Voom available on Serenade?

[Durkman]

We are cruising the Baltic Capitals out of Stockholm on Serenade on July 3 and the 30% discount (1 device) Voom package just popped up in my Cruise Planner.

 

From everything I have seen on these forums and online, however, Voom is not yet available on Serenade -- can anyone confirm? Maybe they are selling the package in anticipation of having it available by July?

 

Based on reviews, Internet service on Serenade has been terrible -- I assume that would change if, indeed, Voom is available. Correct?

 

Thanks in advance!

[Secretlyfi]

I did the same thing today, after seeing the notice on the Voom sale. Went into Cruise Planner for my June Adventure cruise and there were the Voom packages. I was able to purchase the one with streaming, so I hope it's truly installed on this ship!

[cello56]

We just got off Serenade last Monday and Voom was most definitely NOT installed yet! Internet was very slow, and very spotty connection wise.

[Durkman]

We just got off Serenade last Monday and Voom was most definitely NOT installed yet! Internet was very slow, and very spotty connection wise.

Thanks Cello. Sounds like Royal is anticipating having it installed at least by July. If not I may be at guest services onboard seeking a refund for the Voom package I ordered today...

[MattSaw]

Does anyone have any info on when they are installing a better/functional system on Serenade -- or thoughts on whom at Royal to contact to find out the timetable? We're on the May 22 cruise.

 

Regrettably, I have got to be able to check the grid, even on the sea days (but not all the time!, or there would a widely reported murder on the ship and I would be its victim). I've already started looking into renting a little briefcase-sized satellite receiver, believe it or not.

 

Thanks for any scoop or tips that anyone can offer.

 

Matt

[Ashland]

I did the same thing today, after seeing the notice on the Voom sale. Went into Cruise Planner for my June Adventure cruise and there were the Voom packages. I was able to purchase the one with streaming, so I hope it's truly installed on this ship!

 

It's available for purchase on my cruise planner for my May 7th & 14th Adventure cruise (yikes finally so close)....I purchased it for both weeks and am hoping it is.

Edited April 28, 2016 by Ashland

[Clarea]

Does anyone have any info on when they are installing a better/functional system on Serenade -- or thoughts on whom at Royal to contact to find out the timetable? We're on the May 22 cruise....

Royal has not published any timetable for VOOM rollout. You can call Royal, and they will probably give you an answer, but ...

[WeatherFx]

On Serenade now. Took me 4 minutes to load this thread and reply. Yes it's that slow. Talked to bar tender and he says he gets tired of looking at the spinning circle and that it doesn't matter what time of day. Even the captain was joking about it at the Q & A,

[Durkman]

On Serenade now. Took me 4 minutes to load this thread and reply. Yes it's that slow. Talked to bar tender and he says he gets tired of looking at the spinning circle and that it doesn't matter what time of day. Even the captain was joking about it at the Q & A,

Thanks for the update. I'll guess we'll see what happens (if anything) over the next couple of months.

[MattSaw]

I keep getting e-mail pitches for 30% off Internet packages on our sailing next weekend. This almost sounds like fraud, based on what I'm reading here!

[Clarea]

I keep getting e-mail pitches for 30% off Internet packages on our sailing next weekend. This almost sounds like fraud, based on what I'm reading here!

Still a better price than pre-VOOM, even if the speed is not true VOOM.

[LT Hambone]

Is anyone out there on the Serenade now and using Voom? The posts prior were all dated before the cut-over to Voom, so I'm curious if the speeds have improved.

 

I've also read somewhere that the Voom system doesn't reach the Baltic - too high in latitude for the ship to "see" the satellite. Not sure if that's true or not - guess I'll find out next month!

 

 

Thanks!

[bluskygrl]

We are set to sail in October and I also will need access at times. (Also subject to a murder if too much time :D )

 

Please update us if you have experience with Voom aboard the Serenade.

 

TIA!

[bluskygrl]

Another thread was started on Voom aboard the Serenade by Tulipbee who appears to be sailing now. hopefully she will update us!

[TulipBee]

Hi, I am currently on Serenade. They are advertising and charging for VOOM on board right now. I bought the surf + stream package and it is barely the speed of my old dial up! I had realllllly wanted to be able to watch Game of Thrones on my iPad, hence the desperation for streaming service, but in truth it is so slow that most websites will not load pictures (text only). Today there were a LOT of people at a cafe right next to port desperately using the wifi and griping about how they paid a lot for a service that didn't work on the ship. I intend on asking for a partial refund - calling this streaming speed is false and misleading advertising.

[sellwingri]

Hi, I am currently on Serenade. They are advertising and charging for VOOM on board right now. I bought the surf + stream package and it is barely the speed of my old dial up! I had realllllly wanted to be able to watch Game of Thrones on my iPad, hence the desperation for streaming service, but in truth it is so slow that most websites will not load pictures (text only). Today there were a LOT of people at a cafe right next to port desperately using the wifi and griping about how they paid a lot for a service that didn't work on the ship. I intend on asking for a partial refund - calling this streaming speed is false and misleading advertising.

