Anyone on a Celebrity cruise right now using the Basic Surf Internet Package?

[Ken the cruiser]

I’m following an Apex thread that just started today and the OP is using the Basic Surf internet package that came with their AI non-suite perk combination and it’s working great! When we were on the Apex in November in a SV and then again on the Constellation last month in an Aqua cabin, we had to upgrade to Xcelerate Streaming in order to access the forums on Cruise Critic and well as other multi-layered complicated websites.

 

I was just curious if you are reading this thread, as well as possibly posting to CC threads, are you using the Basic Surf package that came with your non-suite AI package? If so, which ship are you on right now and how has the internet service been?

[Jim_Iain]

12 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

I’m following an Apex thread that just started today and the OP is using the Basic Surf internet package that came with their AI non-suite perk combination and it’s working great! When we were on the Apex in November in a SV and then again on the Constellation last month in an Aqua cabin, we had to upgrade to Xcelerate Streaming in order to access the forums on Cruise Critic and well as other multi-layered complicated websites.

 

I was just curious if you are reading this thread, as well as possibly posting to CC threads, are you using the Basic Surf package that came with your non-suite AI package? If so, which ship are you on right now and how has the internet service been?

Someone is currently on Apex and live blogging with loads of pictures and using Basic Surf.   You can drop by and ask her about it.   She also just posted a speed test

[Ken the cruiser]

1 minute ago, Jim_Iain said:

Someone is currently on Apex and live blogging with loads of pictures and using Basic Surf.   You can drop by and ask her about it.   She also just posted a speed test

Jim, I know. I’ve posted quite a few times on the Apex thread as I was the one asking about their internet experiences using the Basic Surf Package.

[Cruise Gopher]

I was on the Reflection last week and the basic surf was horrible. Cruise Critic message boards were basically unusable. 

[eroller]

I just got off APEX today and had the basic surf package.  It was great for Facebook and other social media sites, and I uploaded many pics to FB and Instagram no problem ... but forget Cruise Critic.  It would only load CC in it's raw format (not sure the real technical term), and none of the hyperlinks worked.  If you clicked on any it would just take you back to the raw main page again.  

[Ken the cruiser]

Well, the non-responses from current Celebrity cruisers, other than maybe @BennyBrun who has a great Apex Live thread going on right now, pretty much answers my question of being able to access the Cruise Critic boards using the Basic Surf internet package. The silence speaks for itself.

 

Not sure how @BennyBrunis able to do it, but I guess we'll continue for now with our strategy to upgrade to Streaming prior to boarding to get the discount when we have a non-suite cabin booked. That is, of course, unless we start hearing more positive responses. 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[royalcruz]

CC is working on Millenium and occasionally I've been able to text. I was able to send a video message on FB Messenger too.

[MamaChach]

I would love to know how iMessage and FaceTime would work with the basic surf internet.  If anyone can report we will be on Silhouette soon!

[Ken the cruiser]

12 minutes ago, royalcruz said:

CC is working on Millenium and occasionally I've been able to text. I was able to send a video message on FB Messenger too.

Cool! You just posted this from your Millennium Basic Surf package account (and you are not in a suite) and have had no issues accessing Cruise Critic boards logging in while you've been onboard. That's good news to hear!

Edited January 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[LXA350]

I can speak from a past cruise on Apex some months ago and the basic package was useless. Basic websites didn't load etc. The answer from the IT Support team was that the basic package is not compatible for most websites and applications as they use a much higher bandwith. Well why do you offer such a product at all if it's useless, absolute marketing trick what X is doing here, promoting a perk that is non existent. 

[jelayne]

Is it possible that passenger count could make a difference in how well the Surf package works.  Seems passenger counts have a wide range these days.

[royalcruz]

46 minutes ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Cool! You just posted this from your Millennium Basic Surf package account (and you are not in a suite) and have had no issues accessing Cruise Critic boards logging in while you've been onboard. That's good news to hear!

Yes to all. A few weeks ago I could not use CC with the surf package on the same ship but now I can.

[Ken the cruiser]

28 minutes ago, jelayne said:

Is it possible that passenger count could make a difference in how well the Surf package works.  Seems passenger counts have a wide range these days.

