Silly WiFi question

[sunlover5]

On our first celebrity cruise we had Wi-Fi. I always checked to make sure I was on. I was also charged by my carrier.  Is this normal if you have free wifi?  I was wonderIng if I didn’t log in right to the ships WiFi or did something else wrong. Last cruise I didn’t have it so no problem as I had my phone off. We will be sailing from Barcelona this fall and TA got us all inclusive so I wanted to make sure I know what I’m doing. 🤣😳🤪 Thank you so much!

[wrk2cruise]

You need to put your phone in airplane mode and then enable wifi only.

[Lena11033]

I would keep the phone in air plane mode, if for whatever reason your phone doesn't connect to the wifi your carrier will pick up data and will be expensive (my husband does wireless for his company dealing with Verizon and AT&T)

[deepcman]

🤦‍♂️

[jean87510]

Keep phone on airplane mode and keep wifi calling on.  

[DCPIV]

You could have been charged because you lost wifi for any number of reasons.  Going ashore would do that, of course, but it also could blink out on the ship.

 

Definitely put your phone on airplane mode (and then turn wifi back on).  As a second layer of protection, also turn off data roaming before you turn on airplane mode.  That's just in case you accidentally turn off airplane mode.

 

By the way, you need to turn on wifi calling while you still are in your home network.  Go ahead and do that now if you haven't already.

[blackshirt]

13 hours ago, sunlover5 said:

I was also charged by my carrier.  Is this normal if you have free wifi?

That all depends on your phone settings. If you connect to a cell tower whether at a port or on the ship, you may get charges from your carrier whether you are also on WiFi or not. As noted, put your phone in airplane mode. That prevents connecting to a cell tower.

[sunlover5]

Well I have internet on my upcoming cruise. I think the problem was I never got the instructions on how to connect to the ship. I never put in my sea pass card number etc. like I have been reading you are suppose to. My carrier said if I was connected to the ship I wouldn’t have been charged. I will definitely look in the cabin for my instructions!!!!!  Thank you. 

[CNSfromHI]

3 hours ago, sunlover5 said:

Well I have internet on my upcoming cruise. I think the problem was I never got the instructions on how to connect to the ship. I never put in my sea pass card number etc. like I have been reading you are suppose to. My carrier said if I was connected to the ship I wouldn’t have been charged. I will definitely look in the cabin for my instructions!!!!!  Thank you. 

My carrier (AT&T) unexpectedly nailed me bill-wise for two cycles after our cruise last autumn 😡 -- even though I'd turned off "cellular" on my iPhone, confined my (limited) use to the ship's Wi-Fi, only texted a few times while on the ship's Wi-Fi, etc. (I tried to add an international travel plan but AT&T wouldn't allow me too unless I upgraded my monthly plan.)

 

Anyway, after my return and as others have said above, I learned on this Forum to place your phone in "airplane mode" to prevent the many non-obvious ways a mobile device uses data despite thinking you've locked it down.

 

Also, based on your post, it sounds like you did not have the Celebrity app on your device? Please make sure you load that one before your cruise, which offers several benefits -- such as ship maps by level, a daily calendar of your events, a list of available activities, access to your onboard spending account, etc. According to Celebrity, you can use that app onboard using its Wi-Fi for free.

 

Hope this helps!

 

cjr

[NutsAboutGolf]

5 hours ago, sunlover5 said:

Well I have internet on my upcoming cruise. I think the problem was I never got the instructions on how to connect to the ship. I never put in my sea pass card number etc. like I have been reading you are suppose to. My carrier said if I was connected to the ship I wouldn’t have been charged. I will definitely look in the cabin for my instructions!!!!!  Thank you. 

 

It's super easy to connect, generally do it first thing when getting to the room

1)  go to login.com on your phone

2)  create an account

3)  populate a few fields including the SeaPass folio number

4)  create an user name and a 4-digit pin

5)  experience issues?  Go to the internet manager

 

Once complete, there are a few settings you can use including airplane mode which also keeps your battery from draining less

 

For an iPhone:

1)  airplane mode on

2)  wifi on

3) settings < wifi < scroll down < set "Auto-Join Hotspot" to "Automatic"

4) settings < wifi < select the blue "i" icon to the X wifi network and "Auto-Join"

 

[sunlover5]

Thank you everyone!!!  Yes, I do have the celebrity app!!!   I appreciate all the help. 

[In Toronto]

. "According to Celebrity, you can use that app onboard using its Wi-Fi for free."  

Surely that is not correct although I would like it to be true because, on my next cruise, I do not have the wi-fi package.

 

Would love to hear that it is correct.

 

Thanks

[wrk2cruise]

It's correct.  The package just allows you to connect to the internet.   You can still connect to WiFi and use the app without a package.   You can probably browse the Celebrity website as well.

 

Edited February 24, 2023 by wrk2cruise

[Barwick Cruiser]

Just disembarked from the Silhouette yesterday. Our group of four all had the basic package and we were very impressed with the speed and how much we could do. Much better than on Eclipse in September. We were able to send and receive emails, browse, use WhatsApp for calls etc. Unless you need to stream movies or participate in Zoom meetings the basic package works very well. 

[NutsAboutGolf]

21 minutes ago, Barwick Cruiser said:

Just disembarked from the Silhouette yesterday. Our group of four all had the basic package and we were very impressed with the speed and how much we could do. Much better than on Eclipse in September. We were able to send and receive emails, browse, use WhatsApp for calls etc. Unless you need to stream movies or participate in Zoom meetings the basic package works very well. 

 

It may be ship specific, been on the Solstice twice since starlink, had premium both times, it rarely went over 3.0mbps down or up, folks on the Beyond are posting speeds of 25+

[phoenix_dream]

46 minutes ago, NutsAboutGolf said:

 

It may be ship specific, been on the Solstice twice since starlink, had premium both times, it rarely went over 3.0mbps down or up, folks on the Beyond are posting speeds of 25+

And maybe location and capacity specific as well. On Apex for a b2b. Last cruise awesome speed. This cruise,  in a different direction and with 200 more passengers started out awesome and has gone steadily downhill since then.  Not awful, but on premium quite a bit of buffering at times watching things.