Royal Connect Phones

[900000]

I'm going on the Allure soon and I've tried to get info from Royal Caribbean about their on board phones you can rent to keep in touch with your kids, but they just tell me to talk to the people on board. That doesn't help me prepare before the cruise, so I'm hoping you all can help! Researching here, I know they are like $30 each to rent, are $1,000 to replace if you break it, and I have to get one right when I board otherwise they will be all gone. What I DON'T know is:

 

1. Do they come with any kind of holster or something to carry it in? I'm going to have 2 kids with me and am wondering how they are going to keep a hold of a phone all day while playing, eating, etc. with a bunch of other kids. If the phones don't come with a holster, does RC give kids a pouch or something to hold their card in that could fit the phone, too?

 

2. Is it an iPhone 4 or 5? If I want to buy something for them to carry it in, I'd have to know which model.

 

3. I've heard rumors that if you have a personal iPhone you can just install their app and use that the same way. Is this true? RC couldn't even confirm this for me. It would be nice to not have to carry 2 phones on me on port days!

[Clarea]

Regarding question #3, I've not yet heard of any app you can download to your phone that duplicates the capabilities of the Royal Connect phones.

[EllaDuChien]

My family used the phones when we were on Allure in 2012 so some things might have changed but here is our experience:

 

1. They did not come with any type of holster/pouch/carrying case. They did have a hard shell case, but that was it.

 

2. When I was there, they were 4's, but it was 2012 so 5's were not out yet, I don't know if they might have upgraded since then.

 

3. The RCCL app as well as the ShipMate app can show you the deck plans, but not connect with other people in the party so they cannot give locations of the people that have the phones, using your own phone to text/call etc will be charged at your carriers rate no matter which app you have!

 

Overall we thought that the phones were moderately useful. They have some failings, but some good points also. We would probably use them again if we were to sail on the Allure again. I hope this helps!

[jticarruthers]

Just off Allure this past week and we used the phones.

 

The phones come with plastic "shell cases" that are more annoyance than useful.

 

They are still the original IPhone 4's from when they first got them (or at least the ones we had were), the staff made mention of getting ready to replace them all with a whole new system "soon".

 

Tough to say whether they were worth it or not, we had a lot of problems with "dead-zones" were you could not get a call and there was no indicator to let you know you had missed a call when you came out of the dead-zone. On at least two occasions the kids were sitting by the door in kids club for an hour waiting for us to come get them and we weren't aware they had called.

 

They were great when they got clear signals though .... and definitely ran out fast I think we were in the cardroom at 1pm and they were getting low.

[redlobster]

The new wifi deployed on Allure and Oasis should make these units much more effective. We used them on the Allure in 2012. We are planning on getting several phones on our upcoming Oasis cruise.

[Josiepug]

I think this will answer your questions :)

 

http://www.royalcaribbeanincentives.com/docs/rccl-pdfs/connect-brochure.pdf