Before you sail: the 15-minute connectivity setup

Everything on this page needs a normal internet connection, which means it has to happen before you board. That is the whole reason it exists as a checklist — at sea, half of it becomes impossible rather than merely annoying.

Fifteen minutes at the kitchen table. The slow part is never the settings; it is getting everyone in the same room with their phones at the same time.

1. Settle the airplane mode question, and do it early

Turn airplane mode on before the ship leaves, not after. A ship's maritime mast reaches well past the harbour wall, so a phone can latch on while the port is still in sight, and it bills at maritime rates for background activity nobody asked for — app refreshes, photo backups, email checks.

Then switch wifi back on separately. Airplane mode kills the mobile radio; wifi is its own toggle and stays available, which gives you the ship's network with none of the roaming. What still works in that state is here, and how the big bills actually happen is here.

2. Download everything now

Films, series, podcasts, playlists, books, offline maps for the ports, boarding passes. A satellite link shared by several thousand people is worst at exactly the things people try to stream on it, and that is not a fault, it is the physics of the connection.

Check they actually downloaded rather than queued. A grey tick in a streaming app is not a file on the phone.

3. Install the apps — all of them, on all the phones

• The cruise line's own app. Most carry the daily schedule, deck plans and dining, and several include guest-to-guest chat over the ship's network at no charge. Which lines include chat and which charge is here.
• Whatever your group will message on. If that is CruiseLink, everyone installs it and joins the group now, while invite links still open. The steps are here.
• Anything port-related — ride apps, transit apps, translation.

This is the step that gets skipped, and it is the one that cannot be recovered. Nothing installs at sea without a package, and a group messaging app with three of five people on it is a group messaging app that does not work.

4. Decide who, if anyone, is buying wifi

Ship wifi is sold per device, per day, so a family buying one each pays several times over for something they will mostly use to say where they are. Work out the real number before you board rather than at the sales desk: the calculator does the multiplication.

For most families one package between them is plenty — it means somebody is reachable from home, which is the actual requirement. When it is worth more than that is here.

5. Tell the people at home what to expect

Most of the worry a cruise causes at home is silence being read as trouble. Two sentences fix it: when you will be in touch, and what to do if something is urgent.

Write down the cruise line's emergency contact number for whoever stays behind, with the ship's name and the sailing dates. It is on the booking confirmation. Why that number and not your mobile is here.

6. Agree the meeting points

Old-fashioned and still the most reliable thing on this list. Agree the fixed points of the day — breakfast, dinner, a bar after the show — and nobody needs to be contactable in between. Which ones actually hold up on a big ship is here.

The one thing you genuinely cannot fix at sea

Installing things. Everything else on this list has a workaround once you are aboard, at a price. Step 3 does not: with no connection, an app cannot be downloaded and an invitation cannot be opened.

So if you only do one of these before the gangway, do that one. It takes four minutes and it is the difference between a plan that works and a plan that was a good idea.

Get CruiseLink

Free, no account, nothing to set up beyond your group. On iPhone and Android, and the two work together.