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 Shortly after sailing from Bali, a passenger on the Crystal Symphony sees her first grandchild for the first time as an e-mail photo file. When she checks her office e-mail, a friend finds my grinning face, with a Caribbean beach in the background, on her computer screen. The gathering of tuxedo-clad men at 1:00 a.m. on the Voyager of the Seas is not at the bar, but at the "Cybary," doing online checks of their stock portfolios. Cruising teenagers run up the family tab by surfing the Web and playing games. Welcome to cybersea. From E-mail to video postcards, the Worldwide Web is riding the waves. Passengers can keep in touch with their offices, friends and family at just a fraction of the cost of satellite phone calls (which range from $5.95 to $16 a minute) and get instant news, sport and stock reports. The cruise industry's first Internet Cafe at sea made its debut in August on Norwegian Cruise Line's Norwegian Sky, within the ship's coffee bar. Open 24 hours a day, the service was such an immediate hit that five more computer terminals were added. For 75 cents a minute, passengers are keeping in touch with their offices via e-mail, checking the stock market and news updates on the Internet. The Norwegian Sky also offers in-stateroom connections to the Internet (for the same rate), and laptop rentals will be available later this year. Internet Cafes are fully operational throughout the NCL fleet. More floating Internet centers followed faster than a downloaded file. Celebrity Cruises will introduce it's first cyber cafe when the new Millennium debuts in June, 2000. The ship's Online@Celebrity Cruises cyber center will hold 19 computers with internet connections and cameras for sending photos with e-mail. Laptop computers may be rented and suites will all have outlets for internet connection. A separate business center will have scanners and printers; the cruise line hasn't determined rates for e-mail or use of equipment. The new Volendam, which made its inaugural cruise on November 12, 1999, is the first Holland America vessel with an Internet center, "The Web Site." About 100 passengers a day are going online at the eight computer terminals, with some guests logging on up to eight times per day--depending on the stock market activity. The "Web Site" is open round the clock, and the fee is 75 cents per minute. There is a $5.95 additional charge per e-mail sent through passengers' "cruisemail" account, but there is no additional charge for guests sending mail through their own Internet service provider, such as America Online or Hotmail. "Web Sites" will be part of new Holland America ships and will expand into the rest of the existing fleet. When the world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas, set sail in November, it carried, in addition to 3,100 passengers, a "Cybary," 18 computers with Internet access. The program, " Royal Caribbean Online," has shortcuts to popular services such as AOL, E-Trade, Yahoo, The Weather Channel and CNN for stocks, sports and news updates. A dedicated satellite modem connection provides high speed Internet access 24 hours a day for 50 cents per minute, in both English and Spanish. Passengers can even print coupons redeemable at various shipboard retailers and service providers, such as a $10 discount on specified spa services. Royal Caribbean Online is currently on 10 RCI ships, and installation is underway on the Nordic Empress. Explorer of the Seas will have Internet Access in the cabins, and a second phase of the program will add several foreign language capabilities and personal laptop access in all on-line centers. "Wish you were here" takes on a whole new role when the postcard arrives on the stuck-at-home's computer monitor. Royal Caribbean's digital imaging system places the passenger in a shipboard setting or a port scene. A camera mounted on the computer snaps a photo of the passenger, and the virtual postcard can be personalized with a message and sent to multiple recipients for $4.95. Wave to the folks at home on video e-mails. They're $9.95 per transmission, with a limit of five E-mail addresses, on the Norwegian Sky and $9.95, per recipient on the Volendam. Princess Cruises is investigating the possibility of adding digital postcard and video service. In the meantime, "Princess Access," to the Internet and e-mail is available during the ships' Business Centers' hours, which have been recently extended to various morning, afternoon and evening periods. Whether using the computers to play solitaire, surf the Web, send e-mails or use a word processing program, the rate is $7.50 for each 15 minutes of usage. Business Centers are on the Sun Princess, Dawn Princess, Sea Princess, Grand Princess and will be on the Ocean Princess, which debuts in mid-February. Although Crystal Cruises was the first line to offer e-mail at sea, the line does not anticipate having Internet access until mid-2000. There is an initial e-mail setup charge of $5, then a $3 charge for each e-mail (up to approximately eight or nine typed pages) sent or received. The personalized e-mail address is on the cruise ticket, so passengers can advise their friends, family and business associates of this contact before departing. The line notes that about 60 percent of its guests send or receive e- mails during a cruise. Another Crystal service tracks stocks, mutual funds and options. For an initial fee of $10, plus the $3 e-mail charge for the daily report, passengers will receive the closing stock prices, change, volume and some news clips about their stocks. Crystal is one of the cruise lines whose ships send and receive E-mail periodically throughout the day--versus the "real time" e-mails transmitted directly by passengers over the Internet. Under this system, e-mail messages are printed and delivered to passengers' staterooms. The Seabourn and Cunard ships don't charge for incoming E- mails under 20,000 bytes; outgoing rates are $5 for the first 5,000 bytes, $1 for each additional kilobyte. An e-mail, up to 5,000 bytes, costs $7.50 to send from the Wind Surf; incoming messages are $5, plus $5 for each file attachment. It's only $1 per 2 KB (about a half a page) for outgoing or incoming on Radisson's Seven Seas Navigator. Some passengers have been introduced to e-mail and the Worldwide Web at Crystal Cruises' Computer University@Sea, launched in 1997. Through free lectures and hands-on classes at 22 computer terminals, passengers have learned the basics, such as Windows, to the more advanced, such as the currently-popular sessions on digital cameras and manipulating of digital images. Private computer instruction is offered for $75 per hour, and laptops may be rented for $10 per day. Crystal estimates that more than 15,000 guests participated in Computer University@Sea in 1999. Passengers on Carnival's "Fun Ships" apparently are too busy playing to care about surfing the Web. Carnival Cruises hopes to have Internet and e-mail available within the next year, but plans are still in the concept formulation stage. As the Internet sets sail, "don't leave home without it" now applies to your e-mail address list. |
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