walkie talkies

[4xcruisers]

Ok parents need advice.

My family is on a carnival cruise in about a week. We will have our kiddos with us this time. Two very mature children. One almost 8 one 10. I know the 10 year old is going to want to go alone to some places. Like go get a piece of pizza and come back. I do not have an issue with this at all, my only concern is him getting lost. Usually he is really good at directions but sometimes gets confused (don't we all). Do walkie talkies or anything of the sort work on the ships with all the metal? Cell phones will not work so that is not an option. Looking for something he can take with him to "call" us if he gets twisted around. Any suggestions?

[crzgrl66]

A few years ago we used walkie talkies on Carnival Paradise (it's a really old ship) and the wt's worked great. We had a group of 10 and 11 year old boys and one of them had a walkie talkie at all times.

 

We did a "can you hear me now?" test on our first day with all of the boys so that we knew we could contact them.

[smoothy]

Some folks can be put out of sorts by walkie-talkies being used in their vicinity (crabby people on a cruise?? never heard of that before :rolleyes:) so you may want to have DS use it when possible away from crowds just to avoid having some coot shake his/her fist

[olemissreb]

someone on the RCI boards mentioned that some of the RCI ships have DECT phones. They cost about $25/phone for the week. They are sort of like cell phones, but all calling is via a 4 digit number to any other DECT phone or cabin on the ship. The phones do not work off of the ship. Not sure if these phones are still available on RCI (someone else posted that there weren't any on their ship) or if they are available on any other cruise line.

 

I also read another post about walkie talkies that have texting capablities. This would eliminate the threat of "some coot shake his/her fist" at the kids for using regular walkie talkies!

 

Yes I've been researching this topic as we are cruising with our kids for the first time and I know they are going to want to explore as well. My kids are a little older than yours - 13 & 9 (14 & 10 when we cruise) and I want them to be able to do that, but have a way to get in touch with us should they get lost.

[Ann0513]

I will be cruising with two teenagers and just purchased walkie talkies for our upcoming cruise. They are Tri Square TSX300, they have vibrate & text features and come with a base where they can recharge. They not very big either. We have been testing them from our basement and they did work around the block. Now we can find each other any time without disturbing anyone else.

 

Last year we used our cell phones for texting, it worked well but cost us a fortune when we came home, this was a huge savings as this time around as they only cost me about $80.00. I purchased them online at Wal-Mart, they had the cheapest price.

[mimi2009]

I brought walkie talkies on the last cruise that we took our daughters on. These didn't have text and proved to be more of a pain than anything else, as everyone had them and everytime you heard 'Mom' come through, you could hear more than one person answer :confused:. I think that I may look into the text feature for this one...

Good luck and have fun!

[Ann0513]

I brought walkie talkies on the last cruise that we took our daughters on. These didn't have text and proved to be more of a pain than anything else, as everyone had them and everytime you heard 'Mom' come through, you could hear more than one person answer :confused:. I think that I may look into the text feature for this one...

Good luck and have fun!

 

 

These are also digital, long range with 10 billion channels, so hopefully they should work without interference