For those travelling overseas, a travel eSIM can often be a useful and cost-effective option for holidays or business trips. Red Bull offer both land and cruise eSIM packages.
On P&O Arvia, like many cruise ships, you can purchase onboard internet packages. However, we wanted to explore a cheaper alternative. Two companies I came across offering cruise eSIMs were Red Bull and GigSky. After reading reviews, we opted for Red Bull as several users suggested it performed more reliably on Arvia.
As Red Bull offer combined cruise and land eSIMs, we purchased separate data packages for three phones. The main aim was to allow us to stay connected via WhatsApp throughout the cruise. Once activated, the eSIM automatically handled connections both at sea and when docked in ports.
As a family, we installed the Red Bull eSIM on each of our phones before travelling. At sea, the eSIM connects to the ship’s maritime network and then switches to local mobile networks when arriving at ports. We purchased data in GB allowances, with pricing around €18 for 1GB covering both cruise and land use. If you mainly use low-data services such as WhatsApp messaging, this can work out significantly cheaper than many onboard Wi-Fi packages. Red Bull offer many different packages and amounts of data to meet individual needs.
It is important to minimise data usage though, as cruise data can disappear surprisingly quickly. Before travelling, I made several adjustments on my phone, including:
- Turning off background app refresh
- Restricting which apps could use mobile data
Installing the eSIM itself was straightforward and Red Bull even provided 100MB of free data simply for activating it. My wife and I purchased 2GB each, while my daughter had 4GB. We also took advantage of referral promo codes, which gave each of us an additional free 1GB of data.
So, how did the service perform in practice?
Unfortunately, the experience was very mixed and ultimately quite disappointing.
At the start of the cruise, the connection was extremely unreliable. Service was sporadic at best, with frequent dropouts and inconsistent performance. Initially, we wondered whether signal quality depended on our location onboard, as it sometimes appeared slightly better on higher decks. Interestingly, some other passengers mentioned they had used the service previously without problems but this time were also experiencing issues.
I did notice online that several customers had reportedly contacted Red Bull requesting refunds. I decided to email them myself, not initially to complain, but simply to ask whether they were aware of any known issues affecting the ship and whether they could help resolve them.
Around a day later, the eSIM suddenly started working almost perfectly. For approximately six days, it performed reliably regardless of where we were on the ship. Disappointingly though, I never received any response from Red Bull customer support and the improved performance did not last. Around a week later, the service deteriorated once again and became unreliable for the remainder of the cruise. Unfortunately I had topped up all the e-Sims with more data and we are now left with unused data.
To be fair, the eSIM generally worked very well whilst on land. However, the cruise performance, combined with the lack of customer service, left us frustrated. I would not buy again or recommend.
While nobody expects cruise eSIMs to deliver flawless high-speed internet at all times, you do expect a basic level of reliability, especially for simple connection to communication apps like WhatsApp.
I have pursued the matter with Red Bull, as I feel we paid for a service that ultimately failed to deliver consistently. While I gained a quick response this time and a refund they did not address my comments on how poor/unreliable the product was. I was also hoping they would address how they would resolve the issues, so others avoid the same poor product issues that I did.
A product that I expected big things from and was ultimately disappointing.
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