I use X-vpn, free on iPhone. Currently sending from the carnival breeze, cheapest package. Have fun.
I don’t understand this post. Can someone ELI5?
Wow, I’ll keep this in mind for the future. Do you think it would work on a laptop too (MacBook Pro)?
Which package?
If it’s the social media package, Reddit is commonly included.
I have not tested this from a ship. My home router is Netgear has a VPN option built in. Phone uses an application called OpenVPN to connect to it.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a direct connection between your internet connected device (a laptop, tablet, phone, etc.) and a network somewhere else.
When you’re connected to a VPN, all of your internet traffic is encrypted and sent over a “tunnel” to another network before it reaches the internet.
This can be done for a lot of reasons, like securely working on an office computer network from home, or hiding your internet browsing activity from your ISP.
It’s also useful for getting around content restrictions or throttling of connections in some places like hotels.
I think OP is saying they they are using a restricted package with a VPN. I’m not sure that would work though, as VPN traffic is quite easy to spot.
I’m watching Netflix right now in my cruise using a vpn, normally you can only use social media and a few other things, but with a vpn you can use whatever you want
VPN will work with laptops and mobiles. Actually probably easier to get it working on a laptop. look up OpenVPN. My Netgear router has it built in and the guide to setup was pretty easy. Edit to add I never tested it from a ship not sure it will work that way.
Which is the cheapest package that the OP claims to have bought, so maybe the VPN doesn’t actually work.
I thought VPNs were blocked on the ship. As such, would using this VPN simply allow me to access websites that are restricted according to the package I bought? And, is the speed the same or faster(i.e. buying the lower tier, but getting premium speed)?
Thanks for the tip! 
Unlikely a VPN would work on a social media and messaging package.
Well Reddit doesn’t work on those packages, at least not for me. plus, I’m using literally everything. I’m watching YouTube and Netflix, checking emails, and so far I haven’t found anything that doesn’t work. It removes content restrictions entirely
I have never tried to use a VPN on a ship, as I’ve not paid for internet onboard before. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they were blocked.
It’s unlikely that they would result in faster speeds. The cases where I have seen this happen (on land) are where a technique called traffic shaping is used on a network so that things like video streaming from Netflix don’t overtake the entire bandwidth of a network.
In those cases, if you were to try to watch Netflix the network might slow the traffic down so much that Netflix plays video in standard definition. But if you connect to a VPN first, the network can’t see that you’re watching Netflix and thus can’t perform any traffic shaping.
A VPN can be used to get around content restrictions (adult content, for example) but on restricted plans that only allow, say, messaging or social media, it’s unlikely a VPN would work at all. Hopefully OP can clarify what they were doing here so we can all understand this a bit better.
It does, I’m using EVERYTHING. Netflix, YouTube, name it and I can use it. The only thing that doesn’t really work is downloading apps, it’s immensely slow.
I’m using a VPN on the carnival breeze right now, it completely removes the content restrictions. I can watch YouTube, Netflix, ect and get on any app or website, everything is unblocked. Yeah it’s slow, but it can manage to watch YouTube steadily at 720p, granted this has only been at 2 am so slot of people are probably off the WiFi. I’ve never tried this on any other ship so I can’t say for sure this will work for everyone, but it’s worth taking the chance. Also, I’ve used it all throughout the day so either they see it and don’t care or they aren’t paying attention.
Can you clarify which plan you purchased?
The cheapest one, aka the first one out of the 3 possible chooses. It just gives social media.
Interesting. This (Carnival webpage)[https://www.carnival.com/FunShops/item/sra/social-wi-fi-plan] specifically calls out VPNs as being unsupported on this plan.
I wonder if they manually blocked IPs that are known to be used by VPN services? I’ve had good luck using a VPN to my own network in weird places where commercial VPNs don’t function due to blocks.
Hm, maybe they just wanna deter people from using them. Then again maybe they manually block them aswell, as it turns off pretty frequently during the day, but after midnight it works flawlessly.