WIFI on the ship and its speed and stability.

[MaryJulian]

How easy and fast is the wifi on the majestic princess?

[Valiamo]

Basic service will get you emails and surfing to most common websites.   You will find transferring large files or lots of photos to a cloud service much, much slower than on land.   

 

This is a satellite service so you are NOT getting GB service and you can expect around 30MBs upload and 10MBs download.   During the evenings and when at sea, service will be less that daytime or in a port (just because of the # of concurrent users on at the same time).

 

While you could use streaming services like Neflix (as an example) you will find the service somewhat spotty.

 

[Kmkub]

Just off the Enchanted in January and the Regal last week. Internet is lightning fast. I was able to stream from Hulu on Enchanted. Regal wasn’t quite as good, but still excellent.

[PescadoAmarillo]

It is highly dependent on the area in which the ship is cruising. DH has been on the Ruby Princess for a month.  When the ship was en route to-from Hawaii, we could WiFi call and it was not too different than calling using cellular, just with a bit of latency. Since he has been going through the Panama Canal, he can’t even place a call out and I can’t call him. 

[Bgwest]

1 hour ago, PescadoAmarillo said:

It is highly dependent on the area in which the ship is cruising. DH has been on the Ruby Princess for a month.  When the ship was en route to-from Hawaii, we could WiFi call and it was not too different than calling using cellular, just with a bit of latency. Since he has been going through the Panama Canal, he can’t even place a call out and I can’t call him. 

As the poster above described, the quality and speed of the Wi-Fi will vary GREATLY depending on the ship’s position/location. 

https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/ocean-medallion/medallionnet/

 

watch the video near the bottom of the page. 
Watch video: How MedallionNet works

 

This coverage map is a bit (intentionally?) inaccurate in that the signal degradation and accompanying satellite switchover shown north of the equator is also present as a limiting factor south of the equator.  

 

 

Edited March 11, 2022 by Bgwest

[Kmkub]

 

1 hour ago, PescadoAmarillo said:

It is highly dependent on the area in which the ship is cruising. DH has been on the Ruby Princess for a month.  When the ship was en route to-from Hawaii, we could WiFi call and it was not too different than calling using cellular, just with a bit of latency. Since he has been going through the Panama Canal, he can’t even place a call out and I can’t call him. 

Excellent point. My husband was able t work un rte Caribbean, but that may not be true everywhere.

Edited March 11, 2022 by Kmkub

[MISTER 67]

We had great WI-FI speed on our 2 cruises on the Carib. Princess in November and December. 

[minnesotasisu]

Out internet speed on the Enchanted Princess was very good

[BuckeyeMark]

What can we expect speed-wise on a UK cruise?  Anybody done that?

[Rick&Jeannie]

We had essentially ZERO internet on the Regal TA between the Azores and about 1 day short of Fort Lauderdale.  You could sometimes get a very short message through but nothing like streaming video, YouTube, upload/download pictures etc.  Disappointing that they are not very upfront about the extreme wide range of service levels.

[antsp]

4 hours ago, BuckeyeMark said:

What can we expect speed-wise on a UK cruise?  Anybody done that?

Not as good as Caribbean based itineraries, you are to far north to be in the footprint of the low earth satellites. 

[nbsjcruiser]

21 hours ago, MaryJulian said:

How easy and fast is the wifi on the majestic princess?

Excellent speed and when you get on board, head to the medallion station and ask them to hook you up. They'll put your phone in airplane mode and connect you to the network. Easy peasey. 

[cruzsnooze]

On the Majestic in February. It was a Mexican Riviera cruise and the service was usually quite good. There were a few times it was slow but it always worked. I didn't use a phone, this was on my laptop which I never had to turn off. 

[mtnesterz]

14 hours ago, Bgwest said:

watch the video near the bottom of the page. 

Watch video: How MedallionNet works

Thanks for the link! This short video answers all for anyone with this question.

