outtoseacruise

On 11/2/2023 at 11:34 AM, The Fun Researcher said:

 

 

Your bitterness regarding the suite lounge is duly noted 🤣 but there is no need to take it out on Diamonds.

The best solution is to make the Crown Lounge the Pinnacle Only Lounge! The writing is on the wall for more changes from Royal coming soon.

21 hours ago, island lady said:

 

So they have Lattes now?  🙄

No, if the D's want that they can go pay at Starbucks.

7 hours ago, Ret MP said:

Good suggestion.  Maybe they should open a small room somewhere with just the ever-so-popular coffee machine and call it the Diamond and above coffee kiosk.

Easy solution is Diamond's get their coffee from the Windjammer.

Hopefully they expand it to anyone under DP340 gets kicked out of the Crown Lounge. If Pins are getting banished from the Suite Lounge it rolls downhill. 

37 minutes ago, BeachBum777 said:

Grand Princess just south of Honolulu headed for Tahiti

 

multiple tests shows similar results no matter what time of day or night. certainly better than the old days and good enough but considerably slower than land-based lines.

 

 

 

 

Sad numbers, Starlink onboard is capable of more. The problem is Princess or should I say Carnival Corp has the policy to throttle is what I was told on Enchanted this summer. I have 2 upcoming Princess Cruises in the next 60 days and will probably do a Vlog on it. It won't be pretty comparing the Princess Starlink Network against the ones onboard Royal and Virgin. Even Royal worst preforming ship is a lot better than the best Princess ship.

Th meeting this morning went very well and I think we both understood each other. There were 2 Officer's that I met with. The IT Manager and also someone I later learned was from shoreside. I do feel that the Officer from shoreside will be able to relay the concerns that those of us have when we work from sea onboard. She also has the power I believe to get these changes done. 

Those of us that work from sea are an entirely new demographic for Princess compared to their guests of the past. I did explain that when I remoted into my home office computer to get a contract yesterday for a call it took 5 minutes to download the 22 MB file onboard. Yes, I understand we are at sea and this isn't Spectrum. I also showed the IT Manager some of the results I have seen on the 15 other Starlink equipped ships I have been on. Some of those results were almost like being at home while some were about 3x or 4x faster than what we are seeing on Enchanted Princess. 

The way Princess has their network setup the best you will probably see on bandwidth is 3 mbps with probably the best latency of about 90-100 ms. I was then asked what I thought would be acceptable as a minimum to be able to work from sea. My response was bandwidth between 6 to 9 or 10 with the 90 - 100 ms latency has been sufficient and was sufficient a few weeks ago on Virgin with their SES even with a little higher latency.   

I even suggested that for a little extra bandwidth matched with this latency, I would even be open to paying an extra $10 per day which is what Virgin does. Virgin also credits you back depending on your status with them and makes it free. Which Princess could also determine if they would do this with their Elite Members?

At the end of the meeting I did get the feeling that once these finding are brought to the table at Princess Corporate there could eventually be some changes that will make Princess an easier place to work from sea while you cruise. 

On the topic of how SES was still being broadcast up until yesterday I let that go. I explained to them 8 years ago when I ran IT for my company one of our vendors installed a new IP Phone system at one of our offices which they wired in the rack incorrectly and caused an IP conflict between the 2. I had to completely pull all the wires out of both racks and wire the networks correctly. It can happen and there is no way of knowing really who or when it was done. It's in the past.

Finally got a call and acknowledgement and will have a meeting at 8:15 AM. When they called my cabin a few minutes ago they advised the SES had been turned off months ago. I told her that is pretty much impossible since the SES IP was showing up in test still. What I did notice was this afternoon we did have a brief period where the their wasn't any internet. It just so happened shortly their after my phone no longer showed the SES IP and was now replaced with a Starlink IP. I also told her that another guest doing B2B had also been seeing SES as the provider. 

Now it appears whatever they changed they messes something up totally onboard with the network. The below screen shots are what going onboard now. It appears that SES is back on again. This is after they just told me it has been off for months. I tried to explain the only way the SES IP can show up is if it's on. It went right over their heads. 

I will see how tomorrow AM goes, I don't expect to see this resolved. The contacts I have been emailing this info to at Carnival Corp and Princess Corporate appear to be rattling cages onboard. I just asked to have this escalated to someone in IT shoreside to help the onboard IT get this resolved. 

