Starlink is online on the Discovery Princess

[Kb55kb]

I think at some point this trip they flipped on starlink because my original speed test was not a starlink connection. The connection has been adequate at worst. I was able to stream Ted Lasso after we left Hubbard glacier yesterday with 2 or 3 10 second buffering pauses. But I have had no issues browsing the internet at any point so far up here in Alaska. (Edit idk why the speed test screen shot is flipped. The other picture is what appears to be starlink dishes or the only thing I could find that looks like them above the sky suites)

Edited May 4, 2023 by Kb55kb

[Rick&Jeannie]

Interesting!  Please keep us posted!

[Rick&Jeannie]

I'm hoping that since Sky just came out of drydock that maybe (hopefully) they added Starlink there as well.  We are boarding Sky next week.  Of course, Discovery may just be a trial...

[jeromep]

I'm glad to hear that Discovery has "better" Internet, or at least a dry run at trying to provide better Internet.  My next cruise will be on the Discovery, so this is a nice touch.

[Jersey42]

mirror image

Edited May 4, 2023 by Jersey42

[Roberto256]

1 hour ago, Kb55kb said:

I think at some point this trip they flipped on starlink because my original speed test was not a starlink connection. The connection has been adequate at worst. I was able to stream Ted Lasso after we left Hubbard glacier yesterday with 2 or 3 10 second buffering pauses. But I have had no issues browsing the internet at any point so far up here in Alaska. (Edit idk why the speed test screen shot is flipped. The other picture is what appears to be starlink dishes or the only thing I could find that looks like them above the sky suites)

 

 

Those numbers look pretty poor.

 

Wait 'til 4000 people try sharing THAT connection.

 

[billco]

I am on the Sapphire Princess in Juneau, Alaska. Streaming is significantly better than it was at the start of the cruise with SES as the provider.

Edited May 4, 2023 by billco

[CCFC]

I was getting 30Mbs on Royal Caribbean in 2015, not impressed, they need to do someting

[billco]

Just now, CCFC said:

I was getting 30Mbs on Royal Caribbean in 2015, not impressed, they need to do someting

It’s good enough to stream. Something I couldn’t do on Mexican Riviera cruises on the Discovery in March and the first part of this Alaskan cruise on the Sapphire in April and May. Ping is only 70 as compared to 700 with SES.

[azbirdmom]

Good to hear.  Discovery had the absolute worst WiFi of any of the ships so I'm happy that Starlink is making a noticable difference.

[cr8tiv1]

1 hour ago, azbirdmom said:

Good to hear.  Discovery had the absolute worst WiFi of any of the ships so I'm happy that Starlink is making a noticable difference.

 

I still don't understand why the newest ship in the fleet (Discovery) has the worst WiFi. 

 

The numbers posted don't sound impressive.  I am getting 5 Mbs on a dial up/DSL home connection.  And think that is pretty poor.

[SCX22]

What device is being used to make this analysis?  Tablet, phone, laptop?  Also, at what resolution was the content able to be streamed?

 

Regardless of the speeds, pages/apps/videos on tablets and phones will always load faster than on laptops because they are watered down and are designed to use less data.  That is why there is sometimes an option to revert to the desktop version on phones/tablets to get the full experience.  As an example, videos stream faster on the YouTube app on a tablet rather than opening up YouTube on a web browser on a laptop.  

 

[memoak]

2 hours ago, CCFC said:

I was getting 30Mbs on Royal Caribbean in 2015, not impressed, they need to do someting

Back 8 years ago 95 % of passengers were not spending all that much time on line since there was a limit to minutes and it cost quite a bit to be online hours every day

[billco]

Here are some of Sapphire’s antennas. Already we have naysayers. Right now I can do streaming in Alaska that I have never been able to do. It wouldn’t surprise me that the speed is throttled so they can sell premium down the road.

