Interesting re: Internet on Journey

[bob278]

I was told that if you are in a suite you get 235 minutes plus your loyality minutes. I was told this by a very nice young lady on the phone at Le Voyage Club this week. I hope I was not given misinformation

 

The following is copied directly from the terms and conditions on the Azamara website. I don't think you'll get both.

 

Complimentary Internet: This benefit will be available to all Le Club Voyage members. Members will receive the following complimentary internet minutes.

 

LE CLUB VOYAGE LEVEL COMPLIMENTARY INTERNET MINUTES PER PERSON

Adventurer (0 – 149 points) 30 minutes

Explorer (150 – 299 points) 60 minutes

Discoverer (300 – 749 points) 90 minutes

Discoverer Plus (750 – 2,999 points) 120 minutes

Discoverer Platinum (3,000+ points) 150 minutes

 

Le Club Voyage members who stay in Suite Staterooms will receive their Suite amenities, and not their Le Club Voyage benefits for complimentary internet.

[critterchick]

FWIW, earlier this month we took our daughter, son-in-law, and four grandkids on the new Quantum of the Seas. You would never catch Gail and me on a ship this size by ourselves, but they could drive easily to the port, and we know how good the kids' programs are on RCCL -- and they were!

 

However, one item of interest is that the ship uses a new low orbit satellite system which can somehow better "target" a ship. The internet was amazingly fast, almost as if we were at home, and get this, it was free, yes free, for all 4000+ of us the entire voyage (8 nights). I saw no degradation ever in its working. I understand RCCL has introduced this on some of its other ships, and I'm guessing it's the future for sea-borne internet systems.

 

As to Azamara, we've always loved our cruises. But with all the negative changes in the last couple of years, its pricing no longer makes sense to us, It's no longer in our future. None of our five cruises this year will include Azamara.

 

We'll miss Heike, Philip, Ryzsard, Russ, Eric, Tony, and all the others.

 

Bruce

 

Internet is not normally free. There have been ongoing issues with Quantum and I think that they gave the free Internet on a couple of cruises to placate people. Lucky you!

[brucedodge]

Internet is not normally free. There have been ongoing issues with Quantum and I think that they gave the free Internet on a couple of cruises to placate people. Lucky you!

 

Hello Jean,

 

I'm sure you're probably right, and I'm always happy to be lucky.

 

However, the main point may be that RCCL has "broken the code" on much faster internet at sea -- despite the number of users at one time.

 

And as someone else pointed out, internet is becoming more and more just a part of daily life.

 

It's also true that more cruise lines are offering it for free.

 

IMO the great experience sailing on Azamara continues to be blunted by ill suited decision making on shore.

 

Cheers,

 

Bruce

[Hyundaigirl]

We sailed on the journey in October, 2014. We are Elite status on Celebrity and were given ample free minutes on the Journey. The service was excellent and frankly we could not possibly use all the minutes provided. If you sail fairly frequently on either Azamara and/or Celebrity the perks are rather generous.

 

We had just the opposite experience on Journey in October - we paid for our minutes and the WIFI was horrible - thankfully we had a shipboard credit we were using.

[midwestchick]

We had just the opposite experience on Journey in October - we paid for our minutes and the WIFI was horrible - thankfully we had a shipboard credit we were using.

 

 

We were on the same sailing and I did not think it was as slow as others had previously posted. What I did find was the man who was in charge of the IT room was not that Apple savvy. My iPad froze up on iCloud and I could not get it to work the whole time. Once home I learned that it would have been a simple fix to E-mail Apple about my password, since that was the problem. My iPad was new to me, but I would think someone who deals with Apple products on the ship should have known this. I did not care for his demeanor when I saw him interact with other pax having problems either....very short and abrupt.

 

Hi Hyundaigirl and tonyd285. :D

Edited January 28, 2015 by midwestchick

[BBMacLaird]

We were on the same sailing and I did not think it was as slow as others had previously posted. What I did find was the man who was in charge of the IT room was not that Apple savvy. My iPad froze up on iCloud and I could not get it to work the whole time. Once home I learned that it would have been a simple fix to E-mail Apple about my password, since that was the problem. My iPad was new to me, but I would think someone who deals with Apple products on the ship should have known this. I did not care for his demeanor when I saw him interact with other pax having problems either....very short and abrupt.

 

Hi Hyundaigirl and tonyd285. :D

 

Hi Midwestchick, I hope you mentioned this shortcoming on your end-of-cruise questionnaire. I'll pass this by the Hotel Department just to make sure they get the message.

The other day I had a similar problem I'll share…my new(ish) MacBook Air suddenly required a password for the 'keychain'. I had no idea what it was and couldn't proceed without it. I took it into the nearest Apple store and they had to gather 2 technicians to figure it out how to bypass it. My takeaway: sometimes there are things that are unexpected and hard to fix.

