Internet Access of the Magic?

[erineab]

I am sure this question has been asked and answered dozens of times before, but I can't seem to find it. My husband mentioned today that he may have to login to work for an hour on one of our cruise days. Is there any internet access on the Magic? If so, any idea of how much it costs?

 

[kcashner]

75 cents per minute. In a package, it can be as cheap as 30 cents per minute. (250 minute package). It is S....L....O....W and painful to use. It kicks you off periodically.

Many ports have internet cafes with free or low cost service available if that is a possibility. At St. Thomas in December, DD got all day service for $3 at a much better speed.

 

[disneybeachprincess]

we found that as well kcashner...if you are in port @ Key West one day, you can log in there & have cell phone reception too...

 

[4 mickey]

OMG one word slowwwww
DH took a package in september ( wanted to keep in touch with coworkers ) turns out out of 100 min he maybe did have maybe 20 min of internet service ...always veryyy long ...system would shot off ...he was mad ..and it is very expensive just so you know ahead of time

 

[sayhello]

Slow is putting it mildly! All I wanted to do was check in online for my flight, and it took forever & ended up costing like $16. Ridiculous!

Sayhello

 

[thomprod]

Not only is the service very slow, but the signal is advertised as being available in all staterooms. There was a very weak signal occasionally in 2131 on the Magic on our recent 7-night Western cruise. I was never able to successfully login from our stateroom. I was able to login twice on deck 9, but I had to use seven or eight minutes to check one website each time. I had purchased a 100 minute package and was able to get a refund for the unused minutes.

 

[ducky_love]

I was thinking of syncing a seldom used email account to my ipad to stay in touch with family. My thought was that they will be the only one to use the address. Would the internet connection support just sending an email in a basic text format?

 

[TDC Nala]

I was thinking of syncing a seldom used email account to my ipad to stay in touch with family. My thought was that they will be the only one to use the address. Would the internet connection support just sending an email in a basic text format?

Yes, but it probably won't be any faster.

 

[ducky_love]

Yes, but it probably won't be any faster.

They may just have to miss me!! LOL! Better to know in advance, though. Thanks!

 

[DisneyOHFan]

I have international access for e-mails on my blackberry and it works very well and saves on the cost of logging into the computer to do all of my e-mails. This way, I only have to log-in if I have to send an attachment or type a long e-mail.

 

[k5jm]

Time to go into the weeds!!!

FWIW, internet on the ship is much more usable after 1am on the ship.

To touch on Corey's comments in the Email show...

(I posted this last year for PC 1.0 and for 2.0)

Thought ya'll would like to know that the Internet Service onboard is provided by a 128kb (bi-directional) VSAT connection. What does that mean to you? It means that everyone on board is sharing roughly the equivilant of 2 dial-up lines to the internet. Add a 2 second round trip latency ( the satellites are 22000 miles away, there is no escaping the speed of light) and that means you are in for trip back 10 years for internet service. So before you sign-up for the all you can eat Internet, know that you are not eating very much. Do not feel too bad. Most offshore oil rigs only get 56kb across a very old microwave system (was owned by Shell Oil) for their internet

The cellular (and internet) are back-hauled across the MTN VSAT network. They are the cruise industry standard for customer connectivity. They also provide the Satellite TV feed as well.

So to all the geeky folks, like myself, here you go. I would not count on uploading many 15 megapixel, RAW pictures back to the shore.

 

[wmharley]

I have international access on my phone which will work in the Bahamas. However that will be only used in an emergency, and other than that, my phone's data/sync/gps/cellular will be switched off.

If anyone brings a phone and still doesn't use it, the phone can still hunt for a signal and incur charges if the data and cellular radio isn't shut off.