Internet questions on Eclipse?

[Jo and Rob]

Has anyone had any recent experience of the internet speed on the Eclipse? We would like to do a live from on our first Celebrity cruise in July for our Italian Med cruise (14 nights) and wondered what sort of package you would recommend. We will be taking our own laptop but want to post pictures and video or our cruise.

 

Do you find that certain times of the day are a lot slower than others? (This has certainly been our experience on other ships in the past!) Am I right in thinking that we can do it all from our cabin / balcony having registered for a package?

 

If anyone has any top tips about how to get the most out of the packages that would also be appreciated. I must admit the most time consuming task on our last cruise was trying to get onto cruise critic!!

 

many thanks

[uktog]

If you want to use the internet daily you will need to buy the largest package 237 minutes, I see you are new to X so you will not have Elite minutes to reduce the cost

Coverage is very variable, but generally slow regardless of where you try on the ship - the ship has reasonable wireless coverage around the ship, but the internet connection varies from slow to impossible. I found to send a normal email with a compressed picture embedded in it (our new postcard method) took about 3 minutes in port and 5-6at sea. Accessing cruise critic can take up to 4 mins just to get to this page

 

Most people who do daily reports do them from shoreside facilities, many of the ports have free or much cheaper internet in the port terminal

[Adammara]

Completely agree with UKtog, its very slow. I took my netbook, but only used it to check my emails, and a couple of posts to family.

 

When we were in Cadiz last week, our waiter, with several others co workers, was sat in a square online to his family. If you are on BTinternet, you may find a free BT Fon hotspot, I have been lucky with this at times.

 

Richard

[Coco Creek]

I found the Internet service on Eclipse very slow and disappointing as compared to other Celebrity and Princess cruise ships that I have sailed.

[Fblack]

We burned through 180 free minutes on both the Eclipse and Equinox. Europe was especially bad. By far the worst was the last day at sea and people were trying to contact their airline to re-confirm or change airline reservations or looking to get boarding passes etc. Bottom line, Internet can be very slow.

[Lsimon]

Service is always slow and I think that posting any video, or lots of pictures (unless you reduce the file sizes to very small), is a bit optimistic.

 

Service on S class for some staterooms is fine, for others just so-so. You can take your Laptop to a lounge or the buffet to see if you get a better wifi signal there but the best you'll be able to get will still be limited by the slow satellite service.

 

Overall the speed of internet service is limited by both the satellite connection, which is sometimes non-existent, and also by the number of users sharing the satellite bandwidth at any given time. So it follows that service will be faster (or less slow) at times when fewer people are on line, like overnight or very early/late in the day and likewise worse when lots of people are on (mid afternoon on sea days or right after leaving port on port days).

[elena7seas]

We were on the Eclipse for two weeks in January 2011. I found that the internet speed was quite reasonable, but I usually get on the 'net after 11:00 pm. Sometimes Cruise Critic was slow to load, but I usually attribute that to Cruise Critic issues, as I have the same problem at home, and we have the fastest internet service that we can buy. I don't think it ever took me 3 minutes to get on Cruise Critic, though. Loading Yahoo to check my email was always quite quick.

 

We had a laptop with us, and it always worked well in our AQ stateroom and in our 1A stateroom on the second week. I didn't try to upload any pictures to Cruise Critic, but did upload pictures to my Smugmug account with no problems.

 

We are Elite and I always buy the largest internet package, then apply the $49.95 discount that you get for being Elite, so end up paying 40 cents per minute. In addition, Celebrity also usually offers a 15% discount if you buy on the first day, but that isn't always announced, although in my experience, it has always been offered. IIRC, the 15% actually increases your time, rather than reduce your cost. I had close to 270 minutes of internet time.

 

One note about the Eclipse....my DH had a small issue with his internet account, and we really had problems resolving it with the On-line Manager, who was very rude and dismissive. My husband had also purchased an internet package and activated his Elite internet benefit. The staff person in Celebrity Online was very busy at the time, and must not have entered the transaction, because my husband's time was charged out at full fees. When we contacted the Online Manager, he actually accused my husband of lying because at the time, the Online manager had misplaced the paperwork in question. I finally had to go to Guest Relations to have the erroneous $44 charge removed, which was done promptly and politely. The paperwork was later located, but we never received an apology from the Online Manager, who continued to be surly for the length of both cruises.