As of late 2013 and early 2014, aboard the Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas, there was no Wi-fi internet access in cabin. The setup on laptop for wireless internet was very confusing. You had to sign up first for a user name at one of the stations at the Internet Cafe (deck 8 midship).
Part of the process involved swiping your room keycard at the keyboard. The instructions say that you would then use the username and password info to sign in on your laptop browser (after of course, connecting to the wi-fi hotspot). Then you can select a package of minutes to purchase. The available plans were:
-Pay as you go at 75 cents a minute
-38 minutes for $24.95 (66 cents/minute)
-90 minutes for $49.95 (56 cents/minute)
-208 minutes for $99.00 (48 cents/minute)
-555 minutes for $199.55(36 cents/minute)
-1666 minutes for $399.95 (25 cents/minute)
Most of these plans were more expensive than we have experienced on NCL, Carnival, and Princess.
So I proceeded to pick the 90 minute plan, then clicked "Confirm", but it just redirected me back to the login screen. It turned out that I had to go back onto one of the workstations, swipe the card again, and purchase the plan on the station. That wasted a minute of package since I had no intention of using the stations to access the Internet.
Back on my laptop, I then was able to go online with the purchased package rate. Once online, it asked if I wanted to bookmark a link to logoff. I clicked YES, but nothing happened. After a couple minutes online, I wanted to log off, but of course didn't find the bookmark that was supposed to be added. I tried disconnecting from the Wi-fi hotspot, but upon reconnecting it was obvious I was still not logged off. I hurried down to the front desk on deck 5, and after waiting out my turn in line, I was provided with an instruction sheet on how to manually log-off using this obscure link:
http slash slash 172.27.128.1/ekgnkm/icafe2.asp
All my previous experiences with using Internet on cruises involved simply entering http slash slash 1.1.1.1 to log-off. This poor, outdated system cost me 10 minutes out of the 90 minute package I bought. This was certainly annoying and definitely not very user-friendly, even for a former IT Manager such as myself.
