What's the best way to keep in touch with Family on same cruise?

[sidekick180]

This may seem like a really stupid question. But what is the best way to keep in touch with friends and family on the same cruise ship, without purchasing an internet package and without having to pay mobile roaming charges?

I was considering buying some walkie talkies, but not sure if they were allowed on board.

This is just in case one of us wants to head off and do something completely different to the other person. Don't want to be roaming around the ship all day trying to find each other. If any of you have dealt with this already, I would be grateful to hear your ideas.

[kerryincork]

Walkie talkies are pretty much useless due to all steel causing interference. They can also be annoying to your fellow cruisers.

 

The ships are not that big, all you have to do is leave a note in your cabin on where you are going next. Arrange a meeting place at a certain time. Also the rooms have phones you can phone and leave a message on your cabin phone.

 

Some people bring post-its and leave messages on the cabin doors.

[sidekick180]

Thanks, I had a feeling that walkie talkies might not be too good and obviosly we would not want to annoy other passengers. We have only been on one cruise before. that was on Ventura and I thought the ship was pretty big, we did get a bit lost a couple of times. We also missed out on some areas that we found out about after our cruise. Not sure how the cabin phones work but I assume there is no charge for calling your own cabin and would you phone your cabin using a mobile?

[Big Foot]

There are plenty of phones around the ship in the public areas where you can call your or your family members cabin free of charge.  All you have to do is dial the deck number followed by the cabin number.  So for example if you were in cabin D628 on Azura, D deck is deck 9 so you would dial 9628. As previously posted you can then leave a message.  When you get back to the cabin you will see that you have an answer phone message.

[sidekick180]

Thank you for that, I never knew that there were phones around the ship in public places, shows how blind I was when we were walking round on Ventura. I also didn't realise that you could phone your cabin free of charge, so all this type of information is great and the exact reason why I joined this forum. Many thanks

[lebreos]

and of course you can arrange to say ring the other parties cabins at arranged time in morning to co-ordinate breakfast or pre dinner etc from your cabin to other cabin.  Where you can check days horizon and arrange to meet at "x" to see a talk etc if you are going somewhere else..

 

[woodley]

We always put notes under the doors or if they have them in the small mailboxes by the door.  The type of thing we would write would be   "Good morning, its 9am we are going for breakfast  (location) after we are going to head up to the pool deck feel free to join us(or any other planned activity)"  They would also leave notes for us telling us of their plans then we can choose to meet up or not.  If our plans don't match up we would just meet for dinner in the evening.  This way if you really want to lie in bed you don't get disturbed and if you need a day to yourself you can do that without feeling pressured to always be doing things together.