Ships with Starlink + CAS Internet Discounts

[asquared17]

hello!!

anyone on a ship with starlink right now and able to confirm if the crown + anchor discount for diamond and above applying since it seems that the "surf" option has been phased out (at least in the cruise planner)?

i know that there is nothing confirmed about the "surf" option formally being discontinued with starlink being operable on some ships but just wondering how that may impact pricing if deciding to wait until onboard to purchase internet on day 2 since the BF sales are not looking super great for VOOM right now.

(hopefully this makes more sense when you read it, since i feel like i'm having trouble articulating myself right now )

for reference, diamond gets one day and diamond plus gets 2 days. (pinnacles, you lucky dogs, get free internet for the entire voyage!!)

[Matt]

The Diamond benefit was always for surf and stream too. 

[asquared17]

2 hours ago, Matt said:

The Diamond benefit was always for surf and stream too. 

strums guitar meaningfully

did you ever know that you're my herooooooo

THANK YOU!!

[twangster]

The Surf and Surf & Stream plans came about in 2013 when Royal last did a major revamp of internet plans getting rid of buckets of minutes and introducing unlimited 24 x 7 plans.

It stands to reason that Royal is due to revamp internet plans here in 2022 with the introduction of Starlink which costs them ~70% less.  It changes everything about the cost models so it needs a fresh look.

Hopefully this will also level the playing field and make their internet plans the same on all ships in terms of price and performance which hasn't been the case for the past nine years.

What does this mean for CAS discounts and different levels of plans?  Only time will tell.  They could retain the name Voom or they could come out with some new marketing name.  We don't know. 

Wouldn't it be great if they made a Surf type plan complementary and then made a higher performance plan an additional cost option?  That would really hurt the competition who stayed with SES/O3b as their satellite provider (Princess, Carnival, MSC) as it would cost them a fortune to match Royal. This approach would allow folks willing to pay for performance to get priority access while the complimentary version would be best effort so hard to complain.  Good enough for texting and a little bit of simple browsing.

[AshleyDillo]

13 hours ago, asquared17 said:

strums guitar meaningfully

did you ever know that you're my herooooooo

THANK YOU!!

It was definitely only Surf on my last Independence sailing. The discount is equal to whatever the onboard cost for Surf is. I have found buying before on the 7 night cruises beats the onboard discount.  The 3 and 4 nighters, onboard is better..and even more so if you can wait until midnight of the first night.

[asquared17]

4 hours ago, AshleyDillo said:

It was definitely only Surf on my last Independence sailing. The discount is equal to whatever the onboard cost for Surf is. I have found buying before on the 7 night cruises beats the onboard discount.  The 3 and 4 nighters, onboard is better..and even more so if you can wait until midnight of the first night.

WELP. back to the drawing board i go.

i figured if i waited, i would not buy the first night and only purchase like three days worth in between since the last day is wash anyway -- if that were possible.

[AshleyDillo]

23 minutes ago, asquared17 said:

WELP. back to the drawing board i go.

i figured if i waited, i would not buy the first night and only purchase like three days worth in between since the last day is wash anyway -- if that were possible.

I haven't tried it to see if the discount would offset a single 24-hour period purchase, but the charge for 24 hours of Surf & Stream is something like 32.99 and then buying for the rest of the voyage is in the 26.99-29.99 per day range.  If I recall correctly, my discount for D+ was 51.98 which means they charged 25.99/day for just Surf onboard.