On Enchanted Princess it appears there are only 6 Starlink antennas mounted. 2 of the mounting brackets are missing an antenna.

Still no response from anyone shoreside or onboard regarding the issues with Starlink. I was down at Guest Services an hour ago and asked them to tell the Hotel Director I was looking for him. My guess is he will never get the message?

Coral Princess is across from us in Marseille today. I took the below pics of her upper decks and even after blowing them up a bit it doesn't appear Coral has any Starlink antennas onboard yet.

I just met with the Digital Communications Manager, he is a nice guy and we talked for a bit. He was also shocked when I showed him the IP for SES when he was getting Starlink on his. He isn't a tech or an IT person and a lot of what we talked about went over his head. I also rolled through the last 9+  months of Starlink results in my history and he was amazed at some of the results. I asked him to get with the HD since I also copied him on the issues. Unfortunately it is definitely over his paygrade. 

Still waiting on someone from Santa Clarita or the HD at least to touch base with me on this or reply. Unfortunately they have pretty much ghosted like a cheap Tinder date.  

If all else fails they probably won't like the Vlog I will upload on YouTube when I get on Symphony this weekend with their Starlink that is working.

Princess claims "The Best Wi-Fi at Sea. MedallionNet Wi-Fi is fast, reliable and wherever you are.". 

7 hours ago, Bgwest said:

Will be interesting to see where you get the most traction. With the Princess brass or the onboard IT people. 

I also filled out the online form the HD had with a QR Code for any issues he should be aware of. It is definitely a Princess issue with their network/equipment. I have messaged friends on Symphony and Odyssey in the Med and they are not experiencing the same issues. I also know from last month on MSC Seashore (SES) their latency and bandwidth was something that I could work off of. I have done the shotgun effect to both shoreside and onboard. I also did just get a read receipt from one of the recipients shoreside.

3 hours ago, Bgwest said:

Please loop back with us and share what you learned. Very interested in your conversation with the IT people. 

I actually just went nuclear on this and emailed Princess Corp. I hit John Padgett, Collin Steinke, & Lorna Warren with an email. This will bypass all the silly BS of bobbleheads who are afraid to speak up in the chain of command onboard. 

9 minutes ago, Bgwest said:

Please loop back with us and share what you learned. Very interested in your conversation with the IT people. 

I was also talking to a couple that have been on for 2 weeks working. They advised all they have seen is SES the last 2 weeks. 

Presently on Enchanted Princess and after 3 days the internet sucks. In Gibraltar today I ended up working off my T-Mobile Hotspot it was so bad. What I am finding is they appear to be running with dual WAN presently. My laptop is getting Starlink, but my S22 Ultra is getting SES/o3b. The weird thing also is the latency and bandwidth appear to be better with SES? I saw better latency & speeds last month on MSC with SES and Odyssey with Starlink. 

I spoke to one of the Officers tonight at the Captain's Circle Party and the technology went over his head. He is arranging a meeting with some of their IT people tomorrow to see if they even realize this? It is possible with a dual WAN Router, my thinking is whoever set it up may not be the brightest bulb and SES & Starlink could be causing a conflict with each other? In all the ships I have been on since the rollout last September with Starlink, I have never seen both providers active at the same time on any ship (Royal or Princess).

These result may be OK for Aunt Bee or Uncle Fred sending pics to family or their FB or Insta accounts. Those of us that are the new generation of cruisers need to be connected. It just took 4 attempts to be able to talk to one of my employees over my IP Phone. 15 cruises since last September on Starlink installed ships and this is the worst I have seen. Between calls and Zoom it's totally unacceptable. 

13 minutes ago, Sinbadssailors said:

Forgive me if this doesn't work, I've never posted a pic before. 

 

This was this morning on the Enchanted.  We've been on board since June 10th and the connection has always been slow. 

 

I've never seen it connected to Starlink 

Latency looks good, bandwidth sucks, if it is like that for the 2 weeks I have coming up next month it will be a little stressful. 2 weeks ago in the Med I got better results on MSC using SES o3b. 

I find it hard to believe Elon would allow this type of performance from his product. It has to be all on Princess the poor performance.