It's possible, especially when you're only getting between 0.45 - 1 mbps throughput speeds when you're on the Basic Surf package and about 3 times that when you're streaming.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[Ken the cruiser]

9 minutes ago, royalcruz said:

Yes to all. A few weeks ago I could not use CC with the surf package on the same ship but now I can.

Cool! Going along with the idea from @jelayne, how many passengers are on your current cruise as compared to a few weeks ago? When we were on our Apex B2B in Nov, both legs averaged around 1700 passengers.

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Ken the cruiser

[deejayfore]

On 1/9/2022 at 7:46 AM, MamaChach said:

I would love to know how iMessage and FaceTime would work with the basic surf internet.  If anyone can report we will be on Silhouette soon!

iMessage works fine, FaceTime does not.

[deejayfore]

On 1/9/2022 at 7:29 AM, Ken the cruiser said:

Well, the non-responses from current Celebrity cruisers, other than maybe @BennyBrun who has a great Apex Live thread going on right now, pretty much answers my question of being able to access the Cruise Critic boards using the Basic Surf internet package. The silence speaks for itself.

 

Not sure how @BennyBrunis able to do it, but I guess we'll continue for now with our strategy to upgrade to Streaming prior to boarding to get the discount when we have a non-suite cabin booked. That is, of course, unless we start hearing more positive responses. 

I was able to access and post to CC my whole time on Edge, look at my comment history and you can even see comments saying it in other threads!

[Jim_Iain]

I've found that location of the router to your room and the number of guests using the wifi really affect the speeds.    Many of the newer ships have routers in the room but this still does not mitigate if many on the premium internet are streaming.   You might try moving around the ship close to a router and see if your experience is different.    You can see them in the hallways if you look up.

[Ken the cruiser]

1 hour ago, deejayfore said:

I was able to access and post to CC my whole time on Edge, look at my comment history and you can even see comments saying it in other threads!

That's great to hear. If I might ask, do you remember roughly how many passengers were onboard the Edge when you were able to access the CC boards using the Basic Surf package you received when you booked your non-suite cabin?

[Ken the cruiser]

33 minutes ago, Jim_Iain said:

I've found that location of the router to your room and the number of guests using the wifi really affect the speeds.    Many of the newer ships have routers in the room but this still does not mitigate if many on the premium internet are streaming.   You might try moving around the ship close to a router and see if your experience is different.    You can see them in the hallways if you look up.

We had a router in our SV cabin and weren't able to access CC using our Basic Surf package until we upgraded to streaming that first evening. However, there were also 1700 passengers onboard our Nov 9th Apex cruise.

[corpkid]

Does anyone know the ballpark speeds of the streaming package?  Going to be doing a Transatlantic later this year on Apex and was hoping to do a little work, which can sometimes be a bit bandwidth intensive.  Thanks!

[Ken the cruiser]

1 minute ago, corpkid said:

Does anyone know the ballpark speeds of the streaming package?  Going to be doing a Transatlantic later this year on Apex and was hoping to do a little work, which can sometimes be a bit bandwidth intensive.  Thanks!

Around 2 mbps for streaming. My daughter was on a cruise with us over Xmas and she had no issues zooming with her folks back in Seattle as well as downloading large files. They just to a little longer than using the 100+ mbps service she was used to. 

[Ipeeinthepools]

On 1/9/2022 at 11:23 AM, jelayne said:

Is it possible that passenger count could make a difference in how well the Surf package works.  Seems passenger counts have a wide range these days.

 

This seems like a reasonable argument but even at the highest passenger loads they are not close to full capacity so it's still a mystery to me that the Basic package performs so poorly.  I'm not sure if it's the location of the routers on the ship or the amount of bandwidth Celebrity is purchasing but the current Basic set-up seems to offer poor performance on most ships.  I hope Celebrity finds a way to remedy this situation because it's currently a major source of customer satisfaction.

[deejayfore]

On 1/10/2022 at 10:24 AM, Ken the cruiser said:

That's great to hear. If I might ask, do you remember roughly how many passengers were onboard the Edge when you were able to access the CC boards using the Basic Surf package you received when you booked your non-suite cabin?

1200

[royalcruz]

I posted on Sunday morning but by the afternoon I could no longer post to Cruise Critic.  

[Ipeeinthepools]

3 hours ago, royalcruz said:

I posted on Sunday morning but by the afternoon I could no longer post to Cruise Critic.  

 

Maybe you violated CC rules.