CRUISING WITHOUT AN IPHONE

[RedIguana]

8 hours ago, 3red7s said:

sadly they have neither, hence my concern 

If you are near them, you can set up a username and password for them, and use the app on your phone to get them checked in, vaccine cards uploaded, and health questions answered. Once onboard the app isn't really necessary.

[Charles4515]

1 hour ago, Moonarino said:

My "luddite" objection pretty much just relates to those who might want to cram it down our throats and make it "required" for no real reason at all.

 

 

There is a real reason the cruise lines push it. It saves on their costs. They can get by with less workers. They are not pushing it for fun. They have business reasons.

 

I don't think they are requiring it. They are just making it inconvienient not to have a smartphone. Considering that now a days  most people who are going to be their customers do have a smartphone it is a win win for them. The small number people who don't have them now are insignificant to them. If  all those without a smartphone stopped booking they would not care. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Charles4515

[Charles4515]

2 hours ago, lenquixote66 said:

We did not have a phone until 1952 and had no problem.

 

If you had no problem without a phone until 1952 why did you get one in 1952? You did get a phone....... 

[SRF]

23 hours ago, nascarcruiser said:

My inlaws doesn't have a smart phone and refuse to get one.  They don't even have internet at home.  They still have a land line.  That being said some people  do not embrace new technology they don't understand or feel they need

 

Age is in the the determining factor.

[SRF]

13 hours ago, twinmommy08 said:

I didn’t see a texting post so my apologies if this is a duplicate. 
 

I’m assuming the four of you are purchasing WiFi. iPhone users who put their phone on airplane mode and signed into WiFi can text each other through iMessage. It’s WiFi texting. iPhones won’t be able to text an android through iMessage, so texting your normal way won’t work. All 4 of you could download a free texting app like what’s app so you can text each other over WiFi. 
 

edit to say I did miss where the OP said her SIL and BIL have no electronics, so this won’t apply. I’ll leave it in case it helps someone else 🙂 

 

I guess you have never heard of wifi calling/texting.

 

Most smart phones and most carriers support it.  You have to set it up before your cruise when you have a cellular connection to your carrier. 

 

Once set up, you can call and text with a wifi connection just like you did with a cellular connection.  No app needed.

[SRF]

6 minutes ago, SRF said:

 

Age is NOT the the determining factor.

 

[SRF]

9 hours ago, poocher said:

I tell my grandkids we had a rotary dial phone on a party line.  If our neighbor was on, we had to wait.  

 

I think you are misremembering.  Party line phones were not direct dial.  You picked up the phone, cranked the crank to get the operator's attention.  Then they would connect and ring the phone of the person you were calling.  Each house had a ring assigned, you might be one long, and I might be a long and a short.  RIIIIINNNNNGGG  was for you..  RIINNNNNGGGGGG RING would be for me.

 

Rotary dial phones came with direct dialing and each line having only that phone on it.

[Lady Hudson]

I don’t like requiring an app to sail but will do it.  My DH will have nothing to do with it.  I am just hoping I can do everything for both of us on my phone.  Seems to me a lot of stress for everyone boarding who do not use their phones to run their lives.  That and worrying about testing — oy vey!! But I will be glad to get back on a ship.  Katherine 

[poocher]

35 minutes ago, SRF said:

 

I think you are misremembering.  Party line phones were not direct dial.  You picked up the phone, cranked the crank to get the operator's attention.  Then they would connect and ring the phone of the person you were calling.  Each house had a ring assigned, you might be one long, and I might be a long and a short.  RIIIIINNNNNGGG  was for you..  RIINNNNNGGGGGG RING would be for me.

 

Rotary dial phones came with direct dialing and each line having only that phone on it.

Sorry but you are wrong.  We had a, at the time, traditional rotary dial phone.  We had a party line with the neighbors across the street. If you picked up the line and Shirley was using it, you heard their conversation.  This was the late 50’s and early to mid 60’s.  We did not live in a rural area.  We lived in a midsized city in the northeast.  Phone numbers started with 2 letters i.e BA5-2131 and yes that was ours.  The neighbors had a different number so calls to them did not ring on our phone.  But we could not both be on the line at the same time.

Edited October 4, 2021 by poocher

[Moonarino]

10 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

 

There is a real reason the cruise lines push it. It saves on their costs. They can get by with less workers. They are not pushing it for fun. They have business reasons.

 

I don't think they are requiring it. They are just making it inconvienient not to have a smartphone. Considering that now a days  most people who are going to be their customers do have a smartphone it is a win win for them. The small number people who don't have them now are insignificant to them. If  all those without a smartphone stopped booking they would not care. 

Programming costs money, IT staff cost more than many other employees. In-house or outsourcing contract. IT and support framework costs money on several levels. I budgeted IT for about 10 years. Writing an app is not quick or easy. I've also done programming, both development and "maintenance" (fixing problems and adding new features). A phone app needs to talk in two different directions. First it is designed (and then coded, tested and deployed) to work inside a phone (two different types of phones, Android and iPhone, different interfacing on each) so as to "talk" to us and take data from us on those devices, and it also has to interface to the website to push and pull data.