 

Good luck getting a refund. I was on Serenade in April and my internet completely stopped working on day 3 of a 10 day cruise. Passenger Services just messed up my iPad without fixing anything. They refused to give me a refund. I'm still extremely angry.

[CVU]

Friends on this ship now and did the TA B2B. Horrible internet. VOOM is supposed to be on when they got to Europe but not yet.

[Durkman]

Thanks for the updates. Will continue to monitor and will probably cancel the package I purchased prior to the cruise for a credit/refund if there is no indication of any improvement by the time of our cruise in July.

 

Disappointing to hear that RCCL won't issue refunds onboard. I'd be supremely annoyed (or other words I can't use on these forums) if I had paid for a streaming service that was advertised and not being provided and then was refused a refund.

[bluskygrl]

Hi, I am currently on Serenade. They are advertising and charging for VOOM on board right now. I bought the surf + stream package and it is barely the speed of my old dial up! I had realllllly wanted to be able to watch Game of Thrones on my iPad, hence the desperation for streaming service, but in truth it is so slow that most websites will not load pictures (text only). Today there were a LOT of people at a cafe right next to port desperately using the wifi and griping about how they paid a lot for a service that didn't work on the ship. I intend on asking for a partial refund - calling this streaming speed is false and misleading advertising.

 

Thank you for the update! I am conflicted as to what to do. I will mostly just need email access. Any thoughts on the best option for this?

[Clarea]

Thank you for the update! I am conflicted as to what to do. I will mostly just need email access. Any thoughts on the best option for this?

For email, the Surf only option will work fine.

[aviator1945]

I was on the 29 May Baltic sailing out of Copenhagen. On the basis of our Diamond membership of C&A, DW and I had one free day of wifi each, which we shared on the two sea days. Glad that we didn't have to pay, because much of the time the connection was slower than old-fashioned dial-up and sometimes even totally down. Even the Guest Services staff admitted that it wasn't good. Provided that the service was procured for the remainder of the cruise, the price per day was $12.99 for SURF and $17.99 for SURF + STREAM when purchased onboard; I never encountered the word "VOOM" in the RCI promotional material, perhaps a tacit admission on their part? For those who only wanted the service for one day, the price was higher, I don't know exactly how much, since it wasn't mentioned in the Cruise Compasses.

 

For those of us with a European mobile phone subscription, a better option was connecting via 3G/4G when we were near the coastlines, which was relatively often during daytime. We got away with paying less than half of the SURF cost most of the time, except in Russia, where it was roughly the same as SURF, but with a meager amount of MB allowed (email was ok, but uploading to Facebook would have been more expensive). I have no idea of how much roaming on shore-based networks would cost for subscribers of non-European networks, but most likely more.

 

One more thing: if you have mobile data and roaming turned on, there is a risk that the phone will connect with Cellular at Sea, which I believe is an AT&T subsidiary. It's more expensive than the shore-based networks in the Baltic area, at least for us Europeans. We turned off the automatic selection of roaming networks, and selected manual, to make sure that we stayed off Cellular at Sea.

[Durkman]

Thanks for the update, aviator.

[Biker19]

For those who only wanted the service for one day, the price was higher, I don't know exactly how much, since it wasn't mentioned in the Cruise Compasses.

 

$20 for SURF (same as the D discount) and $28 for STREAM.

[apple girl]

We were on the June 16 Baltic cruise. Don't waste your money on the internet. We paid for one device unlimited service for the whole cruise. What a joke. There were times that in 48 hours maybe just maybe we could get 10 minutes of internet time. The times we could get on just long enough to imessage was 3am. It was very frustrating. Don't waste your money!

[Durkman]

Post-cruise follow-up: we are just off Serenade in the Baltic (July 3-10) and had prepurchased the 2-device Surf package. After one day/evening of trying to get online we went to guest services on day 2, which issued us a full refund of the entire package price.

 

There were numerous issues with the service:

• Device wouldn't connect to the service; sometimes we needed to try a dozen times and/or "Forget network" in order to get the WiFi to finally connect.
  
• When it did connect, the Royal login page sometimes wouldn't load so we could not enter our access code and begin surfing.
  
• Super-slow speeds (as documented). See speedtest results (attached).
  
• The service is supposed to time out after some time (2 hours I think) of inactivity. This is great, but as far as I could tell there was no way to disconnect early if you wanted to. Just turning the WiFi off on your device wouldn't necessarily disconnect you. As a result, if we wanted to switch from one device to another we had to wait 2 hours for the service to disconnect automatically. Very inconvenient.
  

We spoke to numerous fellow cruisers over the course of the week, and every one of them cancelled for a refund after getting frustrated with the lack of service. We even had a brief conversation with the head of the ship's IT department right after the lifeboat drill on Day 1 -- he sort of chuckled as we talked about it and said something to the effect of "we'll see; good luck!" As others have said, don't waste your money on Voom on Serenade. Hopefully she will get upgraded to true "Voom" service soon.