We're planning on a Disney Cruise next year. I decided to look into whether wifi was available on their ships and what it cost.

Here's a link: Disney Cruise Line Internet and Cellular Services

They charge $0.75 a minute unless you buy a pre-paid block of minutes that lowers your per-minute rate to between $0.55 and $0.30. You cannot upgrade from one pre-paid block to another nor are unused minutes refundable. Service is slower than normal WiFi hotspots and not guaranteed to be available at all times. And if you're on a 6-night cruise, you can buy a package of 100 minutes for $40, but if you're on a 7-night cruise, the same package costs $55.

But the worst part of all to me is not the perminute rates, but that they charge per minute at all. Anyone who knows about networking knows that data is "bursty". Someone will use data intensely for a few seconds while they download something, then they'll spend some time using little or no data while they process/read the data they just downloaded. So you really only need the wifi for the 3 seconds it takes to download a web page, but Disney bills you for the 3 minutes you spend reading the web page.

The amount of time someone is connected to the network is not, in and of itself, a good indicator of how much they're actually using the network.

And it's not like Disney is creating a new connection to the satellite for every user who is on their network. The connection to the satellite provides a data stream which can then be shared throughout their onboard wireless network. There is little or no incremental cost for each user who is connected to the shipboard WiFi network, but not activelty transferring or receiving data. Their cost really only comes in general maintenance for the network and for the data being moved.

Charging each user by the minute is disingenuous, because they're not incurring costs by the minute for each user. Furthermore, their system is slow by their own admission and I've read complaints of it taking 10-15 minutes to send an e-mail. If they charge by data usage, then whether it takes 1 minute or 10 for sending an e-mail, you're paying for the data, so it's the same price. If they charge bt the minute you're paying extra when the system is especially slow. While it would still be annoying for it to take 10 minutes to send an e-mail, it becomes infuriating if every extra minute is costing you $.30 to $.75.

I looked into mobile satellite internet services for businesses and internet-addicted RV'ers who want a connection while they're outside the range of most cellular nets. Prices were generally on a monthly basis with a DSL-comparable speed (3-5 megabit downloads, 1-2 megabit uploads) with a usage cap of 3-9 gigabytes. For a 5 megabit plan with a cap of 9 gigabytes, it was 839 a month.

Assuming Disney is getting better speeds and better rates because of their ability to run more/bigger dishes and negotiate bulk deals, their cost is $0.09 per megabyte or less. If they added on an over 200% mark-up, they could sell a 100 megabyte package that let you check your e-mail and a few favorite sites every day and post a few photos to Facebook for $30. Or maybe they could sell the 100 megabyte plan for $50 and do a 500 megabyte plan for $150. It would still be pricy, but it would be based on how much data you actually used.

But since there's no competition once you're onboard, you pay what they charge and you pay it based on the unreasonable metric of how long you're connected to the network instead of based on how much data you use.

I was surprised and pleased to find out Disney Cruise Lines didn't pull the trick of making juices and other sugared beverages free, but charging you $2 a pop for diet sodas. But I guess some of the cruise line overcharge mentality had to worm its way in somewhere and it's wormed its way into how Disney charges for internet access onboard. Such a shame.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 at 2:00 pm and is filed under Techno Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.