Allure internet review April 2014

[thrifty99]

My first post and thought I would share my internet experience on the Allure this week.

 

I purchased the unlimited internet for one device for $189.99. My Platinum status gave me a 15% discount so it came out to about $160.

 

The internet speed is pretty good. It was slow if uploading/downloading photos but fine for most web browsing. I will run a speed test and post the results later.

 

I am an active stock/options trader and was able to run my trading software (ThinkorSwim) with a few live charts active. Again, pretty good speed.

 

We use Apple products and had no problem using MacBooks, iPhones, and iPads. Since we only purchased the one device at a time package, if you signed onto one it would just sign you out of the other device automatically.

 

iMessage worked great all week to text to family back home. Photos work in iMessage but they are slow to send.

 

FaceTime audio or video calls did not work.

 

I had a wifi signal EVERYWHERE on the ship.

 

The internet credit is applied towards the end of your cruise. This was our first cruise in a suite above Junior Suite (Grand Suite) so we had access to the Concierge Lounge. I was disappointed the concierge staff did not know about the internet discount. I asked him about it and he sort of smugly replied that there is no internet discount. I told him it was listed as a perk for platinum members and he said they did away with that. Trip down to guest services and they explained it would be applied on Friday and sure enough it was.

 

While still pricey, I felt the unlimited internet was definitely worth it and the reliability / speed has improved since our last cruise in 2012.

[thrifty99]

Just ran a speed test and it is fairly slow. About .25Mb/sec upload and download.

 

Not sure if today is worse since we are at sea and many may be signed in now.

[Clarea]

Just ran a speed test and it is fairly slow. About .25Mb/sec upload and download.

 

Not sure if today is worse since we are at sea and many may be signed in now.

Thanks for the report. I think it's hard to use conventional speed tests to judge the speed because they have some sort of throttling going on to control large data transfers.

[thrifty99]

Yes - wasn't sure if the speed test would even work.

 

Last time I cruised it was much slower / went down frequently so the upgraded internet has been much better on the Allure now.

 

I do wish you could sign up your iPhone with their ship

Cellular so you could text family members to find each other. But you have to rent one of their iPhones for $20 for the week to do this.

[Fisherwoman]

We were on the Jan 12/14 sailing of the Allure. Internet speed was pathetic. We kept getting cut off. Many people complained and got extra time. I just decided it wasn't worth the frustration and will leave my laptop at home and use my smart phone in wi-fi hot spots in ports in the future.

[FLACRUISER99]

The new fast internet is now only on Oasis, supposedly they have never used more than 10% of the available bandwidth and are allowing all kinds high bandwidth uses. I would like to here a real report from A Oasis passenger as my information is from my RCI source.

[nelblu]

On the Feb. Allure cruise the speed was woefully slow. It took some 10 minutes to sent an e-mail to our kids. We basically gave up while at sea and saw smaller improvements while in port. The guest service staff was having problems accessing data. Maybe it was a bad week, but it was pitiful.

 

The worse was to come towards the end of the week when Pax's tried to print airline boarding passé. We all kept getting freezes and finally took us 45 minutes to print 2 boarding passes.

[thrifty99]

From the staff I spoke with on the ship the true high speed internet is coming later in the year to the Allure. They did not know (or would not share) if it was next month or in 6 months. The speeds will then allegedly be near the speed you can get on land.

 

I wonder if they will increase the price for internet when the speeds increase? Maybe someone who was recently on the Oasis could share if it is true that they already have the high speed internet.

[Clarea]

Yes - wasn't sure if the speed test would even work.

 

Last time I cruised it was much slower / went down frequently so the upgraded internet has been much better on the Allure now.

 

I do wish you could sign up your iPhone with their ship

Cellular so you could text family members to find each other. But you have to rent one of their iPhones for $20 for the week to do this.

If all of your family members have internet access, you could use iMessage to text them.

[cuti]

I'm on board right now with an iPad... On oasis. How do I check the speed? Happy to report back.

[cuti]

Feels really slow...

 

.16 download and .1 upload

 

Oasis 4/5/13

[reedl]

Yes - wasn't sure if the speed test would even work.

 

Last time I cruised it was much slower / went down frequently so the upgraded internet has been much better on the Allure now.

 

I do wish you could sign up your iPhone with their ship

Cellular so you could text family members to find each other. But you have to rent one of their iPhones for $20 for the week to do this.

 

I think that they have a multiple device package for the cruise that is much less than the individual prices, so you could log in two or three devices at the same time and iMessage to each other using the purchased WiFi.

 

...And the speedtest is only going to show you much they give you. In fact if you noticed, the ping time was pretty much instantaneous which is of course not real since the packets have to travel up to a satellite and come back down. Their system responds to pings as if it is the destination host.

 

So there is no way that a single person will be able to "hog" all the bandwidth at all. It is not like your home router.

[thrifty99]

One device unlimited internet for the week is $189. Unlimited for 2 devices is $229. Those are the only unlimited options they offered.