reedl

I would love to be able to bring out the suitcase and start laying out clothes for a cruise a week or so beforehand....but when the suitcase comes out our cat goes insane. Sigh. So to make everyone's life bearable I wait until the night before...

You mean like this?

I second Google's Fi service. I used it on my recent Caribbean cruise, and unless we were out at sea, it worked as advertised.

I would imagine on a river cruise, it would work well.

I have not had my photo taken on 12 cruises (except for the security photo in the computer).

So therefore for me, it is not work it at all.

The other real cool feature is that you can get 'data SIMS' for free which use the same bucket of data from Fi ($10 a gig) that work on devices like iPad Air 2, etc. This allows you to use your Cellular devices outside the US for the same $10 a Gig.

On Serenade in Nov 2016, I was able to use OpenVPN with their internet service. I have an OpenVPN Server in my router at home and was able to connect without issue.

Ripple does not work on RCCL because RCCL will not connect you to anything (even on the local LAN) if you do not have an account.

Your options are:

1. Get internet for each device, and use text messaging on your phone in airplane mode.

2. Leave notes in the cabin

You can purchase a 5 device plan for all your devices which will keep you connected.

But try and figure out if you really need to be that connected. I have traveled with my kids on various cruises, and we never had cell phones. They did what they want with the understanding that we would meet at a specific place at a specific time. Sometimes just letting them be alone for a few hours is the best thing. If anything happens there is always someone who can help them.

I got a google Fi phone about 9 months ago since I go to Canada every few months. The good thing is that they have roaming agreements in over 140 countries which allows the use of the phone with $10 a gig for data in pretty much every port. On my recent Serenade Repo cruise from Boston to Port Everglades through St. Thomas, St. Martin, St. Lucia, Curacao, and Aruba, the phone (Nexus 5X) worked perfectly as an access point for my other phones. I never made a call on the phone.

Also when we were travelling back from Aruba by Cuba, the phone actually connected to Cuba's Cell towers which allowed me to surf the net for about an hour for $10 a gig.

When you are on the ship, you can leave the phone on since it will not connect to the ship's towers so you do not have to worry about vampire data costing you a lot of money.

The plan is $20 for unlimited voice in the US, and Voice is pretty much always 20 cents a minute outside the US, but we use our other phone as a WiFi phone to the Google Fi phone.

I know there are people who want to disconnect when travelling, but I like to be connected. This is a cool service.

once the ship hauls anchor, the ship board towers turn on and override any shore based options.

Actually No. The ship has to get out to a place where it will not affect land based communications. Imagine the ship being near land and someone on land has their phone connect to the ship's cell phone tower. That would be an expensive phone call.

While I have not tried this device myself, it is supposedly setup to log into a wifi signal itself and then split the data on it's own hotspot. This is supposed to include those systems where you need to sign into a webpage first to activate the signal.

 

https://www.asus.com/us/Networking/WL330NUL/

That looks like something that should work. Actually that is a cool device in that it is sort of a 'swiss army knife' of internet connectivity.

I bring down my carry on a few weeks before we go on vacation and put it on the dining room table. Into that I put my electronics, cameras, computers, etc. and the documents needed for the vacation (printouts of stuff, luggage tags, passports, etc). The night before I pack my clothes. It is pretty easy since I pretty much wear the same thing. Pants, shirt, and undergarments. My wife is a little more of a planner, but only a week or so in advance for things like dresses, etc.

The day we leave, into the carry on goes the phone, charging cables, etc. that I use daily.

I could not pack my clothes weeks in advance since I wear the same stuff during that time period. I wear jeans pretty much every day summer and winter so I would not want them locked up in a suitcase.

If I am lucky enough to take a cruise out of Boston (which is 45-60 minutes from my house), I drive in the morning of the cruise. There is no need to waste any money on a hotel for that short of a drive.

If the cruise is anywhere else, I fly in the day before typically. Although for a couple of cruises, we have arrived the morning of the cruise because of scheduling issues. I work for a living, so I cannot arrive 2-3 days before.

Another piece of data. I worked with a company that had a site that used the Hughes Satellite delivered internet (same type of latency as the ship's internet), and we had 10 people using that single .5 Mbps connection without issue for surfing, etc. Of course they could not stream anything, but that was not what they needed.

