walkie talkies?

[tsnider117]

are walkie talkies a good way to stay in touch with other family members onboard?

[near the beach]

We have used them while on board. There can be a lot of talk on them like a party line. Make sure you have enough batteries or rechargeable ones. Sometimes there is blackout areas on the ship were they may not work well or at all. Ones with the longer rage work better. :)

[coasterjan]

I only carried walkie talkies with us once, on our first cruise 5 years ago. At that time, it seemed like EVERYONE had them, and there was so much constant chatter that they were useless. Possibly some of the novelty has worn off and there might be less people carrying them now (I'm still not willing to take up precious luggage space with them, now that the airlines charge so much for checked baggage...)

[cruiserNC]

We used them once worked ok. We found sticky notes to be the way to go. Keep in mind their are phones throughout the ship that you can use to call cabins.

[tsnider117]

ill be going with 2 15yr old and just wanted a way to keep in touch

[tricy99]

ill be going with 2 15yr old and just wanted a way to keep in touch

 

 

OP, thanks for anking this question. I was told that Carnival keeps walkie talkies at guest services, is this correct?

 

We are traveling with an 13 and 9 year old. I was concerned that maybe they would lose them. Have anyone encounter this?

[adamthepianoman]

Tried using walkie talkies last year on the Dream for the first time...so much static and such bad signal that we retired them after a few hours....and it was the super long range ones too. By the time we got the walkie talkies in range, we could literally see the other person anyway so we might as well have just walked the few more steps.

[In2why]

We bought a few sets of the Cobra long range walkie talkies for our group of 14 in December on Legend. They are rechargeable, come 2 to a package and worked everywhere on the ship and even in ports. The best thing about them is that few people understand that even though there were only 24 channels there are "channels on every channel" and you can lock all the radios in on the same frequency. For example we used 3.21 and never had a problem with other people's chatter. I would buy them again in a heartbeat....they were $39 at Walmart and 4 people in our group bought them. Then we broke them up during the day so that the whole group had one. They were a life saver. Just remember to turn them off in the dining room and shows.

[calmmerritt]

we had them last year and FOS and they worked problem was 14year old hated carrying it and day 1 they stayed in the room, wont be taking them this year on the Dream

[hankandteri]

Took them once and hardly used them.

[tak81288]

we had them last year and FOS and they worked problem was 14year old hated carrying it and day 1 they stayed in the room, wont be taking them this year on the Dream

 

Lol...Similar situation with us. Before leaving walkies seemed like a great idea, but once on the ship NO ONE wanted to carry them around. They never left the luggage and we haven't thought about bringing them since.

 

Reviewing the fun times every morning to find out what everyone was interested in doing so we knew where they might be located and setting up meeting places & times seemed to work better for us.

[jmps]

We are a family of four. We have used them with our girls starting when they were little and they are now 18 and 20. We take them and use them. They are best on sea days when we use them to find each other at the pool or where ever we are at. They are easy to drop into a pool bag along with a book or whatever. We also use them in port if we aren't together to find each other.

 

We have found that they work from most areas of the ships. We have even used them to talk with our girls on the ship while we had a drink ashore near the ship.

 

They used to be a lot more common but cell phones have taken over the role on land so fewer people use them now. As with cell phones they can be abused and conversations should be short and at low volume to not disturb others. I highly recommend them for your family with boys at your ages.

 

Do take the earlier advice and get ones with rechargable batteries. We use ones from Motorola that have a charging port so we don't have to take out the batteries at all.

[ODA 564]

http://www.amazon.com/TriSquare-TSX100-2VP-Digital-Charcoal-Metallic/dp/B000WY77VE/ref=sr_1_2?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1296057044&sr=1-2

 

These eXRS radios use private (encrypted) channels. Read all the reviews. They have latency issues (lag between send and receive) which are only noticeable next to each other - plus an immediate "skip" tone (standing right next to each other you may not received when one transmits - but they are radios, so why would you use them them next to each other?).

 

This band communicates well through all the radio-proof structure that is a ship (ships have their antennas outside for a reason! - and inter-ship radios on vessels have repeaters placed to overcome all that steel and aren't FRS or GMRS).

 

Our pair works fine compared to GMRS or FRS hand-helds. You can communicate from the aft Lido deck of a Fantasy-class vessel to an outside (oceanview) cabin on deck 6 forward (lots of ship in the way). That will defeat a GMRS or FRS unless it is modified to a higher transmit power than the FCC allows.

 

The biggest advantage is the encrypted private channel. You don't have 100-200 other radios stepping on you.

[capndinghy]

Yes...they work great. You will be glad you have them. It sure beats running all over the ship trying to track someone down!

[hawaiikat]

I've used them with my teens on both the Valor and Splendor. Helped me keep track of them and they could find me when they needed me. Coverage was pretty good, with just a few dead spots. My kids just clipped them on their lanyards that they had their S&S card on. If they wanted to be out and about without me, they carried the radios. No complaints....if they didn't carry the radio, they didn't go out!

[blacksheep2]

are walkie talkies a good way to stay in touch with other family members onboard?

we took them with us when we were on Dream last year as our friends had children with--make sure you do not put batteries in before you go-ours were taken out either by the cruise line or the air lines