In June, the family are going on a cruise around the Mediterranean. The ship is the Royal Carribean “Independence of the Seas” which can hold nearly 6000 people. (3/4 of it are passengers).
We depart from Southampton on 19/6/2010 which means driving down from Belfast the day before.
Ports of Call:
Gibraltar (22/6/2010)
Villefranche, France (24/6/2010)
Florence, Italy (25/6/2010)
Rome, Italy (26/6/2010)
Sardinia, Italy (27/6/2010)
Cadiz, Spain (29/6/2010)
Lisbon, Portugal (30/6/2010)
Vigo, Spain (1/7/2010)
Arrive back in Southampton: 3/7/2010
So excited 😀
Of course, my concerns are going to be the ability to get adequate data connections while abroad. Last time we went on a cruise for the Honeymoon, I managed to send a lot of data (most of it at £4 a MB but some of it at £6 a MB) but this year I intend to be a little smarter about it. Maxroam is still around €3.40 a megabyte which is cheaper than O2 but still not the sort of price that I want to pay for mobile data.
In June 2008, T-Mobile decreased their data roaming costs to £1.50 a MB but as they’re merging with Orange, who knows what will happen.
The Register reported in February 2008 that:
Five operators across Europe have banded together and agreed to cut wholesale data rates to €.25 per megabyte. The agreement should reduce customer prices over the next 12 months
but I’ve yet to see a single reasonable decrease as a result.
So, I went and had a look;
| Carrier | Web Page | Costs |
| Three | EU Roaming | £1.25 per MB |
| Vodafone | Roaming | Around 20p a MB (£4.99 for the first 25MB per day) |
| O2 | International Roaming | £3 per MB |
| Orange | Phone Abroad | £2.55 per MB |
and at first look it would seem that Vodafone have it down. I’m going to have to go and talk to Vodafone now that my O2 contract is at an end.
Does anyone have anything to add here? Are you getting a great deal from your carrier for data roaming?
On a similar cruise with a rival company, I was able to get wifi onboard meaning the need for roaming is substantially decreased. Not sure if it’s in any way helpful but they did offer about 500mb for £50, or something like that.
The voda rate look’s great, I must have a look into this myself.
As I work half on this side of the border and half on the other, i have resorted to an Irish iPhone and a UK one….. not ideal.
Like you I did this cruise a few years ago, I resorted to the ship Wi-Fi which was around $12 for 200 minutes which soon adds up I can assure you.
@Russell – the cruise WiFi is allegedly $55 for 150 minutes. Which is shocking.
20p a minute for WiFi.
You could always try leaving the internet behind when you board…
Why on earth would I do that?
I’m going on holiday to do things that I enjoy. I’m not going on your holiday, doing things that you enjoy.
*RARRRR*.
easy tiger.
It was just another option. But hey – each to their own.
How is it an option? Honestly – if it was an option, would I have bothered to research the prices?
You might want to augment these plans with Vircado, which aggressively optimizes your data usage when you’re roaming so that you really use as few MBs as possible.