Internet Usage Questions, Please ?

[Robert11]

Hello,

Friends will be going on a one week cruise leaving from Port Canaveral
(the one with a stopover at a "private" beach/island for a day)

Unfortunately, I don't have the name of the ship, but I imagine my questions
are pretty generic enough to ask anyway.

Regarding the internet apparently available on all their ships now:

a. is it "generally" reliable ? Reasonable speed ?

b. Apparently it is provided by a third party.
Do they charge by connection time, usage, or some combination of both ?

*c. Realize this is very variable, but using the internet to do, e.g. homework for a school course,
connecting to and discussing with teacher, others, submissions, etc.,
what might a typical 1 Hour full usage cost ?

Any caveats, or questions I should be asking regarding using ?

All in all, a good experience ?
(e.g., "it works well, and cost is "reasonable" ? Easy to connect to ?)

Much thanks, really appreciate your thoughts on this,
Bob

 

[DynamicDisneyDuo]

A. Yes, although the speed can be sluggish during high traffic times such as first thing in the morning. Using it while everyone is ashore or asleep will likely provide the best results.

B. By the MB. There are packages available.

C. That is pretty close to impossible to say as it depends on how much data will actually be used. It could be a little or it could be a lot.

 

[MomOTwins]

You purchase a block of megabites and then purchase more when you run out, so there is no way to rack up more cost than you are willing to spend. Those MBs go fast though; are you talking about email/message board with teachers/classmates or live video chat? I think you could manage a written conversation but there's no way I would try to stream video with it.

 

[Cruising Engineer]

Here is a good place to start learning about DCL internet wifi service: https://www.travelingmom.com/disney-cruise/disney-cruise-line-internet-connectsea/

Having experienced doing an online university class once before I am better prepared for this fall semester class. It is not cheap.

• Log on, download any assignments, reading materials, etc. log off.
• Offline read the material, do the assignment on Word (or whatever is the required format).
• Log on, upload the assignment and log off.

Video chat !!!! You must be made of money. The system is not as reliable as at home. The first time I a mid term exam, timed of course. The system was so sluggish, what should have taken 20 min. to complete the exam, I barely finished it in the one hour $$$$. This time I'm working with the instructor to load up most of the work ahead of time.

 

[Jestocost]

While download speeds are reasonable, upload speeds are not and latency is inherently awful. In addition, the service relies on a satellite connection and there are times when the ship will be out of position and no Internet is available.

 

[FigmentSpark]

While download speeds are reasonable, upload speeds are not and latency is inherently awful. In addition, the service relies on a satellite connection and there are times when the ship will be out of position and no Internet is available.

Just hope you weren't trying to sign off your package when the internet goes down. All is fine, except you won't be sitting there until it comes up again to log off and bammo! there goes the rest of your data! Yeah, that happened to me. Luckily, it was only the free package that I lost, but still. This time around, I logged on, did a couple things and logged out. No casual surfing, just in and out.

 

[southerngirl528]

Just hope you weren't trying to sign off your package when the internet goes down. All is fine, except you won't be sitting there until it comes up again to log off and bammo! there goes the rest of your data! Yeah, that happened to me. Luckily, it was only the free package that I lost, but still. This time around, I logged on, did a couple things and logged out. No casual surfing, just in and out.

Ouch!

 

[doublesided]

Can you bring a mobile hotspot or will it not work on the ship?

 

[Van Houten]

Mobile hotspots will not work - the ship's cellular network does not provide data link, and only supports calling and SMS texts. The only exception to this is if your service is with AT&T and you had data roaming option enabled for the hotspot account - in which case, you will be paying over $6 per megabyte. Otherwise, the data service is via WiFi only.

 

[kiford]

DH did a 30 minute audio Skype chat with people from work when we were docked in Dover. It used up the full free 50MB. We then purchased another two blocks (200MB total) over the course of the 12 day cruise and the two of us used it mostly on e-mail (often with photos attached) and the occasional book download and web surfing. I think we had some left at the end. I don't think I'd try to do any video streaming - I don't think the speeds are particularly good for that and it depends on other people's usage but we found it to be pretty good for e-mail and infrequent surfing and not too expensive overall.

 

[Jestocost]

Just hope you weren't trying to sign off your package when the internet goes down. All is fine, except you won't be sitting there until it comes up again to log off and bammo! there goes the rest of your data! Yeah, that happened to me. Luckily, it was only the free package that I lost, but still. This time around, I logged on, did a couple things and logged out. No casual surfing, just in and out.

Thankfully, no. But once the satellite connection was out when I needed to get online to check in for my Southwest flight (this was in the days before Early Bird Check-in), and I didn't find out until I left the beach on Castaway Cay and went back to the ship. That stunk.