Keeping in touch

Forgive me if this has been addressed. I have been reading this forum for a couple of months now and I don't recall seeing it. I am curious about phone reception during the cruise. My dad refuses texting and is completely clueless on a computer, so keeping in contact with him while mom and I (and my aunts) are cruising will be made more difficult. I have ATT cell service and I know they offer international packages, which I plan to purchase to keep in contact with dh and my kids. Mom will have to call dad though.

We are going on the Paris to Prague, Cities of Light tour (Viking). I would appreciate any input. 😃

Well ATT has a pretty reasonably priced package that gives you up to 50 international text messages in one month (it is less than $10) you just have to remember to cancel the service when you get home because it is a monthly charge and it will stay on your bill until you cancel it. Although if you have a smart phone it might be just as easy to use the free wifi on the ship and email back and forth just to stay in touch.

Your mom is going to have to pay a lot to make phone calls home. It runs about $3/minute plus whatever roaming charges are added on. Cell service is generally pretty good throughout your route. There may be some places where service is spotty but probably not too many.

Might be more economical to have your DH or kids call your Dad and pass along the email reports and save the phone calls for more emergent situations. ;)

Making phone calls internationally is pretty expensive. Is there no way to teach him how to accept a Skype or Facetime call, which your Mom could make when she has decent wifi?

Forgive me if this has been addressed. I have been reading this forum for a couple of months now and I don't recall seeing it. I am curious about phone reception during the cruise. My dad refuses texting and is completely clueless on a computer, so keeping in contact with him while mom and I (and my aunts) are cruising will be made more difficult. I have ATT cell service and I know they offer international packages, which I plan to purchase to keep in contact with dh and my kids. Mom will have to call dad though.

 

We are going on the Paris to Prague, Cities of Light tour (Viking). I would appreciate any input. 😃

Isn't there anyone in the US that you could e-mail or text with a daily message and then they could relay it to your Dad? Like someone who'd be looking in on him regularly anyway? You're going to spend a fortune in phone calls. FYI Verizon also has an international package and I think it was $25/month but you do have to cancel it BEFORE the month is up otherwise they just keep charging you.

You can skype to a phone number if you have prepaid funds into your skype account. We use skype all the time for work and we work globally. Some of our colleagues do not have fast enough internet speeds to use skype, but virtually everyone has a mobile phone, so.....Just read the skype info to make sure the situation applies to you.

I don't use apple products so no clue if the same can be done for facetime.

We bought German sim cards for our trip, which was great most of the time (we used primarily for data on our smart phones, and texting each other, and did not call the US) The problem for us was that we couldn't roam and our trip did bring us to non-German countries. So next time we do a multi-country trip and want to get new sims, I'll get an international card. Lots of info online. Many come out of Baltic countries....

Mom and I were talking about that this afternoon and we'll probably text my sister and have her keep in contact with dad. Anything technology related is out of the question for him. He's not the least bit interested in trying to learn since his first disastrous try at a computer haha. The major concern is that he's not in the best of health and we will need to stay in some sort of contact with him.

Thank you for the input!

Personally I just use the MagicJack App on my iPhone which allows free calls to USA phone numbers when you have access to WiFi, or Facetime Audio calls when I'm calling another iPhone.

Personally I just use the MagicJack App on my iPhone which allows free calls to USA phone numbers when you have access to WiFi, or Facetime Audio calls when I'm calling another iPhone.

Who knew?? Never thought about Magic Jack! Great idea Mark T :)

Thanks Mark, I'll look into that.

Google Voice coupled with Google Hangouts is another way for the technologically adept to stay connected while out of the country. If you have a Google Voice number (available free), Google Hangouts allows one to dial any number in the US without charge using either WiFi or a data-only SIM. Looking forward to using it when we are in France this summer; worked well from the Caribbean in December.

We have T Mobile and texting to and from 120 countries (Europe) is included and data roaming too for a great standard price. Also phone calls are only .20 per minute. We were in Europe for 5 weeks last year. I called my mom once a week. Texted my daughter and aunt. I think I paid $5 to $10 more for the calls and I talked as long as I wanted. I send pictures to my aunt and no extra charge.

this has been a very informative thread---have never used a phone in Europe. These suggestions are really good. Thanks, marchmom for starting it

Across Europe the companies are having to bring down roaming charges at last, this is the kind of thing that makes the EU a joke. We have been told that the number of people on Skype have blocked the bandwidth and we understand that the majority of passengers are a lot further away from home than we are we don't know if this is true or not. We even being from the UK take a basic phone with us instead of the ubiquitous blackberry and take a tablet to keep in touch with the family. We are only across a small stretch of water not that great big pond when will the phone companies realise that if there charges are the same world wide they would make a ! lot more money.

Happy cruising CA

Across Europe the companies are having to bring down roaming charges at last, this is the kind of thing that makes the EU a joke. We have been told that the number of people on Skype have blocked the bandwidth and we understand that the majority of passengers are a lot further away from home than we are we don't know if this is true or not. We even being from the UK take a basic phone with us instead of the ubiquitous blackberry and take a tablet to keep in touch with the family. We are only across a small stretch of water not that great big pond when will the phone companies realise that if there charges are the same world wide they would make a ! lot more money.

Happy cruising CA

If you think cell phone charges are a joke in the EU, you need to check out the exorbitant rates we pay in the US. You have it good across the pond.

So true :)

I carry 2 phones with me on business, one with a USA contract and the other with a UK contract.

Using a US phone in Europe involves crazy roaming fees, and using the UK phone in the USA would suffer the same problem.

Roaming around Europe is getting pretty cheap now, but only if you have a European phone...

What I meant was that to many of us in the UK the EU is a joke one of the few benefits has been the forcing of the cell phone companies to equalise roaming charges.

Cell phone coverage across Europe is improving all the time but there always will be black spots due to the odd mountain, gorge or other idiocyncrasy of terrain getting in the way, there are ways to get over this but one thing I am not is a mounteneir. As you rarely if ever dock away fro civilisation there will always be part of the day with coverage.

Happy cruising CA 😃

There is also an app called Viber. If you and the person you are calling installs the apps on your phones, as long as you have wifi the call is free. It worked great for me.