I just came ashore from a week aboard a Carnival Cruise ship. They have the worst Internet connectivity in the world, for which they extract premium prices. At the beginning of the cruise, I was able to log in to SigForum, but connectivity was so bad that I could not post.

Around the second day at sea, I tried to post but found that pretty much any forum dealing with firearms had come under their "net nanny" microscope and I was unable to access this site until today, when I was back on land.

My reason for wanting to post in the first place was the appalling display of CNN -- the only cable "news" channel available on board. I skipped the formal dinner on Tuesday night to watch President Trump's address to Congress, which I thought was well done, if not ground-breaking.

As expected, CNN tore it apart. In fact, every time during the cruise I turned on the TV hoping to catch some news, all CNN seemed to be able to do is tear apart the Trump administration. If it wasn't the speech, it was Jeff Sessions, the immigration policy and pretty much anything else the talking heads could dredge up to throw at the screen.

Of course, CNN is much like something I would scrape off my shoe, but when it's the only news source available, it becomes a pretty loud sounding board. I shudder to think what people who only have CNN for their news of the USA think.

Sounds to me like carnival cruise is something to avoid in the future. No thanks.

My wife has been on several cruises in Europe and the internet access has been awful on all of them.

Boycott..... ENGAGED

quote:

Originally posted by maxwayne:
My wife has been on several cruises in Europe and the internet access has been awful on all of them.

Well yeah,it's satellite internet. it's 36,000 miles each way to the satellite, then if the boat rocks a little bit it throws the dish off and as well as cloud cover etc. So the dish is constantly trying to move to compensate, now with TV it works pretty good because the dish is only recieving, but with internet it's sending too......satellite internet is uber expensive, we have it on yachts, I think it recently has come down to $10 per gigabyte.

I love this place, but pretty sure I could find something else to do on a cruise than surf the web.

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:
I love this place, but pretty sure I could find something else to do on a cruise than surf the web.

Amen to that.

I think SF blocks Carnival Cruises, don't we?

Cruise = No!

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:
I love this place, but pretty sure I could find something else to do on a cruise than surf the web.

Well, I don't drink, smoke or gamble, so that pretty much leaves eating, walking and taking in a show or two.

Since I did this same cruise last year, I've seen the shows (they haven't changed). I did a lot of walking and eating, and my primary goal was to go ashore, take some photos and buy my granddaughter a souvenir. Done and done.

Mostly, I needed Internet because my offer on a new house was accepted and now all parties want tons of documents signed. It was mostly a confluence of events... That, plus I like to upload photos to a photo-sharing site, so quite naturally (for me), a visit to my favorite sites during my post-processing stage is par for the course.

Now, if a cruise line installs and runs a 25-yard shooting range below decks, I'd spend a lot of time there...

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:
I love this place, but pretty sure I could find something else to do on a cruise than surf the web.

Pretty sure I'd rather surf SIGforum from my own toilet than take a cruise, especially on Carnival.

You need a VPN. I have a subscription based one that works on my iPhone, iPad, and computer. 90% of the time it gets me to Sigforum.

I've spent enough time at sea to probably never warm up to the idea of paying thousands for a ship ride, anyway.

We have taken several trips with Royal Caribbean. And they never blocked any of the sites. The speed sucked, but I hear they have really improved recently.

Last cruise they stayed close enough to shore that I was able to use my phone until we passed Miami. So I was able to send a few pictures at decent speed.

Carnival is bottom of the barrel, according to my wife the cruise expert.

quote:

Originally posted by fpuhan:

quote:

Originally posted by SIG228:
I love this place, but pretty sure I could find something else to do on a cruise than surf the web.

Well, I don't drink, smoke or gamble, so that pretty much leaves eating, walking and taking in a show or two.

Since I did this same cruise last year, I've seen the shows (they haven't changed). I did a lot of walking and eating, and my primary goal was to go ashore, take some photos and buy my granddaughter a souvenir. Done and done.

Mostly, I needed Internet because my offer on a new house was accepted and now all parties want tons of documents signed. It was mostly a confluence of events... That, plus I like to upload photos to a photo-sharing site, so quite naturally (for me), a visit to my favorite sites during my post-processing stage is par for the course.

Now, if a cruise line installs and runs a 25-yard shooting range below decks, I'd spend a lot of time there...

20 years ago they used to do trap shooting off of them. It was a ton of fun as the boat rocking added to the difficulty. Unfortunately I don't think any of them offer it anymore.