cuddylier

The tendering in Santorini easy - requires you to take a funucular/cable car up and down tomgo to towns... Don't miss the ruins of Akrotiri - go with a private guide. It was amazing!! if u are on an excursion thru Royal there are busses and you don't take cable car once off tender. The ports entire cruise were wonderful. we had a great CC group and many of us planned private excursions which everyone innour group enjoyed doing that way... so small excursion sizes and less cost than thru Royal. if you need recommendations of private happy to share names. cruise was very port intensive and I need a post cruise vacation. or at least a few days of sleep and no walking!!! If Motown and Tenors are on your cruise..... put those 2 shows on your list. ps - remember anything you buy on board has 22% vat added. on board they were discounting dinners in the speacialy restaurants by 30%. those also are suject to VAT. No liquor bottles on sale on ship. No tobacco products on sale on ship. I prefer larger ships but larger ships can't do all of the ports on this iten.

Did you happen to see if the internet had VAT added on as well? Buying it via the cruise planner doesn't add VAT so might be beneficial for me to get it before going in August (different itinerary but still out of Civitavecchia so I assume the same VAT rules).

I'm sorry I don't understand what that means :confused: I'll just take away "it will sort of suck" ;):D

 

She just started getting into this stuff several months ago so I'm wondering if she is going to want to play on board.

200ms = 200 milliseconds of latency. Latency is how long it takes to go from the ship to the game's servers and back to the ship, 200ms isn't bad at all for a ship, the satellite system on other RCCL ships that don't have O3b is over 600ms, most games if they're on a mobile device are probably okay on the 200ms O3b stuff.

TLDR: The game will probably be okay but just be prepared for some delays/slowness in game.

I think its cruise specific or region specific. They are still offering 30% off both my Grandeur cruises this year.

Ah it must be, Jewel is going out of Civitavecchia on 20th August 2017.

Majesty has O3B and it was pretty sad for Stream

 

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/2545343593

 

3.87 Mb/s download

2.31 Mb/s upload

199 ms for the ping

Oh that's a shame :( I had Surf and Stream on Allure in 2015 and it was 25Mb/s down and 10Mb/s up, I loved it!

Surf will have you throttled down to about .5 Mbps but you are correct that it's the latency that kills general performance.

I'll just be web browsing since watching Youtube etc was hopeless on Surf and Stream last time so 0.5Mb/s will probably be fine and same as before.

Thanks for the info everyone.

Without the discount pre-cruise, you may as well wait to get on board and get the Surf tier which is not available online.

I could do that, I'm going on the Jewel of the Seas in August which I believe still has the old Satellite stuff so maybe the speed won't be that much different, it was pretty slow on Surf and Stream on Vision of the Seas last August (maybe 2Mb/s down but the latency played the biggest part probably as always).

That is correct, for one a one device package.

Thought so, there isn't anything added onto the $17.99/day like a gratuity or anything right? I can't quite remember as last year I managed to get the 30% discount by purchasing on the cruise planner, seems like that has stopped :(

Isn't surf and stream $17.99/day total on board? On the UK cruiseplanner it's saying £12.60/day for surf and stream 1 device, that works out at about $15.51. I'm platinum so would get 15% discount on board so that works out at $15.25 with the onboard discount, so in my case, there is no advantage to purchasing prior to the cruise?

Even with O3B, you are still not going to get "at home" like performance. You still have much worse latency (ping of about 200 ms) on the ship vs. home (in the 10-50 ms range - the lower the better). It's not as obvious as with non-O3B ships, but it will still be slightly slower.

 

Considering Liberty did not get the O3B upgrade during its dry dock, it is questionable if any other ships will get it (other than brand new ones like O4 under construction).

I understand that however from my own experience of 03b on Allure, it really couldn't have gotten much better speed wise and I was never sitting around waiting however on Vision it was very evident to me that the latency was causing pages to load much slower than Allure did, of course due to the massive latency difference but I thought that might be the best non technical way to explain it to anyone who didn't perform speed tests. Thanks for the info about the potential for 03b on other ships.

Have not seen any reports indicating O3b on Jewel.

Ah okay :( Was hoping the dry dock or shortly after would put in 03b but I guess it'll be quite some time before they do, thanks.

No speed test- I'm not that tech savy but I was able to send emails with photos attached daily without issue.