[BBMacLaird]

Hello Jean,

 

I'm sure you're probably right, and I'm always happy to be lucky.

However, the main point may be that RCCL has "broken the code" on much faster internet at sea -- despite the number of users at one time.

And as someone else pointed out, internet is becoming more and more just a part of daily life.

It's also true that more cruise lines are offering it for free.

IMO the great experience sailing on Azamara continues to be blunted by ill suited decision making on shore.

Cheers,

Bruce

 

Hi brucedodge, I'm sorry to read that you're unhappy with Azamara, especially our 'shoreside decisions' that you allude to.

I hope you will stay in touch with us and reconsider Azamara in the future when you're looking for a smaller-ship experience. We'd love to win back your preference.

 

p.s. we too are excited that the internet breakthrough happened at our parent company.

Back in the early days we used to say people go on vacation to unplug. That truism is no longer true, if it ever was. But of course back a decade (or two) fast & cheap internet onboard ship was pie-in-the-sky.

[uktog]

We were on the same sailing and I did not think it was as slow as others had previously posted. What I did find was the man who was in charge of the IT room was not that Apple savvy. My iPad froze up on iCloud and I could not get it to work the whole time. Once home I learned that it would have been a simple fix to E-mail Apple about my password, since that was the problem. My iPad was new to me, but I would think someone who deals with Apple products on the ship should have known this. I did not care for his demeanor when I saw him interact with other pax having problems either....very short and abrupt.

 

Hi Hyundaigirl and tonyd285. :D

 

I would hope it was not the same person as I fed back on in May on Journey. Had to be the rudest most condescending employee I'd ever met and he knew NOTHING about iPads. Told me I was not allowed to log on until I'd cleared my cache :rolleyes: ironically on that sailing the best ever IPad seminars were run by the DJ Marcio. So right for the audience and no geek speak.

[MNgardens]

Do the Club Continent suites get free internet minutes or just the big suites? I haven't thought through yet how much money to budget for internet on our 2016 cruise.

[excitedofharpenden]

Do the Club Continent suites get free internet minutes or just the big suites? I haven't thought through yet how much money to budget for internet on our 2016 cruise.

All suites get it and a free bag of laundry per suite for each 7 days.

 

Phil

[2fromTO]

I just returned from the 17 day Antarctic Cruise referred to in the article of the original poster. Yes, it was great that we could access the internet in the Antarctic, however, I did not notice any improvement in speed from that which we experienced on the Journey in Asia last February.

 

The Captain made several itinerary changes due to weather issues and I quickly burned through my complementary 90 minutes trying to rearrange private tours. Furthermore, since we were at sea for 14 days, there were few opportunities to seek out free wifi ashore. Even though we were very careful with our use of the internet, we still ended up paying an extra $130 for minutes that, last year, would have been complimentary. For us, the net result of the new LCV program has been a reduction in benefits.

[midwestchick]

Hi Midwestchick, I hope you mentioned this shortcoming on your end-of-cruise questionnaire. I'll pass this by the Hotel Department just to make sure they get the message.

The other day I had a similar problem I'll share…my new(ish) MacBook Air suddenly required a password for the 'keychain'. I had no idea what it was and couldn't proceed without it. I took it into the nearest Apple store and they had to gather 2 technicians to figure it out how to bypass it. My takeaway: sometimes there are things that are unexpected and hard to fix.

__________________

Bonnie MacLaird

Chief Blogging Officer

Azamara Club Cruises

(*CBO is an authorized and compensated representative of ACC)

 

No, Bonnie, I did not mention it and I did not fill out the questionaire because I missed the time limit.

He suggested I take it to an Apple store and the closest one was in Napoli.....not an option for me since we were on the ship. It only took a quick phone call to Apple support to fix the problem. As I stated, it wasn't just his lack of knowledge but the way he treated others in the IT room. I will honestly say he was the worst Azamara person I've ever had to deal with. He certainly did not exemplify the other Journey staff.

 

uktog...I also wonder if he was the same person....dark complected but I could not really tell what country he was from. We also saw him the day we disembarked and he (I think) was assisting with luggage....once again, the same demeanor was apparent.

Edited January 28, 2015 by midwestchick

[rinshin]

It's true we go on vacation to unplug, but many of us have responsibilities at home we have to check on a daily or every other day. For us, it's a communication between our pet sitters and us to make sure our senior pets are doing ok while we are gone for over 2 weeks on a ship. Once we are in our hotel, we can easily connect with our pet sitter if emergency happens and it has happened twice in our travels overseas.

 

Although most of our bill paying has been automated there are things we have to check through internet.