Dry Erase boards outside the cabin

[N2Mischief]

The phone system actually works very well. If you can't come up with an alternative resolution, give it a try the day of embarkation. You can practice. Call THEIR phone from YOUR cabin and leave a message. When they go to their cabin and see the red light flashing, it tells them there is a message. They just press the button.:) EASY PEASY

 

 

 

This!

[SadieN]

Ship's phones are located on every bar, on the lido deck and attached to the walls at seemingly random places.

If you're in Cabin 321 on the Riviera deck you'd call 4321. 4 being the number for Riviera deck and 321 you're cabin number.

[stevefrisco]

The kids hopefully cannot read all the vulgar stuff that will be on there BUT the obscene and vulgar drawings will be readily apparant (assuming you have boys.) our neighbors used one and it had penises and oral sex depictions every morning when we walked by and a different drawing or saying when we got back from port or pool.

[mmckm]

Why don't you get a key card to enter there cabin and leave the messages there if you don't want them to have access to yours.

[97t-bird]

This is the dry erase board I used on my cruise on RC explorer of the seas......It is a photo I took on another trip and used it to communicate with our friends. Also left a message encouraging people to write things....Surprisingly it never "really" got out of hand just funny. My buddy and I would leave responses to the random messages.

The board is 12x18 and has magnetic strips on the back.

[KatPem]

How old are your children? I would suggest trying to use the phones....use your first day to see how it will work for you and have post it notes as a back up. When we take the kids, we leave post it notes on each other's doors with what time we are leaving the note, where we are going, who we are with and when we anticipate being back. We left them on the doors or inside (we had keys to each other's rooms) but you could also stick them in the mail boxes if you were concerned about someone messing with them. Or, on the first day you could go to guest service and get you and your husband each a key to their room and leave all notes in there. This worked out well for us so we could find each other. They were 9-11-12-15 first cruise and 11-13-14-17 the second time. We also gave them a time they had to be in the cabin to get ready for dinner as well as a set of rules (such as no going to cabin areas with anyone, including new friends....etc)

[fmrlkr]

We used a dry erase board on a cruise with 3 families including 4 girls aged 8, 12, 15 and 20. It worked great. Everyone would write a note about where they were or what time we were all meeting for dinner. No one wrote bad things, it was not stolen. We got it at dollar tree and also bought sea creature stickers to decorate it. The girls had free run of the ship as long as they stayed together, the 20 year old is a mother hen type so we knew we could trust them. In the end, they felt empowered to chose their activities. They came to us more often than we went to find them. They were afraid we were having fun without them. Use the board and have fun.

[Cinnamon2]

Mary, I think this is a very good idea. I did something similar on my past 3 cruises . . . not white boards but stick on (and easy to pull off) chalk boards. I showed it to my room steward as I was sticking it on my door so he would know it was harmless.

 

It was handy to post quick messages to my friends/family such as "at Lido aft" or "see you all at dinner" or "at the casino". Never was tampered with. I was able to put a small piece of chalk in the mail box outside my room. Worked great. I purchased a 4-pack (for $5) of these small chalk boards at a CVS store before Christmas when they stock up with small novel things to purchase.

 

I'm sure white boards would work well - as long as they temporarily stick to your door (magnets? Command hooks? whatever works . . . )

[tonit964]

Did anybody use these OUTSIDE of your cabin? Just wondering if this is a good idea. We will have two cabins and are trying to figure out the easiest way to communicate.

 

Looks like Walkie Talkies don't work very well.

 

Not everybody has a phone, so social media messaging won't work.

 

We don't need to be in constant contact with each other every moment of the day, just trying to figure out an easy "1:00p- playing Bingo" kinda way to communicate.

 

 

Or would it be better to figure out a way to for the kids to have room access to our cabin and just write notes INSIDE?

 

thoughts?? :)

 

There are "mailboxes" right outside your door. You could leave the notes/messages in there.

 

We were at the very back of the ship with little foot traffic and one Thanksgiving cruise, we had a Happy Thanksgiving paper sign on the door that got stolen, my DH found it on some crew door at the front of the ship.

 

So the board could get stolen or your messages could get pranked.

[Retired_to_Cruise]

did anybody use these outside of your cabin? Just wondering if this is a good idea. We will have two cabins and are trying to figure out the easiest way to communicate.

 

Looks like walkie talkies don't work very well.

 

Not everybody has a phone, so social media messaging won't work.

 

We don't need to be in constant contact with each other every moment of the day, just trying to figure out an easy "1:00p- playing bingo" kinda way to communicate.

 

 

Or would it be better to figure out a way to for the kids to have room access to our cabin and just write notes inside?

 

Thoughts?? :)

 

there is a mailbox outside of each stateroom door.

[grannycroozer]

We've used the dry erase board outside our cabin and had little problems. Someone stole the marker once, but I had brought an extra one.