 

 

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Ah okay, I'm just trying to figure out if Jewel has 03b yet but hopefully someone else is able to chime in at some point. If web pages loaded like they would at home speed wise then it's quite possible it has o3b.

Just off jewel and was very happy with surfing package. I was able to easily connect and call home via voip without issue. I also had no issues sending or getting emails. This was a cheaper option than international calling plan.

 

 

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I'm glad to hear that as I'm going on Jewel next year. I assume you didn't manage to perform a speedtest?

Thanks all for the responses. Glad it is well maintained. I wonder if it is having any updates for the next year? How was the pool area?? Specialty restaurants?? The suite is what's drawing me to it!!! Would be a real treat!

 

 

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Vision isn't going into dry dock again anytime soon at least so I don't assume it'll get anything major anytime soon.

Pool area was pretty standard, one pool with four hot tubs and then the Solarium with a pool and two hot tubs. Main pool was quite packed most days so there was no chance of swimming properly but the Solarium's had quite a bit of room most of the time however was often much colder than the main pool, sometimes the main pool was lovely and warm, some days it was freezing so seems they heat it some days and not others but most people probably preferred it being cooler due to the hot weather.

I just got off Vision today, it definitely doesn't look like a 19 year old ship on the interior, modern and well maintained for the most part. The various Centrum shows/events are great and very enjoyable as well as the theatre shows. Everything felt very friendly and I felt like I got to know more of the crew (including the Captain, he was very friendly and happy to 'get out there') than I otherwise would have on one of the bigger ships so it's a nice class to go on every so often.

On Vision OTS at the moment, getting 1 - 2Mb/s download and same for upload on surf and stream package. It's fine for web browsing but wouldn't be for anything sensitive to the high latency, 700ms+. Streaming on e.g. Youtube is okay if you're happy to wait for the buffering or play in low resolutions such as 240p to avoid buffering. I'd hate to think what the surf package is like :O but might still be fine for web browsing only.

Overall I'm still happy I went for it since there was the 30% discount promotion, made me go for the surf and stream just over the surf package.

Someone recently reported that SURF has been further throttled to .5MBs on Freedom - no reports of such restrictions on other O3B equipped ships.

Ah, thanks for the info.

I am assuming that VOOM is actually "WiFi". Does that mean that I can use the Voom for surfing the internet, sending text and pictures, and sending email WITHOUT using any of own DATA? My iPAD and phone both have WiFi and ATT available on them. Would I just need to make sure that I am using the VOOM WiFi and not ATT while on the ship?

Yes, VOOM is just RCCL's term for 'WiFi'. You can use it for anything you normally do on the internet including surfing, emails etc without using your phone's data as long as you set your phone/device in flight mode or turn off mobile data to avoid that being used instead.

Also, I did not purchase the "streaming" part of the VOOM package because I was not sure if I would need it, but I am hoping that someone could please explain why I might need to use the streaming part of the package so I can change my package if needed.

The 'surf' plan is widely known to have download speeds of between 1 - 4Mb/s on O3B enabled ships (the satellites used) which Freedom is believed to use. The 'stream' plan simply increases the download speed up to 25Mb/s. Most streaming services will probably work okay on the Surf plan however you may encounter a little bit of buffering.

I'll leave someone else to answer the rest of your questions that I am not sure about.

We also bring both European and US converters to be able to use all of the plugs, very useful.

We saw a lot of people trying to fill normal glasses up from the machines on Allure last year, a lot of confusion, doesn't say who's able to use them so I can understand when they're sitting there and look like they're 'free'.

What is the discount? Just a lowly gold but I didn't see anything about a discount. Thanks!

 

 

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10% for gold.

Does VOOM work everywhere on the ship...room, decks, etc

Yes, everywhere.

Thanks for all the useful info and photos, really helps us out.

 

We are planning on using this free shuttle and then walking round to the Petit Train and doing their tour to Notre Dame Cathedral which we hope will be nice.

 

Does the Free Shuttle Bus drop off and pick up from the same place?

Yes.

Royal Promenade, Windjammer, Wipeout Cafe. Maybe another, but can't remember.

Just those three locations.

When boarding in Barcelona are the cabin corridors locked until 1pm ? Or can you get access earlier ?

The corridors were open but there was signs up saying cabins weren't ready until 1pm.