Remote work on cruise ship

[tetleytea]

I'm seeing some buzz online that the Royal Caribbean internet is reaching a point where remote work on the cruise ship is starting to be feasible?   Is that mostly accurate?    For my work, I basically need to navigate a remote "Windows" screen (really Linux) stateside with a mouse, and hold Zoom calls.   Are the ships' internet now at a point where I can reasonably do that now?

[Galveston Cruiser]

We were on Radiance of the Seas last April/May (28 days) where I had to conduct several zoom meetings. I had no issues. We were not in the middle of the Pacific or Atlantic but through the Panama Canal and up west coast to Canada and Alaska.   Some of my meetings lasted 3 hours.  Starlink is a great improvement.

[Tatka]

27 minutes ago, tetleytea said:

I'm seeing some buzz online that the Royal Caribbean internet is reaching a point where remote work on the cruise ship is starting to be feasible?   Is that mostly accurate?    For my work, I basically need to navigate a remote "Windows" screen (really Linux) stateside with a mouse, and hold Zoom calls.   Are the ships' internet now at a point where I can reasonably do that now?

 

I started working remotely from RCI ships in 2016.

I am in IT so it is development + video conference.

 

Now internet is even better.

Edited April 5 by Tatka

[Biker19]

35 minutes ago, tetleytea said:

Are the ships' internet now at a point where I can reasonably do that now?

Yes, if don't mind an occasional outage.

[twangster]

It all depends.

 

I have remotely worked quite successfully for many years on Royal ships long before Starlink.  I cruised all my way to Pinnacle often working many of those 700 nights.

 

However... my work activity allowed me to time shift.  Over the course of a week if I performed and met expectations for that week I was fine.  I have worked remotely for decades so I was disciplined and actually worked, just not a straight 9-5.  Some of my work was accomplished outside of 9-5 hours.  The company was fine with that so long as work was completed as required.  All of my performance reviews were great.  I got the job done and everyone was happy.

 

If your job needs you to be on daily meetings using Team or Webex or Zoom at very specific times then Murphy's law means that is exactly when Voom will not work.  I used to schedule important calls to coincide with ports of call where I could use cellular as backup in case Voom was down or degraded.  That happened enough so I always planned important meetings accordingly.  If that is beyond your control then it might not work for you.

 

I should also mention I cruise mostly solo.  If something came up at work I could adapt without ruining family plans.  Having an entire family waiting to see a port of call, waiting for someone doing a Zoom call for work, would suck for everyone involved.

 

YMMV.

[njkruzer]

In early 2020 I sailed on Radiance around Australia with very few problems.   Only needed to work a couple of hours, mostly at night. I also worked sailing from Copenhagen to Boston, again with few, if any problems. 

[DennysDad]

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

[njkruzer]

7 minutes ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

Yes, but that's the way life is. For me it was just a couple of hours w day and I set the time. 

[DennysDad]

1 minute ago, njkruzer said:

Yes, but that's the way life is. For me it was just a couple of hours w day and I set the time. 

Life, nobody gets out alive. That's also the way life is.

[mil76]

5 minutes ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

We cruise 8-10 weeks a year instead of 2-3 because I can work from the ship.  The goal for me is to not look back at life and say I should have cruised more.

 

 

[la_croisiere_s'amuse]

54 minutes ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

I believe the question was about working from the ship, not working on vacation. The two don't always go hand in hand for those of us who are still of working age.

[Tatka]

1 hour ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

Literally nothing happened to vacation time for vacation. 🙂 

There is plenty of time for everything,

 

With great internet available we started cruising 5 full cruises a year. Now I have enough PTO days for all 5, but back then working 1-2 days on Thanksgiving week cruise or semi working (watching for emergencies) during Christmas/New Year cruise allowed us to cruise more. 

[Pratique]

Largely it is doable. My biggest problem is my employer’s VPN is super slow from large distances (such as cross-country). But video conferences are possible. (I even had a Teams call from an American Airlines flight recently.) Hiccups happen when sailing through weather or after dinner when everyone on the ship is FaceTiming at the same time.

Edited April 6 by Pratique

[Tatka]

46 minutes ago, la_croisiere_s'amuse said:

I believe the question was about working from the ship, not working on vacation. The two don't always go hand in hand for those of us who are still of working age.

