Say goodbye to the days a cruise served as a mandatory digital detox—ships around the world are now rolling out Wi-Fi plans catered to every smartphone addict.
Carnival Corporation, the world’s largest cruise company, announced a new Wi-Fi pricing plan this week that offers access starting at $5 a day. The company, which owns 10 brands from Costa to Princess, plans to offer this service on 40 ships by 2016, growing to 100 ships come 2017.
The company’s new pricing plan is now in place and broken down into 24-hour blocks onboard Carnival-branded ships. A similar pricing plan will be deployed on all other Carnival ships including Princess, Holland America, Seabourn, Cunard, Aida, Costa, P&O and Fathom. We outline the plan below:
$5 a day: Access to all of your favorite social channels and apps, including Facebook (FB), WhatsApp, and Instagram.
$16 a day: Basic web capabilities, i.e. Perfect for checking email or the news.
$25 a day: Bandwidth up to three times faster than the other plans, suitable for Skype (Hi, Grandma!) And music streaming.
Carnival isn’t the only cruise line prioritizing connectivity. We break down the Wi-Fi options onboard ocean and river cruise lines below:
Royal Caribbean: $15 – $25 per day
Royal Caribbean provides high-speed Internet on all of its 25 ships for $20 per day. It’s even more affordable for guests aboard one of the four Quantum and Oasis ships. These ships offer a service called VOOM, which allows guests to stream videos and music for $15 a day.
Norwegian Cruise Line: $24.99 – $29.99 per day
Norwegian Cruise Line is also expanding its Internet availability on all 13 of its ships. Wi-Fi is available throughout all of its 13 vessels except the Pride of America, which has Ethernet in the cabins. Pricing depends on the length of the cruise.
Connectivity costs $29.99 a day for cruises lasting 1 to 12 days and drops to $24.99 a day for cruises longer than that. Here’s the catch: 24-hour plans must be purchased for the entirety of the trip, which means Wi-Fi will cost $300 for a 10-day cruise.
Cruisers looking to check in for just a few minutes can purchase shorter plans. Sixty minutes cost $39 and 100 minutes cost $85.
River Cruise Lines: Free – $11.95 per day
River cruise lines are more generous when it comes to staying connected: All of Viking River Cruises’ ships offer complimentary Wi-Fi. Access to faster service—which is needed for video streaming—is available for $11.95 a day.
Following suit, all of AmaWaterways’ and Uniworlds’ ships offer complimentary access to basic Wi-Fi.
This article was previously published on Travel + Leisure. T+L is a content partner of Coins2Day.com.
For more on travel Wi-Fi, watch this Coins2Day video:
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