In the major motion pictures "Star Trek: Generations" there is a scene in the beginning of the film in which Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his First Officer, William Riker, are celebrating the recent promotion of crew member Worf aboard a holodeck representation of a 19th century sailing vessel. Gazing across the water the two have the following exchange,
Picard: "Will, ... just imagine what it was like. No engines. No computers. Just the wind and the sea and the stars to guide you."
Riker: "Bad Food. Brutal discipline. ... No women!
Picard: After being advised he was receiving a communication, "... The best thing about a life at sea was that no one could reach you. This was freedom, Will."
While we are still sailing the seven sea's aboard nautical vessels and not shooting through space aboard starships, we have begun to enter an age where it is becoming increasingly easier to connect and communicate with those back home. Recently Carnival announced enhancements to its internet connectivity programs for guests. In the past if you did wish to connect home it required a pretty significant investment in the form of paying for internet minutes, and connecting to a service so slow it made you fondly remember the days of dial-up on services such as America Online (AOL)! On one particular cruise my fiancé and I were in the midst of buying a home and had to check e-mails daily to provide information to the mortgage lender. All told I think we spent $45 to send and receive about six e-mails! (That's how slow these satellite connections were!) But I digress!
As I mentioned Carnival has begun to rollout their new solutions for internet connectivity for their guests, and if you are anything like me, you heard bits and pieces about the Social Network Package or something about a new App you could download on your smartphone and use to communicate to your fellow cruisers at sea! So I did a bit of investigating to find out just exactly what is being offered on a cruise ship near you!
The Internet Package's- (As near as I can tell any prices I came across were for youraverage 7 day cruise)
Social Media Package: This is offered for $5/day or $25/cruise
This I expect will be the most popular offering as it provides guests unlimited access to your favorite social media websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc. Allowing all the connectivity junkie's going through withdraw for a week to stay connected to their world and to upload pictures and tell everyone back home about the massive bar tab they accumulated at Senor Frogs!
The Value Package: Offered for $16/day or $60/cruise
So if social networking isn't all you care about when you connect, this is the package for you. In addition to having access to your favorite social networks, this package offers you full access to the internet. So if you want to log on to your financial institution to raid your children's college fund to pay off your casino or bar tabs, this is the package for you! However you will not be able to access your favorite music streaming sites such as Pandora or iHeart Radio with this package. For those services you would need…
The Premium Package: Offered for $25/day or $99/cruise
With this package the digital world is again your oyster! Carnival boasts that this package provides you connectivity at 3x the speed of the Value (and I assume Social Media) package. This means you not only can post your latest duck-lipped drink of the day selfie, but NOW you can Skype with your friends back home while guzzling down a frosty Shade-Ade and panning the camera around the lido deck making them feel inadequate for still being at home in the rain and cold!
In addition to the internet packages, Carnival has also developed a free to download App available on both iOS and Android platforms. It is called Carnival Huband it offers the following:
-Day by Day schedule of events onboard. Need to find where 80's sitcom Trivia is being held? Now you know! This feature is essentially a digital "Fun Times" that you can access on your phone or tablet. You won't need to carry around the tear-off schedule from your nightly Fun Times anymore.
- "Favorites" feature that allows guests to see what events and activities fellow guests are participating in. I'm not entirely sure how this functions but I suspect you click into "Punchliner with Kevin Hart (I wish) and see what other Hub users have clicked that they are "going" to this event. (Think: Facebook Events)
- Information on casual dining options. I'm guessing the menu for the night's Lido deck, Sushi, etc.
- Searchable deck-plans with key areas highlighted. Can't find Cherry on Top? Or the "Inch of Gold Sale" outside the Fun Shops? Now you can pull out this handy app and have your intuitive map of the ship to guide you. (Think: Ship Mate App)
- Itinerary Details, current ship time, arrival/departure times for upcoming ports. This is a handy feature, however if you're like me you've already committed the itinerary and times to memory weeks or months before you even embarked!
-Access to your current Sail and Sign account. Truly leaving you no good reason not to have a clue how much you've spent on your week of excess! You now have access to your Sail and Sign account on your in-cabin TV, the new(ish) Sail and Sign Kiosks located around the ship, and NOW in your pocket!
In addition to all these handy features, I think the true brilliance of this app is for a flat $5 fee (for the entire week) you can also send and receive text messages from fellow guests also using the app through the ship's Wi-Fi. Very similar to Facebook Messenger. No longer do you need to mess with post-it's playing a ship-wide game of hide-and-seek. No more established meet ups where you hope everyone remembers. Now it's easy to send your wife a quick text "Hey I'm going to the Alchemy bar for a drink while you spend two hours primping for Elegant Night!" or in my case, when my fiancé Lauren has a tray of food on lido and can't seem to find the table we are sitting at, "Hey Honey Bunny, we're six feet behind you!!! Stop panicking!"
Now there are going to be the Picard's out there who see these advancements in communication as ruining one of the greatest parts of cruising- being disconnected from the world. I've already seen comments made on other message boards to the effect, "I put my phone in airplane mode and don't look at it again until we disembark." Or "I cruise to get away from my job! If I had access to my e-mails I'd be a slave on my vacation!" But fundamentally it's just an option given to you. By no means do you have to invest in being connected. I myself am on the fence on this topic. I enjoy for a week I don't feel that monkey on my back forcing me to check my Facebook account all the time. On the flip side- I have used post-it's, I have arranged meeting times, and I even tried walkie-talkies on one cruise. Communicating with those in your party onboard is truly one of the biggest pains in the rump. Post its fall off the surface they were stuck to and someone misses seeing them. Arranged meeting times only work if someone is wearing a watch and didn't fall asleep or get caught up in some fun. And walkie-talkies only work within a few decks of each other since the entire ship is made of signal absorbing steal. I am therefore ecstatic about this leap in shipboard communication and cannot wait for the opportunity to try out the group messenger feature of Carnival Hub. Will I invest in an internet package? I think I feel more like Captain Picard on this one!
Thanks for reading!! See you at sea!
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