 

In short, I'm not at all sure how much time or money the cruise lines are saving, for the foreseeable future at least. They still have to have employees in terminals for various reasons.

 

No they're not requiring it (although Princess says they might on some level) but they are telling us up front that the app IS "required". I wrote my "required" in quotes above and here because they're making us think it's required with their initial communications regarding the app, even though it really isn't.

 

The worst is that none of these apps I've tried to use thus far are ready for primetime, or they haven't been for very long at all. Just look through some of the Celebrity and Princess threads, where I've done the most app-relevant reading. They should've done more limited testing of these apps rather than dump them on all of us before they were more ready. I'm sure they did test on some level (of course they must have, they had to), but not enough. Too eager -- maybe just the competition factor.

 

Just yesterday I showed somebody else (with screenshots), along with others trying to help/reassure, where the X app is NOT required despite other instructions to the contrary. That newest thread I believe was written in ALL CAPS because the person was near panick, thinking he or she HAD to use the app to either check-in or get through the terminal to the ship.

 

Cruise lines are not being sufficiently responsible to their customers regarding this still-too-new app dependence.

[Moonarino]

1 hour ago, poocher said:

Sorry but you are wrong.  We had a, at the time, traditional rotary dial phone.  We had a party line with the neighbors across the street. If you picked up the line and Shirley was using it, you heard their conversation.  This was the late 50’s and early to mid 60’s.  We did not live in a rural area.  We lived in a midsized city in the northeast.  Phone numbers started with 2 letters i.e BA5-2131 and yes that was ours.  The neighbors had a different number so calls to them did not ring on our phone.  But we could not both be on the line at the same time.

Also @SRF... When I got old enough to use the phone, living 15 miles outside of town, I learned that we were on party lines. Yes we did hear other people's rings (everybody's phones rang on everybody's lines), but the rings were different -- one long ring or two short, some variation. Ours was one long for a while but then it changed to, I think, one long and three short. And yeah we heard other people talking when they were on the line, and we couldn't make a call while somebody else was using the party line. If it was an emergency we'd break in and let them know, so they would hang up (they were all close relatives in our case, so very cooperative). But everybody also knew back then not to tie up the phone too long for no reason. It was an interesting life back then.

[poocher]

We did NOT have special rings, we had different phone numbers.  Our phone did not ring when someone called the Janczyks and theirs did not ring when someone called us.  Not Ma Bell here so I don’t know why/how it worked that way.  I just know it did.

[Moonarino]

7 minutes ago, poocher said:

We did NOT have special rings, we had different phone numbers.  Our phone did not ring when someone called the Janczyks and theirs did not ring when someone called us.  Not Ma Bell here so I don’t know why/how it worked that way.  I just know it did.

I understand. I wasn't trying to be critical, just expounding on how it was in our neck of the woods -- so to speak, but also a wee bit literal. 🙂

[davekathy]

1 hour ago, poocher said:

Sorry but you are wrong.  We had a, at the time, traditional rotary dial phone.  We had a party line with the neighbors across the street. If you picked up the line and Shirley was using it, you heard their conversation.  This was the late 50’s and early to mid 60’s.  We did not live in a rural area.  We lived in a midsized city in the northeast.  Phone numbers started with 2 letters i.e BA5-2131 and yes that was ours.  The neighbors had a different number so calls to them did not ring on our phone.  But we could not both be on the line at the same time.

Exactly. Been there done that.  

[davekathy]

20 minutes ago, poocher said:

We did NOT have special rings, we had different phone numbers.  Our phone did not ring when someone called the Janczyks and theirs did not ring when someone called us.  Not Ma Bell here so I don’t know why/how it worked that way.  I just know it did.

Agree. I grew up in a small village in northern NY. 

Edited October 4, 2021 by davekathy

[Moonarino]

For postery, relating to apps and such: "Luddism" in the form of "Precautionary principle" is in fact a broadly acknowledged aspect of Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine. The European Union even has it coded into certain areas of law, as do the US and many State governments. In IT, it has traditionally taken the form of "Acceptance Testing" where the technology is exhaustively demonstrated to the vendor/buyer, to prove that it reliably works as advertised... and is secure in terms of protecting sensitive information from improper release. Private corporations OTOH don't necessarily have those sorts of laws to reign them in (except maybe in the EU, I don't know how far they go with it).

[davekathy]

2 hours ago, SRF said:

 

I think you are misremembering.  Party line phones were not direct dial.  You picked up the phone, cranked the crank to get the operator's attention.  Then they would connect and ring the phone of the person you were calling.  Each house had a ring assigned, you might be one long, and I might be a long and a short.  RIIIIINNNNNGGG  was for you..  RIINNNNNGGGGGG RING would be for me.

 

Rotary dial phones came with direct dialing and each line having only that phone on it.

