grouchomarx

It’s also amusing to me how people don’t realize a LOT of people want to post to their social media while traveling in real time, it’s quite a common thing and I imagine it would suck if you can’t. Personally I don’t but we did find some rubber duckies around the ship and I imagine a lot of them didn’t make it online lol

Once again I will ask, if you had taken 10 cruises and internet was always reliable to get whatever business you needed done, why would you assume the next cruise would be a total disaster and live in fear of cruising? It’s no different than traveling on land. It is expected there is wifi in any hotel and in most public places including shacks on the beach. The precedent has been set by the cruise industry and is widely advertised as a desirable and reliable amenity. When the ships fail to provide an expected and advertised (and paid extra for) service, it is on them, not the user, to look like a fool. We are simply using our experience as a rule of thumb for what to expect, which is human nature. Not everyone can afford to be disconnected from life for extended periods of time.

The problem is, if you’ve had good internet on all your other cruises, you would tend to think another cruise wouldn’t be terribly different, especially on a newer ship.

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.

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

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.

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.

Yes they will be listed in the daily paper.

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.

That is very smart, we were screen shooting all kinds of stuff just to be safe and in case there was no internet at some point. Nav app did get a little crazy in the terminal and decided to log us both out while waiting on line to board! We got logged back in ok but you never know what will happen.

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.)

When we were boarding last Saturday 10/22 in Port Everglades paper boarding passes were not working and you had to go somewhere and get them to print you out a receipt type thing with a barcode on it. So just be aware you are better off with the app on your phone to get through faster. Lots of people with paper passes that were very confused and running around.

There were two comedy sets last week on NS. One night was one 8pm performance in the theater and the other night two performances in BB Kings.

I did fine with the signature package with one exception. Made the mistake of asking a sommelier for a wine by the glass recommendation to pair with food and she chose an $18 Pouille Fusse (sorry cannot spell that.) My bad for not asking the price. Paid full price. Otherwise, stayed within the price range and only went above my 15 drinks on one day of the cruise. Overall it’s quite doable and I drink quite a bit.

On NS this past week our room steward asked day one do you want once a day or twice a day, we requested twice a day and got it every day.