes repeatedly.  VV needs to upgrade their wifi and recode the app.  Everyone complains about the app crashing repeatedly.  

 

If you are satisfied with the poor service it will never improve.

$30 per day?? It's always been $10 per day and if you have status, it's free. Maybe they increased the price to $15 recently.  I'm not really sure why you are comparing land based and satellite based data. There's just no comparison.  The speeds on Virgin have improved significantly with the introduction of Starlink, and I'm sure Elon Musk is charging Sir Richard more than $1 per passenger for the service!  

I don't think anyone here is defending the app. I think it's one of the biggest complaints from regular sailors.  I didn't have too many issues with it on my 2 Resilient sailings this year, but it still gets low grades from me when I fill out the survey.  

Edited August 19, 2023 by FFMilesJunkie

[CruisingWalter]

41 minutes ago, FFMilesJunkie said:

 I'm not really sure why you are comparing land based and satellite based data. There's just no comparison.

 

1000% this. And note that internet speeds vary wildly throughout the cruise and even throughout the day depending on a number of factors. That's for any cruise ship. As for the pricing, it's been $10/day for the streaming upgrade, though with the Deep Blue Extras we get one upgrade for free on each cruise.

[cantgetin]

As above, the price of the Premium upgrade has always been $10 per day.  We got a 2 device upgrade with DBE.  Yes, I know the purchased upgrade is 3 devices, but Sailor Services clearly told us 2 which was fine.  Had we desired, we could have logged out of one device and onto another--it was 2 at the same time.  We didn't do this--we put the computers on the premium and kept the phones on the standard.

Yes, the app is a pain.  It worked a lot better on the ship than on land, but still crashed at times.  It was especially bad when the crew app crashed!

I agree that the TV selections are not extensive, but we had no problem with signal loss.  The crew in the Social Club were very amenable to running sailor requests on the large screens there.  

[RBCal]

I guess I should post my wallet. Premium wifi is $30 a day for slow service

 

[neverendingcruising]

On our most recent voyage it was $30 for 24 hours, $25/day if you bought the length of the voyage (first day "free"), however we have Deep Blue so didn't pay anything. 

 

Have you cruised before? We previously sailed Disney almost exclusively. Tried Royal twice. Virgin is down right cheap compared to those two lines. Disney won't let you stream no matter how much you pay! 

 

It's silly to compare land based cellular on a single personal device to thousands of people sharing a satellite connection at sea. Is it expensive? Absolutely. Do they mark it up over their cost? Absolutely. Are they aligned with the industry? Not even close, way better deal. 

[_tacocat_]

27 minutes ago, neverendingcruising said:

 

On our most recent voyage it was $30 for 24 hours, $25/day if you bought the length of the voyage (first day "free"), however we have Deep Blue so didn't pay anything. 

 

Yikes! I only did the premium once for one day before they announced deep blue extras, and it was $15/day unless you did the full voyages then you got a day free.  I’m guessing at this point they’re giving it away to so many people, the non-DBErs had to start subsidizing it!

[CineGraphic]

Premium wifi is free for us, and we don't compare it to anything else because it's our only option while on-board.

[Fogcityca13]

We didn’t experience much difference between the free internet on Resilient vs having premium on Valiant in the Caribbean. We were just using social media, web browsing, and made a call at sea. Compared to the RCCL paid internet, Virgin’s performance was consistently better throughout the ship. I haven’t been on the newest RCCL ships though. 

[cantgetin]

Valiant Lady improved greatly when they got the Starlink set up.  It was quite awful in October 2022, MUCH improved in April 2023.  We may have been satisfied with regular, but since we had premium as a perk, we enjoyed it.

[lisabucsfan1]

RE Pricing... 7 nights on RCCL for premium wifi for 2 devices - prepaid ahead of time for a "discount" was $265.86 or ~$38 per day.

 

So, $30per day is inline with the competition even if it's not the same as what other VV sailors pay. 

[Wildcatllamas]

When I was on Scarlet back in December of 2021 the internet wasn't the fastest but I was able to do my payroll without any issues. I could keep up with work emails and any of the other things that I had to do.

 

Fast forward to two cruises I did on Princess. Once with their paid internet and this last time with what was included in their package and neither time could I stay on long enough to get through doing payroll. And their internet isn't cheap. I went into port and found a Starbucks in order to at least get payroll done. It was a nightmare and then having to deal with emails from work as to why aren't you replying. 

 

I have Starlink at my home and it is amazing. Way better then the previous satellite internet I had. But my home isn't bouncing around like a cork in a bucket of water. The thing is, that with the number of Starlink satellites that are up there in low orbit you may encounter a short lag between pick up but it isn't by very much and since they are in low orbit the speed up and back isn't even noticeable. 

 

I remember when I first cruised and OMG the cost was prohibitive for WiFi on a ship. Kind of like the package of 70 minutes for $150 for my first cell phone. So times change and things improve. If you like waiting till you are in a port to use your hotspot great. I don't.

 

[xenagurl]

It was a little over $20 a day for Premium when I sailed a couple of weeks ago in Valiant Lady, $150 for the week.

 

It was a good price considering that I wanted to have streaming service.

Edited August 22, 2023 by xenagurl