They may not perceive the slow down since the original connection is so crappy to begin with. On a non-O3B equipped ship, the Surf connection is .5 Mbps down at best with a very high 600+ ms ping - you split that among any devices and are getting even crappier connection. The performance might be better on an O3B equipped ship, but again, the convenience gain by splitting the signal is questionable.

But the type of data transmitted for normal surfing/email/Facebook, etc is bursty and not a continuous stream of data. Therefore even if you split it three ways, you probably will not notice any slowdown.

We used to run a whole company of 100 people on a single T-1 (1.5 Mbps). This was before streaming, etc. We had no issues with 100 people surfing, email, etc.

The bandwidth hog is video.

...And there is no overhead for sharing the connection even ten times. If you have ten people connected, but two are actively using the connection (at that moment in time), they each will typically get half the bandwidth. But because of the way the ships internet works (very high latency, but pretty fast speeds) your requests for text/pictures/etc. typically take a while, but are fast when they start.

Now that it is against the rules to smoke on a balcony, I would call guest services immediately when I smell smoke. If you can help them figure out who it is, that will help remove the issue.

They should take care of it and if they do not, keep calling them until it is taken care of.

To those who think that leaving the door open is somehow a drain to the A/C system or will affect anything, that is simply not the case. The first reason is that pretty much every ship has a switch in the balcony door to turn off the A/C supply when the balcony door is open. Secondly is that it is chilled liquid that is supplied to your cabin, not air. The only possible issue is that it might freeze up your coils with the abundance of humidity, but other than that, no one else will be affected.

Of course, asking the Behind the Scenes engineers answers a lot of questions, instead of relying on hearsay that someone hears and takes to be the truth.

At best VOOM gives you 3.5 Mbps. Split it once it degrades the bandwidth by 60% split it 3 ways 80% signal loss. Have fun with .45 mbps.

TCP does not work like that. If you have three devices, and only one is transmitting at a time, then it would get the full 3.5 Mbps connectivity speed.

If two were using the connectivity, unless you are streaming video, the amount of data is actually quite low so you would not notice any perceivable slowdown.

Furthermore, if you are talking about 802.11, the raw bandwidth of 802.11G is 45 Mbps, which means a real throughput of about 20 Mbps. Typical 'travel routers' like the one I specified, can access a WiFi on one channel, and distribute another WiFi access point name on a different channel.

As an aside, this is my area of expertise. I have worked on internet software for over 20 years, and wireless internet technology for 10 years so I know of what I speak.

I tried using my phone as an access point for my iPad yes the iPad connected but when I tried the internet there was no conductivity.

 

Sent from my R1 HD using Forums mobile app

That will not work since your phone cannot both connect to wifi and generate a wifi access point at the same time.

A device like the the Netgear PR2000 travel router will take a single internet connection and deliver a signal which multiple devices can use.

It will only work in the cabin where the device is located of course.

I used one on the Majesty in Sept 2016 and it worked quite well.

Remember they have hundreds of access points on the ship. Your little access point is not going to carry much beyond the room door.

I have fallen asleep on the loungers in the Grand Suite more than once. It is totally relaxing, and is much better than falling asleep on deck.

Also just walking out in my pajamas in the AM and smelling the air makes it worthwhile.

Many of the production shows are kept around for about 3 years! So if you cruise on the same line, year after year, you are likely to see the same Production shows. On B2Bs you can sometimes have shows and menus repeated,

 

Hank

I think that the OP was complaining that the same show was repeated on the same single cruise over two nights.

If you are renting a car, you could use Budget which has a location on 17th street and a free shuttle. Alamo has a bus that picks you up at the port and brings you to the airport car rental location, but you have to have a rental already arranged.

But either way, if you are going to rent a car, there is no need to take a taxi anywhere.

This became available to use on Nov 4th.

I returned to Port Everglades on 11 Nov on a Repo from Boston. The lines were there, but not open at that time. They had called numbers up to 4. We were in a suite so we exited when we wanted.

What Celebrity officer is it? Capt Stubing? :D

Anyways, if I were invited to the Capt's table, I would probably go, but I doubt I will ever be invited.

But I would never pay for it.

You get a $30 credit to use in the restaurant. If you spend less than that, you get no refund.

When I recently went Port Everglades on the Serenade the mobile passport lines were not even open.