Tips for working while on the Fantasy

[suzu]

Any tips from recent cruisers who had to telecommute while onboard the Fantasy? Were there areas with especially slow internet speed...or good hotspots off the ship in port days?

 

[PrincessShmoo]

Any tips from recent cruisers who had to telecommute while onboard the Fantasy? Were there areas with especially slow internet speed...or good hotspots off the ship in port days?

Internet speed on cruises is extremely slow (think back to dial up). And you can be cut off at any time. That's how it goes with satellite.

For the best connections, you'd be better off finding a free (or cheap) wifi spot in ports. Ask the CMs where they are.

 

[s3rndpt]

We just booked our first Disney Cruise (yay!) and I was wondering the same thing. My husband and I usually travel with a rented mifi, and it appears that you can get them for the Caribbean too. I'm going to do a bit more research on the subject and see how companies view renting mifis or cruises.

 

[trimix]

Internet access on board is so slow as to be useless.

Good hotspots in port? That's going to be a problem. The Fantasy hits different ports on different itineraries, and without your mentioning which itinerary you are on, nobody knows what ports to tell you about. Since you didn't tell us which itinerary you are on, ask crew members for suggestions at each of your ports.

 

[budamacdvcr]

Yeah, don't if you do not have to

 

[226ra]

Any tips from recent cruisers who had to telecommute while onboard the Fantasy? Were there areas with especially slow internet speed...or good hotspots off the ship in port days?

Virtually impossible except for small text-only emails. Forget about attachments and web surfing is extremely slow.

 

[algae]

Any tips from recent cruisers who had to telecommute while onboard the Fantasy? Were there areas with especially slow internet speed...or good hotspots off the ship in port days?

Look for any Starbucks at the major ports.

When we were in Cozumel, we had an excursion over in Playa del Carmen. The ferry that took us there had free wifi on board. Got my Internet fix while on the ferry. It was handy because there's nothing else to do on the ferry for 45 minutes. Should've brought my laptop on the excursion...well, maybe not.

I think those Diamond International stores have free wifi also. Those stores are at every port for some strange reason

After the first day, we really just forgot all about "normal life" and were quite blissfully ignorant of the goings-on from work and the rest of the world.

 

[MrsMas]

Work while on vacation I don't even think about work on vacation especially when enjoying myself onboard a Disney cruise.

Good luck with finding decent Internet service.

 

[danfromca]

Any tips from recent cruisers who had to telecommute while onboard the Fantasy? Were there areas with especially slow internet speed...or good hotspots off the ship in port days?

You can get workable Internet speeds before 6am or so. Port days in the morning aren't too bad. That's assuming everything in their system is working well, which isn't always the case.

 

[dunnhorn]

Unfortunately, due to my line of work I have had to telework on 2 different 4 day Disney cruises. Both times, I bought the maximum number of minutes. On the first one, I used all of the minutes, on the second one I didn't. I thought the connection speed on the second cruise was MUCH slower.

We are preparing to go in a few weeks... In preparation, I decided to call Verizon and ask them about switching my mifi to an international plan. Verizon looked up the ship and said that it has a 3G cell tower on it, and the mifi will send signal through the cell tower and not through the satellite, which is how the ship internet is sent. The Verizon person said the mifi would be faster than the satellite. (I have no idea if this is true - they weren't trying to "sell" me - I was asking a pointed question.)

For the mifi, it is $25 for 100 mb of data, regardless of time. I thought this was interesting, because with the satellite plan on the ship I remember buying minutes and not data. With the mifi, once you use 100 mb, it automatically renews for another $25 and so on.

When we went on the 4 day cruises, I remembered spending around $100 for the max internet package. With the mifi, I asked Verizon to tell me what my use was, and they estimated that over 7 days I would need 300 - 400 mb of data, which is around $75 - $100. That's fine - I don't mind paying even more than that if the dang thing was FASTER than the satellite. I use a web interface for my work, so the waiting was killing me.

Anyway - I can report later how it went. My 'plan" is to try to get as much done as possible on day 1 and then work on alternating days.

Hope this helps!

 

[danfromca]

Unfortunately, due to my line of work I have had to telework on 2 different 4 day Disney cruises. Both times, I bought the maximum number of minutes. On the first one, I used all of the minutes, on the second one I didn't. I thought the connection speed on the second cruise was MUCH slower.

We are preparing to go in a few weeks... In preparation, I decided to call Verizon and ask them about switching my mifi to an international plan. Verizon looked up the ship and said that it has a 3G cell tower on it, and the mifi will send signal through the cell tower and not through the satellite, which is how the ship internet is sent. The Verizon person said the mifi would be faster than the satellite. (I have no idea if this is true - they weren't trying to "sell" me - I was asking a pointed question.)

For the mifi, it is $25 for 100 mb of data, regardless of time. I thought this was interesting, because with the satellite plan on the ship I remember buying minutes and not data. With the mifi, once you use 100 mb, it automatically renews for another $25 and so on.

When we went on the 4 day cruises, I remembered spending around $100 for the max internet package. With the mifi, I asked Verizon to tell me what my use was, and they estimated that over 7 days I would need 300 - 400 mb of data, which is around $75 - $100. That's fine - I don't mind paying even more than that if the dang thing was FASTER than the satellite. I use a web interface for my work, so the waiting was killing me.

Anyway - I can report later how it went. My 'plan" is to try to get as much done as possible on day 1 and then work on alternating days.

Hope this helps!

Thanks for the information. That $25/100MB is very interesting - that could turn out to be a really good deal instead of paying for time.

Whether you see better performance or not depends on where the bottleneck is on traffic. While the ship does have a cellular tower, it does use a satellite connection. The quesiton then is whether data traffic over cellular has any priority over the regular ship wifi service. I look forward to hearing about your experience.