Better than in office for sure. 🙂

[cruiseguy1016]

2 hours ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

 

Some people need to work a few hours a week on a cruise ship in order to be able to keep on cruising.

[Jasukkie]

My personal experience is that Radiance class provides spotty access. I regularly had to step out of my cabin to the hallway to get a page to load. This is even with Starlink. It worked well in certain areas of the ship, like by the pool. I think things work considerably better on the newer ships.

[tetleytea]

3 hours ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

The alternative is we don't go.  I have to work. 

[neverbeenhere]

Recently on the Explorer and a fellow passenger was working in the “computer” room, I was in the library/game room. I got a pretty good stock tip as she was working so loud, I could hear every move she was making.  Try to work in your stateroom if the internet is good at that location. 

[tetleytea]

4 minutes ago, neverbeenhere said:

Recently on the Explorer and a fellow passenger was working in the “computer” room, I was in the library/game room. I got a pretty good stock tip as she was working so loud, I could hear every move she was making.  Try to work in your stateroom if the internet is good at that location. 

Oh, I would want the balcony. 

[twangster]

9 hours ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

 

By working some days and taking some days off I can make my limited PTO go a lot further.  Sea days are great for working remotely.  Port days are typically PTO days or if I'm back on the ship in the afternoon I can work for a bit.  

 

Otherwise I would only be able to cruise twice a year.  This way I can cruise a lot more than that.

 

If that isn't your cup of tea that's fine.  It works for me and I am fortunate it worked for the company too.

[Tatka]

I usually don’t work lately, as I have enough PTO (well it’s unlimited now, but I match it with 26 PTO days + 3 floating holidays I had before so it’s 29 days) … however I had to work this past Wednesday on Vision, because due to accident with Baltimore bridge we had to dock in Norfolk, VA on Thursday and were bussed to Baltimore, That was supposed to be my work day…. I knew I wouldn’t be able to work that day so decided to work on Wednesday.

 

I wish ships had more power outlet and especially in Solariums 🙂 . When I was officially working from Solariums I had to bring large power bank. 

[mil76]

Couple of lessons learned from doing this a few years now:

 

I try to do all my meetings from the stateroom.  You usually can find a nice quiet spot somewhere in a public area on port days, until they start the "Alpha, Alpha, Alpha" announcements for crew drills.  Those announcements usually don't go into the stateroom.

 

Don't expect other guests to accommodate that you are working (nor should they).  I use the library/card room a lot, especially Navigator cruises when I want to let my wife sleep while I work early in the morning.  95% of the time it is quiet in the morning, but you can't predict the early riser family who wants to play a board game at 7:00am.  If you are doing a Zoom or need quiet, don't assume any public area will be quiet.

 

I once was allowed to use the conference center for a Zoom meeting since it wasn't in use.  The problem with that is the conference center has a door to the crew area, so you get a ton of walk-through traffic since they know the room isn't being used.  You also get all the ship announcements at full blast.

 

Being close to land does not guarantee good Starlink internet.  My worst experience was doing a Zoom presentation just off Cozumel on the way to Roatan.  The connection was crappy and I got knocked off the meeting for a few minutes.  I'm usually amazed at how well Zoom works with low bandwidth, but drops are going to happen.

 

Bring an HDMI cable which works with your laptop.  The stateroom TVs on many ships have the HDMI ports accessible, and you can use the buttons on the bottom of the TV to switch the input.  I bring a USB-C to HDMI cable and have used the TV as a big monitor.

[teddie]

17 hours ago, DennysDad said:

What ever happened to vacation time for vacations? Nobody ever looked back at the end of their life and said, I should have worked more.

I'm self employed.  And there it is. 

 

Teddie

[AshleyDillo]

It was painfully slow the first half of 2023 year when I would attempt to work remotely (through a VPN with documents stored on a remote server).  This year it has been flying relative to last year. I went back through my Speedtest screenshots and there's definitely a difference in performance.

[Biker19]

1 hour ago, AshleyDillo said:

It was painfully slow the first half of 2023 year when I would attempt to work remotely (through a VPN with documents stored on a remote server).  This year it has been flying relative to last year. I went back through my Speedtest screenshots and there's definitely a difference in performance.

On the older ships which went geo sync sat connections to Starlink, the performance boost is quite obvious and not just due to download speed.