[Wish2cruzmore]

We had two boards between five rooms on RC Freedom a couple of years ago. Nobody stole them but people outside our group did write on them daily. We had many good laughs over the comments AND pictures. They were fine for letting each other know about minor things like "went to the pool" but we always made sure talked to each other about the important events.

[hillbilly cruiser]

Have been on 18 cruises and have seen several boards and have never seen any thing out of line. Thought it was a neat idea. Like said try it and if it doesn't work try plan B

[ohiowilly]

On our recent cruise, there were a few cabins on our deck, near our cabin that used the Dry-Erase boards to leave messages for others in their family.

 

One group used them exactly as described in a previous post - i.e. 1pm Trivia - 2pm meet at Guys for lunch, etc.

I didn't see any signs of anyone bothering the board all week.

 

We had another cruise neighbor that posted general notes to everyone, as well as posted messages about the annoying battery operated musical toy fish skeleton that hung on their door, playing a bothersome song-byte 100 times per day. I'm not sure why they posted the Dry-erase board; people posted nice messages asking them to turn off the noisy musical fish, but they never did - except when THEY were in the cabin sleeping. - Sorry for the tangent!

[tinalouise69]

When my family went (3 cabins total) we used large round peel and stick decals that are dry erase along with dry erase markers that had a magnet/eraser in the cap. Worked great - 'boards' were secure and peeled off easily at the end of the cruise. We brought extra markers just in case but no issues. Had a few friendly notes once in a while but nothing inappropriate. Will definitely do it next time as well.

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Forums mobile app

[RWolver672]

What a lot of families do in this situation is plan a meeting time at a certain place several times a day. Tell the kids that they have to meet or they'll lose their freedom.

[RoscoeJames]

We had 6 cabins among our family during Christmas. I made up a board for each room and we all enjoyed writing Christmas messages or funny notes to each other as well as our kids posting where they were. We have never had a problem using them.

[Saltz]

Our neighbors on our last cruise had one. Every morning it was filled with vulgar messages from the night before. I guess the drunks returning from the bars could not resist it.:confused:

 

 

We saw the same thing on our Breeze cruise. If it wasn't messages, it was crude drawings of a body part. O_O

[Havingfun2010]

So far, I learned that on a Carnival ship, expect crude drawings and lewd statement on message boards. I also learned that the art of communication is missing. We just always told our kids where to be and at what time, and they had to comply. Same as when I was a kid. Before text and phones.

 

Leave notes in your room, I don't understand why you don't have access to their room, and why are they running around the ship by themselves?

[WildBlueYonder64]

We've also utilized the metal mailboxes by the door to leave messages for others - we would always check for 'tree mail' anytime we returned to our cabin.

[raynvic]

We use the dry erase boards on almost every cruise with no problems.

[L&J]

We had 4 cabins in a row on our last cruise and we all brought dry erase boards. They were awesome and worked like a charm! We never had any problems with anyone taking markers or leaving rude messages. That had never even occurred to me. It was a great way for our group of 13 (ages 5-70) to keep tabs on each other. It's at the top of my list to bring again next year!!

[capcutie2002]

On our recent cruise, there were a few cabins on our deck, near our cabin that used the Dry-Erase boards to leave messages for others in their family.

 

One group used them exactly as described in a previous post - i.e. 1pm Trivia - 2pm meet at Guys for lunch, etc.

I didn't see any signs of anyone bothering the board all week.

 

We had another cruise neighbor that posted general notes to everyone, as well as posted messages about the annoying battery operated musical toy fish skeleton that hung on their door, playing a bothersome song-byte 100 times per day. I'm not sure why they posted the Dry-erase board; people posted nice messages asking them to turn off the noisy musical fish, but they never did - except when THEY were in the cabin sleeping. - Sorry for the tangent!

 

Was the noisy fish on your recent Sunshine cruise? I had a friend that was complaining about that dang musical fish. I thought they finally got them to remove it though. How thoughtless some people are! Luckily, my room was on another deck.

 

I usually travel with a group and we use the dry erase boards on our doors and haven't had any issues. Some people will leave a "Hi" message. We also have had magnetic poetry on the doors and people have fun with those. We aren't usually in high traffic areas and these are longer cruises, so this may help. We use command strips to adhere the Dollar Tree dry erase boards to the doors.

Edited February 29, 2016 by capcutie2002

[Bugger54]

We usually have 6 or 7 cabins in our group when we cruise. We all use the boards and after 5 cruises we still have them! They are fun and other people even write messages. Take a board!

[Colorado Beach Bum]

People really steal these?? :confused: wow. They cost like... 99 cents! LOL

 

Just trying to keep things simple. I need some way to keep track of each other. I can't even keep track of where my DH is, much less the three kids! :D

 

We have used dry erase boards many times. We place them on the outside of the door and NEVER have had anyone steal them. We have gotten a few "goofy" messages and a few "naughty pictures" but it works well for us and our kids.

 

To be completely honest though, the kids generally know where I will be on the ship, we tend to hang out in the same places and they have never had trouble finding me.