Best way to text home from ship

[GadaboutGranny]

We are getting very excited about our Mediterranean Cruise on the Epic which is leaving from Rome on July 8. We are taking our Grandchildren, ages 12 and 14 on this trip and are wondering what is the best way for them to keep in touch with their parents back home. They both like texting as their preferred option particularly because of the 9 hour time difference to the West Coast USA. I am not sure how to set this up for them. I have looked at all of the iconcierge posts and don't see any references to using it to text parties off the ship. Will they need a package from their cell service providers to do this? Any recommendations on the easiest and most cost effective ways for them to keep in touch.

[xriva]

If you have Google Voice, you can send/receive texts over WiFi - you just need a WiFi package from the ship.

 

We use Google Voice and Facebook Messenger from the ship all the time.

[roger001]

Celluar at Sea, at least with Verizon and some others, you can text (SMS only, no pictures) for 50 cents each sent and 5 cents each received. That is while out at sea using the ships service. To do that, have "data off". Leave "voice on while roaming". Texting goes through that feature. However, don't answer calls if you get one unless you want to pay for that also ($2.50 an minute usually). At a port, an international plan might work.. but check with your cell provider.

[Beachcampin]

We got the Internet package on a couple cruises and found that the native phone messaging program that is supposed to work even on wifi only didn't work to well. We found that while on wifi only the best option for us was AOL instant messenger ap. It didn't hog data like some of the other aps did and only sent the texts, even on slower connections. plus the people we were texting could then communicate with us on PC or on their smart phone.

Edited June 12, 2015 by Beachcampin

[GadaboutGranny]

Thanks everyone. We will probably try all of the above options and see which one works best for us.

[Kenlorz]

We just got off the Breakaway and found Facebook Messenger worked the best for us to stay in touch with the kiddos back home. We got a 100mb internet package for $29 and had plenty left over. We probably sent 4 or 5 messages a day to the kids and got an equal amount back. You have to turn your wifi off immediately after you use it or somehow your data will get used up (we found this out the hard way the first day in the first hour at sea when we accidentally left it on and had all of our data gone within 30 minutes). They kindly gifted us back 60mb and we still had 25 or 30mb left at the end of the cruise. The nice thing is that even though our wifi is off, our iphone 6 would still ding a facebook notification when the kids messaged us and you could see a preview of the message even though we weren't connected. This way, we always knew if the kids were trying to get ahold of us. Worked awesome! Would do it this way again in a heartbeat. Tip: take your devices to the internet specialty person at the internet cafe first thing and have them turn everything off that need to be turned off. We took ours directly to ATT before we left and thought they showed us everything we needed to turn off. They showed us everything that uses cellular data, but some apps (like icloud and itunes) are set to only update using wifi and never cellular, so those apps could eat your data if they updates aren't turned off.

[Froggitt]

WhatsApp

[baflagg]

When we were recently on the Breakaway we used the iConcierge app to call home. I think the charge was .49 per minute. Our daughter was staying with Grandma for the week so we just had a set time 6:30pm that we would call home each night and talk to just for a couple of minutes. Once you download the app you do have to pay the one time $7.95 for calling and you can also text others on the ship that also have the app.

[norway olin]

When we were recently on the Breakaway we used the iConcierge app to call home. I think the charge was .49 per minute. Our daughter was staying with Grandma for the week so we just had a set time 6:30pm that we would call home each night and talk to just for a couple of minutes. Once you download the app you do have to pay the one time $7.95 for calling and you can also text others on the ship that also have the app.

 

Actually, you do not need to pay the $7.95 fee to have access to calls home. The fee is to activate on board texting and calls. Also the calls home were .79 per minute.

[GadaboutGranny]

We just got off the Breakaway and found Facebook Messenger worked the best for us to stay in touch with the kiddos back home. We got a 100mb internet package for $29 and had plenty left over. We probably sent 4 or 5 messages a day to the kids and got an equal amount back. You have to turn your wifi off immediately after you use it or somehow your data will get used up (we found this out the hard way the first day in the first hour at sea when we accidentally left it on and had all of our data gone within 30 minutes). They kindly gifted us back 60mb and we still had 25 or 30mb left at the end of the cruise. The nice thing is that even though our wifi is off, our iphone 6 would still ding a facebook notification when the kids messaged us and you could see a preview of the message even though we weren't connected. This way, we always knew if the kids were trying to get ahold of us. Worked awesome! Would do it this way again in a heartbeat. Tip: take your devices to the internet specialty person at the internet cafe first thing and have them turn everything off that need to be turned off. We took ours directly to ATT before we left and thought they showed us everything we needed to turn off. They showed us everything that uses cellular data, but some apps (like icloud and itunes) are set to only update using wifi and never cellular, so those apps could eat your data if they updates aren't turned off.

 

Thanks Kenlorz, I think that Facebook Messenger sounds like the best option for us as everyone has a Facebook account. Also thanks for the tip to have the internet specialty person turn off the stuff we don't need on our phones. I am not particularly electronically savvy so it would be good to have someone who is help us out. Last cruise I ended up with a $450.00 phone bill because I forgot to turn off data roaming.

Edited June 13, 2015 by GadaboutGranny
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