WiFi on Princess Ships, specifically Crown Princess

[warpdrvr]

We haven't been sailing in 7 or 8 years, before wifi became so prevalent in our society. So, I'm wondering if wifi is offered on board, and if so, how much is it daily or even the length of the cruise. I'm fairly sure they don't offer it for free as it's another revenue stream for the industry. Since we have phones, tablets, and a laptop it would be much easier for us to use wifi unless it's cost prohibitive.....

 

Thanks in advance

[Colo Cruiser]

We haven't been sailing in 7 or 8 years, before wifi became so prevalent in our society. So, I'm wondering if wifi is offered on board, and if so, how much is it daily or even the length of the cruise. I'm fairly sure they don't offer it for free as it's another revenue stream for the industry. Since we have phones, tablets, and a laptop it would be much easier for us to use wifi unless it's cost prohibitive.....

 

Thanks in advance

 

 

Its ranges from approx .45 per minute to .75 a minute depending on whether you purchase a package or not.

Its slow and unreliable

[shredie]

Expensive and sloooooowwww. You can use your devices on shore if you can find a free or inexpensive wifi setup. The ship's wifi is not so terrific.

[Loonbeam]

http://www.princess.com/learn/faq_answer/onboard/experience.jsp

 

Click on "The Internet at Sea"

[Kartgv]

Speed ranges from slow to 'much slower'. A lot depends on your itinerary and the time of day. At peak times (generally most of the daylight hours) more people are trying to connect and it's much slower than late at night or very early morning. On our 28 day Hawaii/S. Pacific cruise, things weren't too bad until the return back across the Pacific to Los Angeles. We went 4 days without ever getting a connection at all, even at 2:00AM. They blamed it on the satellite position, but who knows? We were trying to close a real estate sale and almost lost the whole deal. Luckily we had been forewarned (from reading Cruise Critic!) and had notified our agent that there could be delays.

 

We did find that our own laptop was faster than the ship's computers, mainly because we had our most used sites bookmarked and didn't have to be searching for or typing in websites. We found there to be little difference in the success rate in our cabin vs more central public areas of the ship. To use as few minutes as possible, we did as much offline as we could (composing emails, reading pages previously downloaded, etc.).

[xlxo]

I use this site http://rimouski.speedtest.telus.com/ or speedtest.net to assess wifi speeds. Can anyone on a cruise go to these sites to provide us some results?

[paul929207]

Wifi is available throughout the ship, but as mentioned above is expensive and slow. Most of the people you see using it are either Platinum or Elite in the Captain's Circle and get an internet credit.

[warpdrvr]

Thanks for all the answers....looks like I will be having internet withdraws for a few days... I will try to get some free wifi in San Diego maybe if I can find some close enough to the port.

 

But, I suppose going on a cruise to relax means trying to cut the cord!

[paul929207]

For free wifi ashore, just ask or follow the staff. They know all the good places.

[RickEk]

I use this site http://rimouski.speedtest.telus.com/ or speedtest.net to assess wifi speeds. Can anyone on a cruise go to these sites to provide us some results?

 

These types of tests would take forever to complete. The speed (depending on how many folks are using it at any given moment) is akin to dial-up speeds back in the day.

[lovevacadays]

I am Platinum and very glad I am as I have 120 free minutes. I don't typically use the internet when I cruise but needed to on my last cruise. Can I say, slow to non-existent. I had to go down to the Internet Café several times on my cruise to check my email. I had a sick pet staying with my vet and needed to check in. The Internet Café was the only place on the ship I could get good speed and connection. If I had to purchase internet minutes, I just wouldn't.

[Colo Cruiser]

150 minutes?

[xlxo]

These types of tests would take forever to complete. The speed (depending on how many folks are using it at any given moment) is akin to dial-up speeds back in the day.

 

You can run the tests at home or your phone now. It takes less than a minute. With slower connections, these test sites transmit smaller packages.

 

If you see timeouts.... it's sounds like sub-300kbps connections. Ok for emails, but not for browsing.

[satxdiver]

I use this site http://rimouski.speedtest.telus.com/ or speedtest.net to assess wifi speeds. Can anyone on a cruise go to these sites to provide us some results?

 

Having worked in IT the last 30 years, I am aware of speed tests. I will be on a cruise the first of March and would be willing to do the test if you are willing to pay for it. At $.75/minute it can be quite costly to find out it is really slow. To make it worse the speed sites download a lot of graphics which is an absolute no no on slow connections.

 

As others have said the speed is s l o o o o w and connections are sometimes lost causing to start over. It also is dependent on the time of day. At night when most pax are sleeping or during dinner times the speed can be just slow while at other times it resembles the old days of dialup.

[JF - retired RRT]

Thanks for all the answers....looks like I will be having internet withdraws for a few days... I will try to get some free wifi in San Diego maybe if I can find some close enough to the port.

 

But, I suppose going on a cruise to relax means trying to cut the cord!

In San Diego (& most other US ports of call), free wi-fi is available at coffee shops that are usually a short walk.

[caribill]

Thanks for all the answers....looks like I will be having internet withdraws for a few days... I will try to get some free wifi in San Diego maybe if I can find some close enough to the port.