[cr8tiv1]

1 minute ago, billco said:

Here are some of Sapphire’s antennas. Already we have naysayers. Right now I can do streaming in Alaska that I have never been able to do. It wouldn’t surprise me that the speed is throttled so they can sell premium down the road.

 

Huh?  What are you saying?  I will have to pay a higher price for throttled up speed for the "best wifi at sea"?  I've already resigned myself to losing the free minutes AND 50% discount if I purchase a Plus package.  (aka Sheldon).

[fpsphil]

Super excited to see this as it should provide at least a little better performance. Hopefully its on the Enchanted already (but I am sure it is since it just came out of drydock 2 weeks ago)

 

I think a lot of the slowness seen though on end users is caused by shotty routing equipment throughout the ships

Edited May 4, 2023 by fpsphil

[neverbeenhere]

Royal Princess has the pony express of internet and sadly all the riders are dying halfway to the next station. 
 

Princess better up their game or almost no one under 50 will ever cruise on them. 

[Kb55kb]

5 hours ago, Roberto256 said:

 

Those numbers look pretty poor.

 

Wait 'til 4000 people try sharing THAT connection.

 

The number don't look good but I feel like the connection is better than those numbers represent. People were able to facetime friends and family from Hubbard glacier. My wife and I are 27 and we have been able to do everything we typically do on our phones. It may take a few seconds for a webpage to load. But based on reading what people say on here I was expecting wifi to be unusable after the first 24 hours on board so this has been a nice surprise. 

[snoozecrooze]

16 minutes ago, Kb55kb said:

The number don't look good but I feel like the connection is better than those numbers represent. People were able to facetime friends and family from Hubbard glacier. My wife and I are 27 and we have been able to do everything we typically do on our phones. It may take a few seconds for a webpage to load. But based on reading what people say on here I was expecting wifi to be unusable after the first 24 hours on board so this has been a nice surprise. 

Thanks for sharing with us. I did see earlier in the week that Discovery did have Starlink but really appreciate your first-hand experience. Please come back and update us if things change in the midst of your cruise (like if things just conk out suddenly,...which seems to have been a common theme on the older system). Really curious as well about how it's continued to be sustained while in Alaska. Hope you're having a good cruise!

 

1 hour ago, cr8tiv1 said:

I will have to pay a higher price for throttled up speed for the "best wifi at sea"?

I think it would be boneheaded to do this because it would direct a lot more ire at Princess, especially in such a tech-forward era, but pessimistically, I can see this happen if the powers that be at Princess want to create more cash-grabbing opportunities. Pretty sure all the cruise lines are throttling to an extent.

[Ken the cruiser]

7 hours ago, Jersey42 said:

mirror image

FWIW we’re currently on the Celebrity Eclipse and have been using its Starlink connection the entire cruise crossing the Pacific since leaving Sydney about 13 days ago, and those are similar readings to what we’ve been seeing using the Celebrity Premium package. With those speeds we’ve had no issues posting multiple photos and text to my Live From thread.

 

[WAvoyager]

Still not great, but much better than Discovery on its Mexico run on April 15-22…. These results were pretty consistent through the cruise (Riviera deck, mid-ship)

 

[gvre]

Just ran speed test at home:

166.6

Mbps download

9.04

Mbps upload

Latency: 28 ms

Server: San Francisco Bay Area

Your Internet connection is very fast.

 

Think if you get this on a ship!

[KarmaCruisers]

Honestly; if you can get a solid 5Mbps download speed, you can do anything you want on a mobile device  (stream HD, browse web, video calls)

[AZjohn]

Just for fun and giggles I ran a speed test at home on my iPad.

No doubt about it, I’m too spoiled 😂

 

[Honolulu Blue]

From my cruise on the Ruby a few weeks ago.  This is when we were docked in Cozumel:

 

Note the lack of Starlink. 

 

I've been lucky on my three Princess cruises to have OK, decent-ish Internet speeds on all of them most of the time.  Perhaps Starlink will help on my next Princess cruise; we'll see.

Edited May 5, 2023 by Honolulu Blue