Companies tend to take an optimistic view of their products.
You never see a restaurant market its "Barely Acceptable Burger" or a hotel push its "mostly clean rooms and bathrooms."
As consumers, we know not to always believe hype. That can be challenging with restaurants because one person's favorite meal might be below average for someone else.
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Hotels, however, tend to offer some telltale signs. If the billboard out front trumpets "free HBO" or "low weekly rates," that's usually a sign you might not be getting a top-tier room. That room could be clean and acceptable, but before you book, you might want to visit a reviews site to see what other people think.
In the cruise industry. some products are graded on a curve because people understand that cruise ships have some limitations. A "spacious" room, for example, will often be smaller than an average hotel room but larger than a typical 185-square-foot cabin.
It can often be tricky to know what you're getting before you buy it, and that's where the internet hive mind can be helpful. That's especially true when it comes to the onboard internet offered by various cruise
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Image source: Carnival Cruise Line
Carnival offers Starlink internet
Both Carnival Corp. and Royal Caribbean Group have added Starlink internet, a satellite-based service from Elon Musk's SpaceX, across their entire fleets.
Satellite internet quality can vary based on weather, your location on the ship, and how many people are using it at any given time, and it's not nearly as strong as what you'll find in any coffee shop on land.
But it's still much better than the previous cruise-line internet — especially for Carnival — which was often unreliable and at times not usable.
Carnival sells three different packages which it describes as follows::
- Social: Access the most popular social websites and applications like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, X, Reddit, LinkedIn, and major airline sites. It excludes access to most other websites, email, video, and music streaming services, cellular-network-dependent Wi-Fi calling, and FaceTime services.
- Value: Access all sites included in the Social plan with a faster connection speed. Ideal for travelers who want to stay in touch via social media, manage emails, browse, and stay updated on news, sports, and weather. It doesn't support video streaming or cellular-network-dependent Wi-Fi calling.
- Premium: This plan offers access to all sites from the Social and Value Plans at speeds up to three times faster. You can stream movies, video chat, monitor your home and browse the web seamlessly, including apps like Netflix, Hulu, Spotify, FaceTime, Zoom, and Ring where coverage allows. Cellular-network-dependent Wi-Fi calling is not supported.
Social starts at $15.30 a day per person, while Value costs $19.95 per day, per person, and Premium begins at $21.25 per day, per person. All plans must be purchased for the full cruise.
Carnival passengers discuss Internet plans
On the Carnival Reddit page, most people gave the cruise line's internet service a passing grade — so long as users manage their expectations.
"I always get the social media package and it works well to check FB/ TikTok and call/ text home," wrote MnPohler. "You have to remember you are on a ship in the middle of the ocean relying on satellites for the internet to work, along with several thousand other people. It's not going to be as fast as home. If you need to do something important (ie call home) wait until most people are sleeping or eating."
Many passengers commented about the limitations of the lower-level packages.
"Need to buy Premium to stream. Social is useless unless you are just posting. Value is mid-tier and most apps/sites work," shared BrainDad-208.
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Service varies greatly.
"Works pretty well. If you can get your folio number early to log in, I have tested speeds up to 150 Mbps. Once everyone gets their folio and starts logging in the speeds drop to around 10 Mbps and the ping is pretty high since it is satellite internet," posted Shryne.
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Sunshiny_Day was also positive about their experience.
"It depends on what you want to do with it," they wrote. "I think it's worth the price of the lowest tier to be able to send messages to the dog sitter. I think you need the second tier to post pictures on Facebook and make all your friends jealous of your vacation; I think that's worth it too."
There were some negative posts, but they seemed to be the minority.
"Just got off the Magic. Had premium WiFi. It was absolute dog s***. Only really worked in the dining area. Wasn't just me either. My wife had the same issue across multiple devices. Other people we talked to had the same issue as well with the premium WiFi," shared OkEbb9701.
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