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What do you feel is the best way to communicate with those back at home?

LongHill44

By LongHill44,
in Carnival Cruise Lines

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LongHill44

LongHill44

Posted
Posted

With our cruise coming up and having teenaged kids, the thought of a few hundred dollar phone bill is scary.

 

Between Facebook, texts, iMessages and whatever else, I have two questions:

 

1- What have you found to be the best and easiest way to keep in touch with those at home?

 

2- What have you found is the cheapest way to keep in touch with those at home?

 

 

Thanks for all in the input...........

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K&RCurt

K&RCurt

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Posted

I give them the emergency contact number for the ship.

 

If it is not an emergency, I do not want to hear from anyone at home when on vacation.

 

Everyone can catch up when we get home.

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A&Jfamily

A&Jfamily

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We all, teens included, go into airplane mode. We need downtime, and time to reconnect as a family and I have refused to pay for it. If my kids want to talk to someone at home, they can pay for it and they have always decided that was not a smart way to spend their money.

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Baby_Bear

Baby_Bear

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You could do the social package at $4 per day for messages.

 

Also, most of the ports have free WiFi or if you are eating at a local restaurant, they usually have secured wifi and you can access your emails, etc. and call home using Skype or Whatsapp.

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riffatsea

riffatsea

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Unless you have small children or aging parents at home I see no need to be in contact while on vacation. I would not encourage teens to just chat or message with their friends at home. I would want them to be in the moment with you on their trip.

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bobandsherry

bobandsherry

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Check with your cell phone provider. I'm with T-Mobile, when on ship incoming texts are free, outgoing is 50 cents. I tell me adult kids and dog sitter to send a text if anything urgent. I can then send text if needed. Happened one cruise our pup got ill, a couple of quick texts with dog sitter. Under $5 for the week.

 

When I get to most ports of call I have free data and can then go with other means if necessary.

 

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk

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cruisinqt

cruisinqt

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We usually use Facebook messenger. It has its own separate app that you just tap and send messages back and forth just like your regular text messages on your phone. Super easy. But if we have several ports that have free WiFi near the ship we skip the WiFi package and check in with them for free while in port.

I have ZERO guilt for checking in with family or friends while we are on our cruise. I love my family and friends and if I miss them and want to communicate with them that’s perfectly fine.

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coevan

coevan

Posted
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Check with your cell phone provider. I'm with T-Mobile, when on ship incoming texts are free, outgoing is 50 cents. I tell me adult kids and dog sitter to send a text if anything urgent. I can then send text if needed. Happened one cruise our pup got ill, a couple of quick texts with dog sitter. Under $5 for the week.

 

When I get to most ports of call I have free data and can then go with other means if necessary.

 

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk

 

 

You can not send or receive texts at sea, there is no tower. The 50 cent texts is from land.

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bobandsherry

bobandsherry

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Posted (edited)
You can not send or receive texts at sea, there is no tower. The 50 cent texts is from land.
You are just flat out wrong.

 

https://help.carnival.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1129/~/cellular-phone-service

 

Additionally, here's screen capture of text from last cruise, clearly shows cost while on cruise ship.

9a20d717c804490d8dfba180bc91cae5.jpg

 

Here's article from Cruise Critic as well...

 

https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles.cfm?ID=1752

 

And as I had mentioned, I have done it so I can speak first hand at it being available.

 

You can indeed text while at sea.

 

Sent from my LG-H872 using Tapatalk

Edited by bobandsherry
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firemanbobswife

firemanbobswife

Posted
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So even though its not video you cant make the standard call? what package would that fall under?

 

Fyi we are leaving are 2.5 year old at home. So yeah we need to communicate

 

My friends were on the Glory the week before I was (they did a B2B). When they were in Miami they tried to FB call me, WhatsApp call me and I think even Viber call me. Couldn’t get it to work. They aren’t from the US so didn’t have cell data and were going solely off the Social wi-fi Package.

 

I don’t know if calls work with the Premium plan or not, I haven’t tried it. In a lot of cases the internet is so painfully slow that it takes forever to even get a page to load so getting a call to go through may be pretty near impossible. Can you just text their caretaker?

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LongHill44

LongHill44

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We usually use Facebook messenger. It has its own separate app that you just tap and send messages back and forth just like your regular text messages on your phone. Super easy. But if we have several ports that have free WiFi near the ship we skip the WiFi package and check in with them for free while in port.

I have ZERO guilt for checking in with family or friends while we are on our cruise. I love my family and friends and if I miss them and want to communicate with them that’s perfectly fine.

 

 

So you used Facebook mess through the social plan?

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bar1068

bar1068

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Posted
My friends were on the Glory the week before I was (they did a B2B). When they were in Miami they tried to FB call me, WhatsApp call me and I think even Viber call me. Couldn’t get it to work. They aren’t from the US so didn’t have cell data and were going solely off the Social wi-fi Package.

 

I don’t know if calls work with the Premium plan or not, I haven’t tried it. In a lot of cases the internet is so painfully slow that it takes forever to even get a page to load so getting a call to go through may be pretty near impossible. Can you just text their caretaker?

 

I've been on several cruises on different ships using mainly the Value network plan, and for various reasons had to make phone calls from the ship and have mostly been successful. Was just on the Sunshine last month with Value plan had some personal business I needed to address and no issue with wifi calling from my iphone, which is how I make the calls I've made. We've made calls from the handful of TA's we've been on as those were during our grand-kids birthdays, and we called them for bday wishes, plus they get a kick of talking with us "on the big ship from the big ocean"!! Thing that is really really odd, we've stayed connected for various reasons back home and STILL somehow managed to enjoy our cruises!!

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