 

But, I suppose going on a cruise to relax means trying to cut the cord!

 

Except when there have been equipment failures or limited periods of time when there was no satellite within range, I have never been unsuccessful in accessing Internet on a Princess ship.

 

It may have been slow at times and more acceptable speeds at other times, but I have been able to get and send e-mails, pay bills, order prescriptions, check-in for flights, etc. from the ship.

 

Of course I am not downloading or uploading big attachments, trying to stream videos, using Skype, etc.

 

So complete withdrawal is not necessary. Just do what is essential and let the non-essential wait for your return to home.

[peety3]

These types of tests would take forever to complete. The speed (depending on how many folks are using it at any given moment) is akin to dial-up speeds back in the day.

The speeds might be akin to dial-up, but the latency is where you get killed. Anytime it's geosync satellite, it's always ~200ms up to the bird, 200ms back down to earth, then the reply is 200ms up and 200ms down to the ship. It's all about the speed of light/radio waves when not in a vacuum, and there's no physicist who can make it go any faster (so far).

[paul929207]

Call it what you want, but the bottom line is that internet speed on a cruise ship is awful. You don't need a bunch of fancy tests to prove it. Just try to use it and you will quickly learn that it is nearly worthless

[Working 2 Cruise]

Never had a problem on the Crown... Even with my lovely free minutes! A little slow, yes, but acceptable.

[scrappydoo]

I just got off the Crown Princess this morning... I don't know about wi-fi specifically, but this is my experience with internet connection:

 

I had a tour booked for Puerto Vallarta, and unbeknownst to me, Princess arrives at PVR at 10am --- "SHIP" time, which is their own made up time that is an hour earlier than the actual time in PVR. So I don't find out until 10pm the night before that the ship will actually arrive at 11am PVR time and I will be one hour late for my tour!

 

So I tried calling them through the courtesy line at the passenger services desk, but no answer, leave a message....this was on a sea day.

 

Then I decide to try to email them (this was about 10:30pm or later now) and go to the internet cafe and log in to one of the Crown's computers... SO FRUSTRATING... I spent 15min waiting for my email account to load and it never did. I finally gave up and didn't even get to my inbox after nearly 18min of waiting. I paid just under $20 for that very frustrating and unfruitful wait... :rolleyes:

 

Thankfully the day ended up working out, due to a very understanding tour company... but still, that internet stinks. IMHO :)

[caribill]

Then I decide to try to email them (this was about 10:30pm or later now) and go to the internet cafe and log in to one of the Crown's computers... SO FRUSTRATING... I spent 15min waiting for my email account to load and it never did. I finally gave up and didn't even get to my inbox after nearly 18min of waiting. I paid just under $20 for that very frustrating and unfruitful wait...

 

What type of e-mail account were you trying to access?

 

A general one such as yahoo or hotmail or gmail?

 

One from an internet provider such as Comcast or Time Warner or ATT?

 

Especially the ones from an Internet provider have a lot of data to download and some will not work well on the ship's computers since cookies are not allowed.

 

In some cases it is much quicker to use the free mail2web.com where you enter your normal email address and password. All it retrieves is unread messages. You can then either look at an unread message and respond or create an entirely new message. Any message sent will look like it came from the normal way you access e-mail. The mail2web site works best with Internet providers such as Comcast, etc.

[Rancher Dave]

I've found that using outlook is not too bad. After my email account was compromised by the Home Depot Hack, my junk mail is up several times over, so instead of configuring the email so some accounts download full emails while others headers only, this time it will be all headers. Then figure what email I want to download and hit send receive again to get those emails only...from there I can log out not using too much time.

 

I used to get 1-200 emails a day and now it is upwards of 600 due to all the added spam. I think in Cozumel we will get a chance to use some free internet and I will reconfigure then and download any emails I really want but not bad enough to burn ship based time.

 

The speed is slow...if you really want fast speed you have to look at the RCCL Quantum of the seas with the high speed internet system, but the cost difference for your fare will not save enough to make it worth it...hopefully Princess will change over to some high speed internet soon enough.

[Papa Yoda]

We were also fine on the Crown a couple weeks ago and used our newly earned Platinum minutes. But last year on the Golden I entered the Internet Cafe drawing and was the only one to enter and so won 100 free minutes, it was also fine. Just expect it to be slow much of which is due to it being satellite as well as user load.

[Times Prince]

I've never had any major issues with internet on Crown Princess, with the caveat that there may be an outage due to satellite position. We bring a laptop with us and access the internet from our cabin.

 

Although I use Outlook at home, while onboard ship we always use the web based application. https://mail.twc.com/ works for Time Warner Cable. The trick is to go to the site before the cruise and delete as much mail as possible to avoid having to download all the mail or headers while onboard the first time you log on.

 

You should make sure you have a web based email application that is accessible via your web browser (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Silk, etc.).

 

Also, expect the performance in the last 24 hours before reaching the end of the cruise to be abominable, as almost everybody will be checking in for their flights. One cruise it took 1/2 hour for me in the internet café just to access the airline site. (the person next to me was doing the same thing just to find that they weren't in the 24 hour before flight time window to check in :o )

[LadderCo2]

Sailing on the Crown Princess...is the internet cafe free? I know wi fi is a cost...