Not how our phones were set up in northern NY. You've been watching way too much Mayberry RFD. 😂

[Joseph2017China]

I always take a little offence when someone says they are old so therefore, they don't have any modern day technology.  Age has nothing to do with not using technology.  IPhone, or any smart phone is a mini computer that is used for hundreds of things.  As my neighbor said, I won't pay the price to use my phone in Europe, but he got hopelessly lost one day and spent 5 hours trying to get someplace.  If he used his "technology" he would of been at destination in 30 or less minutes.  Not having this, is a choice not related to your age.  No you don't need one on the ship, but it will save you time, and give you easier access to everything both on the ship, and off the ship.  Instead of wandering around, using a paper map, and asking directions in other languages.  Yes, I'm older, used paper maps, know what a payphone is, and at one time, even asked directions. But I won't waste my time because I don't want a phone on vacation, when that phone is a mini computer to make my life easy.  Please don't use "age" an excuse

[Moonarino]

59 minutes ago, Joseph2017China said:

... Not having this, is a choice not related to your age...  Please don't use "age" an excuse

I completely agree there, no argument at all. Just as a sidebar, on a not-so-long-ago cruise I met and conversed at length (during a football game) with a 30-year-old man, half my age, who thought and felt exactly the same as I did on everything we talked about. He wasn't military either (like I used to be) so that level of experience wasn't the reason.

 

Using directories and maps onboad is a simpler thing, which Royal and others have been offering for years. (Edit to add, and being able to schedule is good.) My only (or biggest) objection regarding these apps is the cruise lines duplicating IT effort (and then it isn't quite ready) by forcing or at least "greatly encouraging" us to complete check-in and boarding prerequisites, when we've been able to do all of that online for a very long time. I also copy cruise-critical info onto my cellphone for easy/quick reference. Maps... GPS on every vehicle I own, and my lady also sometimes uses her cellphone GPS but only with someone else driving... is not 100% reliable. Once we got super-irritated in Tampa because a brand-new expressway that paralleled an older one had recently opened, and it confused the GPS (and us) to no end, until I figured out the problem. I have numerous other stories too. But as always, my own "embedded computer" figured out the problems/limitations of the technology.

 

Again, I thoroughly agree that age should largely be left out of it. I for one prefer to go with "experience". As well as other tools of learning.

 

Peace in all things and happy cruising.

 

 

Edited October 4, 2021 by Moonarino

[lenquixote66]

14 hours ago, Charles4515 said:

 

If you had no problem without a phone until 1952 why did you get one in 1952? You did get a phone....... 

My parents got the phone in 1952.You would have to ask them.

[flamingos]

6 hours ago, SRF said:

 

I think you are misremembering.  Party line phones were not direct dial.  You picked up the phone, cranked the crank to get the operator's attention.  Then they would connect and ring the phone of the person you were calling.  Each house had a ring assigned, you might be one long, and I might be a long and a short.  RIIIIINNNNNGGG  was for you..  RIINNNNNGGGGGG RING would be for me.

 

Rotary dial phones came with direct dialing and each line having only that phone on it.

You're a generation of technology back.   After you could direct dial, they still had party lines that cost less than a single line.  Ours was shared with a woman who talked to her mother for 2 hours, every morning and every afternoon.  We had four teenagers in the house and it really put a damper on our social lives.  🙂

Edited October 4, 2021 by flamingos
grammar

[MommaBear55]

6 hours ago, SRF said:

 

I think you are misremembering.  Party line phones were not direct dial.  You picked up the phone, cranked the crank to get the operator's attention.  Then they would connect and ring the phone of the person you were calling.  Each house had a ring assigned, you might be one long, and I might be a long and a short.  RIIIIINNNNNGGG  was for you..  RIINNNNNGGGGGG RING would be for me.

 

Rotary dial phones came with direct dialing and each line having only that phone on it.

I was on a party line (2) in 1976 which was direct dial

[Eddie Wilson]

On 10/3/2021 at 2:17 PM, 3red7s said:

no....plz be kind, there are other circumstances here

 

I have a brother who is not so old yet, but blind.  He has a flip phone.

 

Eddie

[broadwaybaby123]

Nothing, you can do without an iPhone for a few days.

[BND]

10 hours ago, poocher said:

We did NOT have special rings, we had different phone numbers.  Our phone did not ring when someone called the Janczyks and theirs did not ring when someone called us.  Not Ma Bell here so I don’t know why/how it worked that way.  I just know it did.

This.  Your phone only rang if someone called you.  My grandparents had a party line in their small town in TX until I was probably about 10.  (I'm 61 now).  I remember them picking up the phone and hanging it up as the people they shared the line with were talking to someone.  Of course they would complain that their neighbor was on the phone a lot.    A party line means a shared phone line.  That's all it is.  Two homes on the same line so only one could use it at a time.  Also, you could call the operator and ask to be put through to someone.  Easy in a small town.  The operator could also interrupt a call to let someone know that someone else needed to talk to them (emergency use usually).   I remember my grandparents number from then which my grandmother had until she moved into a nursing home around 2000.  Originally it started with two letters (related to the town name).