[BeachBum777]

In regards to the northern hemispheres, my wife and I just completed a Norwegian fjords cruise on Sky Princess and had excellent Internet the entire time which surprised me.  Used an VPN and watched all the games.

You would’ve thought in between the mountains we would’ve had no Service, but that wasn’t the case.

 

as an interesting note, when I did do speed checks, they were pinging off of starlink, which I thought was notable

 

 

Edited September 19, 2023 by BeachBum777

[dides]

1 hour ago, BeachBum777 said:

In regards to the northern hemispheres, my wife and I just completed a Norwegian fjords cruise on Sky Princess and had excellent Internet the entire time which surprised me.  Used an VPN and watched all the games.

You would’ve thought in between the mountains we would’ve had no Service, but that wasn’t the case.

 

as an interesting note, when I did do speed checks, they were pinging off of starlink, which I thought was notable

Yes, all the Princess fleet have Starlink now. There's a thread for reporting latency, bandwidth  etc

 

[Steelers36]

1 hour ago, dides said:

Yes, all the Princess fleet have Starlink now. There's a thread for reporting latency, bandwidth  etc

 

Agree.  This old thread is irrelevant to the situation today and posters should refer to the new thread linked by you.

[Rick&Jeannie]

29 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Agree.  This old thread is irrelevant to the situation today and posters should refer to the new thread linked by you.

Well, given the fact that *all* Princess ships are now on Starlink I question the need for that thread as well. Starlink has made a huge difference in internet service on cruise ships for *most* areas...there will always be some spots that have less than optimal coverage. 

Edited September 19, 2023 by Rick&Jeannie

[BeachBum777]

3 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

Agree.  This old thread is irrelevant to the situation today and posters should refer to the new thread linked by you.

Irrelevant except for the search engines -

 

< google follow link > Star Link Princess 

 

 

Edited September 19, 2023 by BeachBum777

[Guest Snaxmuppet]

On 3/11/2022 at 2:18 PM, minnesotasisu said:

Out internet speed on the Enchanted Princess was very good

That looks like it is network speed... that is speed to the ship wifi. It is not the speed to the internet. If you had tried speedtest.net it likely would have told a very different story 🙂 

[brovol]

I was looking forward to Starlink being introduced to other cruise lines, because the service was so bad on NCL, HAL and other lines, but we had fantastic high speed internet service on the Sky, before starlink, and was able to stream live ESPN football games without interruption, when we sailed last November.  Princess really did have great internet in our experience, ans now with Starlink the reviews are mediocre at best.  Why fix what wasn't broken?

 

We are on the Regal for thanksgiving cruise, and one of the reasons I booked it was because the internet was so good on the Sky.  Hope it works as well.  So many mixed reviews of cruise ship starlink.  I agree that the cruise lines are not purchasing the best service from Starlink, and thus the quality is poor.  Hope that changes, because for me high quality fast internet is a difference-maker, and make a significant effect on which cruise line I will book with. 

 

Im on the Regal this November, and Celebrity Apex in March.  Hope both those ships step up their internet game.

[voljeep]

8 minutes ago, brovol said:

I was looking forward to Starlink being introduced to other cruise lines, because the service was so bad on NCL, HAL and other lines, but we had fantastic high speed internet service on the Sky, before starlink, and was able to stream live ESPN football games without interruption, when we sailed last November.  Princess really did have great internet in our experience, ans now with Starlink the reviews are mediocre at best.  Why fix what wasn't broken?

 

We are on the Regal for thanksgiving cruise, and one of the reasons I booked it was because the internet was so good on the Sky.  Hope it works as well.  So many mixed reviews of cruise ship starlink.  I agree that the cruise lines are not purchasing the best service from Starlink, and thus the quality is poor.  Hope that changes, because for me high quality fast internet is a difference-maker, and make a significant effect on which cruise line I will book with. 

 

Im on the Regal this November, and Celebrity Apex in March.  Hope both those ships step up their internet game.

just a thought - on your Thanksgiving cruise, it will have a lot of kids who will be on their phones 24/7 on the internet.  Good luck getting any kind of service