Communication while onboard Freedom of the Seas

[Majestic-NJ]

Haven't sailed yet. Been doing testing in my office in downtown Manhattan with them though. We've easily been able to communicate with solid results for over 10 floors in the building. Consistent solid results. Then, we've done up to floor 30 with some messages going through and some not with mixed results. I can't say I'm disappointed right now.

 

The plan on the cruise will be to have one mounted on our balcony on a 38 inch temporary mast in a Pelican box. This device will act as a relay. We are on deck 9 so the higher you go the better. If the way the ship docks my balcony is facing the island I am confident we will do fine with this setup.

 

Remember, the more people that have them the better off you are getting messages to go through.

 

Anyway, I should be back after the 15th of August and will be happy to share my results here. If you don't see anything please post a message in this thread just to remind me to do so. :)

 

Fred

[furloughedagain]

Hope you had a good trip! Anxious to hear how it worked.

 

 

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[cb at sea]

You really don't need to text everything you do. Just TELL folks where you're going...find out where THEY are going...and all is good.

[furloughedagain]

It’s to keep in touch with my 12 year old and still give him some independence. But thanks for your input.

 

 

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[Majestic-NJ]

Ok so here’s a summarized report of my findings.

Before I start let me recap that there were 5 cabins in our group. 4 of those cabins had 2 GoTenna devices. I had 4. One of mine was dedicated to be a relay which I hung out on my balcony.

I had instructed everyone to upgrade their units to the latest code before we left. This would hopefully avoid us having any problems.

The ship I was on is Royal Caribbean’s Freedom of the Seas. She is 1,112 feet long, 209 feet high, and can accommodate 3,634 passengers and 1,300 crew on fourteen passenger decks.

Our cabin, 9598, was located MidShip on the Port (left if you are at the back looking forward) side of the ship. We had a balcony with our cabin. The group of 5 cabins total were all pretty close to each other on the same side of the ship. We were all on Deck 9.

Stateroom to Stateroom: We never had problems. Worked perfectly for the most part. I say that because one party in our group had constant problems with their GoTennas. In the end, one of them didn’t update properly and the other kept losing connection to the phone so they never got messages. When I realized that one wasn’t updated they tried to do it and I thought it worked. We were able to chat with that party for most of the day but then that night, the unit died and wouldn’t power up. Their other unit would receive but not send messages. Definitely not good with their units. Not sure what happened there.

Throughout the Ship: I think the general consensus was that the GoTenna’s worked great throughout the ship. We were “regularly” relaying through one or two nodes so I am sure that the fact many of us had a GTM helped. There were some times where the message would not go through at all. I personally recorded successful messages from Deck 5 Midship to Deck 9 Midship, also from Deck 5 Forward to Deck 9 Midship and usually through one or two relay nodes, and from Deck 3 Aft (dining room) to Deck 9 Midship. The last one being a stretch considering all the steel the messages would have to go through.

On the Islands: I’d say the only island I can remember using mine is St. Maarten where we communicated with some of our friends who were further down the beach from us and also one person communicated with his wife on the ship which was over a mile away from us. I also used mine while I was in the port area in St Kitts to chat with my wife who was still on the ship. Most often those messages were relaying but I did get a few failed messages. While we were in Barbados we used the GTMs to chat with each other on the beach a bit but mostly when one of us was getting drinks to see what the others wanted.

In all, I am pleased with the performance we got and can only see things getting better from here. I am keeping mine and looking forward to the next adventure where I can use them.

 

Let me know if you have any questions.

If anyone is interested in purchasing reach out to me via private message and I can get you a code to save $20 in your first purchase.

[furloughedagain]

Did you find other users onboard that you didn’t otherwise know would be there?

 

If our family buys them we would only have 2, maybe 3. It sounds like the fact that you had quite a few of them in your party contributed to your success.

 

Thanks for the report!!!

 

 

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[Clarea]

... If anyone is interested in purchasing reach out to me via private message and I can get you a code to save $20 in your first purchase.

Private messaging is disabled on this website.

[PhoenixCruiser]

Just off the Freedom (14 of us), we had meetings spots - the Squeeze bar/covered area by the H20 Zone during the day, the dining room or casino at night. I also wrote down all of the cabin #s for everyone which also helped to leave messages, call or stop by.