afurman

Varies ship to ship what VPN would work. I have seen all VPN blocked then a few months later it's open. I can say Icon was the last ship that I had a VPN blocked and it was blocking Wireguard connections but openvpn type was working. (those are VPN types and most of the VPN software uses either of those or both as options.)

Per Person

I did the tour a few months ago on Scarlet Lady. It was $200. The places you went to are the following. Red Room (behind the stage also) 6th Floor Kitchens Provisioning/Storage Engine Control Room Environmental Room Laundry Bridge I don't recall any other places that we went to. Pictures weren't allowed anywhere except the bridge. Hope that helps

I heard she goes in 2026.

Valiant Lady was horrible even with Premium internet over Christmas this year definitely not useable if working onboard. Scarlet Lady Internet is good, and you should be able to work from the ship. The difference between the two ships is Scarlet Lady is using O3B from SES at least that was the carrier in November 2023, Valiant Lady is using Starlink.

It wasn't a short line in Vancouver earlier this month to pick up the Medallion. It would be nice if Elite's got free Shipping also for it and if you want to change after placing the order that can't be done either. Seems like a ton of IT issues on the Princess side here.

I'm not sure it matters on who is providing the internet. My felling is their QOS settings when the ship's internet is full is not prioritizing VPN and it's not getting the bandwidth like other services get. I was on Emerald last December and pinging google.com was at 350ms, pinging a VPN I use to access internal stuff not on the internet was over 2000MS and if we take into account the latency from where the traffic was dropped off in the US to where my VPN goes maybe add another 40ms so I really think they don't want VPN used since they want to see what is happening on their network. Now when the ship's internet wasn't full (port day) VPN worked just fine. I tried to have a chat about this with the Internet Manager his answer to me was VPN is heavy resource against the CPU on your device which is what causes the latency to be so high. I tried to call him out on his answer but he wasn't having it but I guess no use for someone who understands how this works to talk to someone who has standard replies for most people. Royal Caribbean on some ships are blocking VPNs and other ships they aren't. They claim the reason why they block VPN is because someone took down their entire internet due to a VPN so because of that it's blocked fleet wide I was told but it's not fleet wide it's just some ships. This whole situation sucks in the end since you don't know what you are going to get and we all have work to do at some point even on vacation 😞. If you want a trick not sure this will always work but it's also something they can't really play with is to use a IKEv2 VPN. The reason they can't play too much with it is because that is what the cell carriers use to make wifi calling work so if they don't want to break wifi calling they won't be playing too much with that type of VPN, also would be very difficult for them to maintain a list of carriers and IP's utilized by them for those VPN's.

You can use HDMI to the TV on Wonder. Search YouTube on how to do it. It wasn't that difficult and worked just fine.

Captain Teo is on Wonder now.

Royal Caribbean said today they are monitoring flights into FLL for this weekend and will work on fixing anyone they booked with their program if they can might be extremely difficult with the amount of flights that got canceled.

I was on the cruise before and the transatlantic in 2022. I have speedtests from the Eastern Caribbean where the carrier was O3B and then speedtests from the transatlantic where the carrier was different. Also, the ship had no internet for about 1 hour while docked in Port Everglades the morning of leaving for the transatlantic and when it came back it was horrible even when in Florida.

Starlink isn't as great as everything thinks right now. It has been pretty bad on Royal Caribbean ships right now. I think we need the gen2 satellites to fix the issues that exist right now, also don't trust what marketing says until real people test it out. Someone talking on a thread about Symphony of the Seas transatlantic a few weeks ago, said internet was horrible and that ship is Starlink already. Also, someone said Sky Princess had working internet this year on its transatlantic. I can say last year Sky Princess Internet didn't work well but it might also be the route they take since the route was different this year than last year, but I can say Princess changed from O3B when leaving Port Everglades last year to high orbit satellites for the crossing not sure what they did this year.

I just tried calling to change mine and got a message that our offices are closed already. The flyer says they are open until 8pm today it's not even 8pm yet. Brand new flyer also. They really should allow you to select this stuff online instead of having to call them. I will let you know what they say when I call back tomorrow.

Royal Caribbean Cruise is Cancelled for Routine Maintenance (cruisehive.com)

You can use the Royal Caribbean APP to message others onboard, text/sms will require internet.

Looks like Royal has announced one of the ICON captains. https://www.royalcaribbean.com/blog/icon-of-the-seas-captain-interview-best-things-to-do

I had no problem using Wire Guard last month on Emerald Princess when no one was onboard. When people were onboard the response times over VPN were horrible. Example ping time to google was around 300ms, ping time to a host on my network was like 2200ms. Let's add the extra 50ms it normally takes from Dallas to the Northeast. So, they are for sure aren't prioritizing VPN traffic on their network like other things. Royal Caribbean seems to be blocking VPN on certain ships now, seems to be ships with Starlink but in November it did work. Caribbean Princess and Sky Princess had no problems with Wire Guard in the past. I wouldn't bother asking the Internet Cafe people since they are good at making up answers on why something doesn't work. When I brought up this latency on VPN, I was told VPN always has that latency due to how much CPU it uses which I know isn't th case since I understand how this technology works.

Captain Dustin is now on Liberty of the Seas.

Currently on Libert of the Seas right now which has Starlink and VPN is blocked. When asking about it was told that VPN has been blocked by Royal Caribbean IT due to security issues and they won't discuss it. So basically, is this just this ship or is it now fleet wide that has it blocked. Didn't have this problem a few months ago on Oasis with Starlink. Have tried multiple VPN clients all not working including WiFi Calling which creates an IPSEC vpn tunnel to work but that also hasn't really been working over O3B for the last year onboard.

When I was on Emerald Princess a few weeks ago VPN traffic barely worked. On the Sky back in March it was fine. So, it might very by ship and usage on their network at the time.

They might be changing over to brunch on sea days. Oasis is not showing lunch this week is showing as brunch ending at 12:30 with a mixed breakfast and lunch menu.

Yes to reservations are still required, for how long before not sure but I went about 30 minutes before on Symphony and had no problems getting a seat in that section.

From what I heard during this update the bandwidth will be extremally limited if they are going to want fast bandwidth then they will need to install SpaceX commercial dishes on the ship with providing it over WIFI. This looks like more for coverage to areas that have no cell service today or during a natural disasters that knocks out cell service. Great announcement but don't it solves cruise ship internet.

The Sky TA in March the Internet was horrible, even after we reached Europe it didn't get better like promised. They changed the Internet that they normally use to a different one for the crossing and didn't switch back until after arrival in the UK, but I did read that it was still bad after that so not sure when the ship if the ship went back to it's faster internet.

I was on that same cruise and Princess did something that morning before leaving FLL. The week before the internet worked great but then for the TA it was basically useless. I did ask a few months ago on Royal Caribbean that has the same Internet that Princess had in the Caribbean how does it fare when they go across the Atlantic. The answer from them was the first few days the Internet is good, then it sucks for a 2-3 days then as the ship is getting closer to Europe it's better and they don't switch the Internet off from the O3B mpower or SES mpower now, which Princess did. Reading other threads seems like the other ships deal with the Internet better on the TA then the newer ones.