Royal Caribbean VOOM Internet service is advertised as the “fastest internet at sea.” We used multiple devices on the faster “Surf and Stream” package on our July 2019 cruise. The service was painfully slow, and sometimes didn’t even deliver messages. Unfortunately, the service got even worse as the week progressed. Let’s look at the details.
First, some background. We sailed on the Liberty of the Seas out of Galveston in July 2019. We were a large party in an aft cabin, and we had 10 total logins. Those were spread across 8 cell phones and two laptops. We had the “Surf and Stream” package which is advertised as being faster. The screen shot above was from embarkation day. The speeds weren’t great, but they were perfectly workable.
Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. Mrs. Texan Abroad needed internet access to work for about an hour a day. I planned to use it to check work email and post to this blog. The other 8 logins were for exchanging messages between us.
What specific problems were there?
When did we first notice the limitation of Royal Caribbean VOOM Internet? On the second or third night of the cruise, one of the adults was watching the kids. She messaged the other adults that she was taking them to the kid’s club. At the same time, the other adults were texting her to say they were coming to get the kids to go to a show. Unfortunately, those messages weren’t delivered for two hours. Therefore, we spent a lot of time figuring out where kids were instead of enjoying shows and cocktails. The kids themselves were, of course, just fine.
Also, I noticed that none of my photos and videos uploaded. That made it much harder to share them here. It also made it harder to send glorious pictures to friends back home. Wifi calling was out of the question.
Was it all bad news?
Fortunately, the Royal Caribbean Voom Internet did have some saving graces. Emails sent and were reliably received. Most days, we could exchange messages efficiently. Frankly, the relative lack of connectivity helped me focus on the moment better.
So, would I buy it again? I don’t know. Probably, because I need some sort of link to the outside world. However, I will buy fewer packages. This service was not worth what we invested in it.
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Sorry to here you had trouble. I agree that Royal’s advertising of the fastest internet at sea leaves a lot to be desired. Usually the mean the faster speeds for their newest ships which has the newest technology which Liberty of the Seas certainly doesn’t not have. 3.82 mps showing in your Speedtest is currently enough for basic email, texting, web browsing, uploading of photos, and even some very basic streaming so you much have had some intermittent outages from time to time at sea which can happen.