8 hours ago, Btimmer said:

We just got off the Regal Princess 6/13 having done a UK circumnavigation.  I happened to run a speed test and noted the existence of Starlink.  But the speeds were IMHO atrocious as previously noted. I tested it multiple times during the cruise and received download speeds of 2.9mbps and 1.0 and less mbps uploads.  We had several YT vloggers onboard and they commented to me that it was taking hours to upload their videos. For me, I was able to read and send email and watch YT videos.

 

At a Q&A session with a 3rd Officer, I asked if Princess was throttling the Starlink speed.  The officer looked at me quizzically and finally said that they were testing it.  I replied that I ran a number of test over a two week period and they always showed Starlink as the source.  But he remained silent on further information.

 

Last week on Royal's Odyssey it took me 22 hours to upload to my Vlog on Starlink. Odyssey had better latency and bandwidth than what I am seeing reported on Princess with Starlink. 

If you use a VPN there is only one that I have found works with Starlink on Princess or Royal. The one that works comes in the McAfee Total Protection. I have been unable to get Surfshark, Fastest VPN, or Google One's VPN to connect on Starlink. 

If you use VMware or RemotePC they both work on Starlink. You do need the better Starlink latency and bandwidth in order for it to work without lag. 

The slow speed even with the better latency doesn't cut it. It may be OK for text, email, and grandma chatting with the grandkids. It doesn't take much to impress some people who don't understand it. Those that need it to run a business or to work know the difference.

1 hour ago, outtoseacruise said:

That is nothing to get excited about especially if you need to work and remote into a server or other computer through a VPN. 

Last week in the Mediterranean I was just barely able to work and do what I needed with the below results on Odyssey doing the Eastern Med.  

When I have been on a ship with acceptable Starlink this is what I have seen or better. It's not uncommon to see better on some ships. Don't be fooled by these people who think the throttled down crap is good. There is more potential than what most are seeing from Starlink.

The results someone posted for Enchanted Princess have me worried about my 2 weeks on her in July. I can see I will probably have to use my T-Mobile Hotspot since those results are not anything to get excited about.

3 hours ago, gamja said:

Currently on the Enchanted. Can pretty much upload and stream anything 24/7. Game changing imo.

That is nothing to get excited about especially if you need to work and remote into a server or other computer through a VPN. 

Last week in the Mediterranean I was just barely able to work and do what I needed with the below results on Odyssey doing the Eastern Med.  

I just tried to get approval for it on Symphony in the Mediterranean. The response was "will not be allowed as partial sailings are prohibited. Interporting will only be allowed for guests that are embarking on a round-trip cruise from a "port of call" rather than the original embarkation port."

MSC, Virgin, & Princess all allow it but Royal refuses. 

Has anyone experienced Starlink on any more Princess ships as the rollout continues on Princess. Please post latency and bandwidth results on ships in the Mediterranean and Alaska that you have seen Starlink active on. Ty

14 minutes ago, PrincessLuver said:

 

Starlink became fully operational on the Enchanted Princess on Saturday May 20, 2023.  A great improvement over the internet service that was being provided prior to that on the Enchanted.  Very happy!!

 

Awesome, any chance to see or get the latency & bandwidth information? 

4 hours ago, RedEarth said:

The mounting plates were being welded on to the railings while I was onboard just week (on a sea day), and a couple days later the antennas were fitted, but they weren't up and running yet (internet was very slow but I didn't try speedtest). I would hope it would be live by the time you cruise though!

Ty, should be very close to going live in the next 7-10 days based on what your saying and previous installs I have seen.

30 minutes ago, Blauelini said:

Yes because forecasting weather and the close integration between an on staff meteorologist and the ships captains’ to ensure best possible outcomes for guest safety was a waste of money. Use that thing between your ears for once.

Jim Van Fleet was just a face to give guest the warm fuzzy feeling to those that need a therapy pony. The Captain gets all of the same information and also sees the present conditions at sea. With all the technology the Captain has to review he doesn't need someone sitting behind a desk telling him and a local pilot about local conditions. If a Captain with 20+/- years experience in some of the worst areas of the world is capable I don't think a failed Fox Orlando & Tampa Meteorologist will make a difference? Don't believe it Google it.

Royal has started to drain their swamp of useless positions & waste. 1 down and 2 (possibly 3) more to go. https://twitter.com/JamesVanFleet/status/1659161312776056832?s=20