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Harmony of the Seas Feb. 3-10, 2019 review

bandjwayne

By bandjwayne,
in Royal Caribbean International

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bandjwayne

bandjwayne

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I also had a couple more thoughts today:

 

Wow Bands:  For ~$5 you can get a wristband programmed with your account information and use this instead of your Sign & Sail card for onboard purchases & opening your cabin door.  We were able to get them on the first day on the Promenade (Deck 5).  We found this easy to wear (they're waterproof) and my husband much preferred this to wearing a lanyard with his card.  Note that on this ship you can NOT punch your card so you must have a lanyard with a plastic sleeve to hold the card.  Downfalls to the Wow Band are that you have to take them off to give to a bar waiter to scan & you can NOT used them to get on/off the ship.

 

Apple iMessage was still working on this trip w/out having to purchase wifi.  There has been some messages on this board saying that this only works on Harmony & might be going away.  As of 2/10 it still worked.  I was surprised to see that it worked for messages to people both on and off the ship. 

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cocoabeana

cocoabeana

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12 minutes ago, bandjwayne said:

I also had a couple more thoughts today:

 

Wow Bands:  For ~$5 you can get a wristband programmed with your account information and use this instead of your Sign & Sail card for onboard purchases & opening your cabin door.  We were able to get them on the first day on the Promenade (Deck 5).  We found this easy to wear (they're waterproof) and my husband much preferred this to wearing a lanyard with his card.  Note that on this ship you can NOT punch your card so you must have a lanyard with a plastic sleeve to hold the card.  Downfalls to the Wow Band are that you have to take them off to give to a bar waiter to scan & you can NOT used them to get on/off the ship.

 

Apple iMessage was still working on this trip w/out having to purchase wifi.  There has been some messages on this board saying that this only works on Harmony & might be going away.  As of 2/10 it still worked.  I was surprised to see that it worked for messages to people both on and off the ship. 

None of us could get the Apple IMessage to work!  There were 7 of us with the Iphone, and it just kept saying it couldn’t connect.  That was annoying.  We thought we would all be able to find each other!    

We were in 9313 closer to the back.  Loved the location.  Never felt the boat move, although it was a very smooth cruise!  

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bandjwayne

bandjwayne

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None of us could get the Apple IMessage to work!  There were 7 of us with the Iphone, and it just kept saying it couldn’t connect.  That was annoying.  We thought we would all be able to find each other!    
We were in 9313 closer to the back.  Loved the location.  Never felt the boat move, although it was a very smooth cruise!  

Strange. We had the phones in airplane mode & then connected to the WiFi so nothing special. That being said we didn’t use it a lot as we don’t like being “connected” on vacation:)


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cocoabeana

cocoabeana

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22 minutes ago, bandjwayne said:


Strange. We had the phones in airplane mode & then connected to the WiFi so nothing special. That being said we didn’t use it a lot as we don’t like being “connected” on vacation:)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

We had the phones in airplane mode and connected to the wifi!  Oh well, we survived!  We were with 20 people so it would have made it easier to have the phones work!

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vidsmart

vidsmart

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16 hours ago, bandjwayne said:

 

Apple iMessage was still working on this trip w/out having to purchase wifi.  There has been some messages on this board saying that this only works on Harmony & might be going away.  As of 2/10 it still worked.  I was surprised to see that it worked for messages to people both on and off the ship. 

iMessage also worked for us on Anthem at Christmas. Good to hear it is on Harmony--just booked for August!

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soulbait

soulbait

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16 hours ago, bandjwayne said:

Apple iMessage was still working on this trip w/out having to purchase wifi.  There has been some messages on this board saying that this only works on Harmony & might be going away.  As of 2/10 it still worked.  I was surprised to see that it worked for messages to people both on and off the ship. 



I was going to make a tips post about this.  We were on the same sailing (3 different couples) and were bummed that RoyalIQ app was removed from this ship and were fearful we would not be able to text each other.  I then remembered reading on here that iMessage has been able to work on some of the ships.  The problem is my wife and I are on Android and our other friends are on iPhones, so no iMessage for us.  I decided to try out what we all use to chat with each other to see if that would work: Google Hangouts.  And it did!  All we needed to do is be on the ships free wifi that you use for the app (none of us had the internet package).  We could message each other with no issue, but could not send photos.

The entire cruise we used Google Hangouts and it made meeting up a breeze.

Also a couple of other things.  My friends who were on an older iPhone could text message people off the ship, but not the ones with the newer phones.  This was not iMessage, but your standard sms text.  

We could use Google Hangouts to communicate with anyone off the ship as well.

My wife and I were able to sms text off ship as well, but I think that is due to us being on GoogleFi.  Once again, we were only on the ship's "non internet connected" WiFi, with mobile data turned off.  We were able to send photos through the messages and receive from land.  I do not think this was an Android thing, but a GoogleFi feature due to how it is able to send through WiFi.

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cocoabeana

cocoabeana

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1 hour ago, soulbait said:



I was going to make a tips post about this.  We were on the same sailing (3 different couples) and were bummed that RoyalIQ app was removed from this ship and were fearful we would not be able to text each other.  I then remembered reading on here that iMessage has been able to work on some of the ships.  The problem is my wife and I are on Android and our other friends are on iPhones, so no iMessage for us.  I decided to try out what we all use to chat with each other to see if that would work: Google Hangouts.  And it did!  All we needed to do is be on the ships free wifi that you use for the app (none of us had the internet package).  We could message each other with no issue, but could not send photos.

The entire cruise we used Google Hangouts and it made meeting up a breeze.

Also a couple of other things.  My friends who were on an older iPhone could text message people off the ship, but not the ones with the newer phones.  This was not iMessage, but your standard sms text.  

We could use Google Hangouts to communicate with anyone off the ship as well.

My wife and I were able to sms text off ship as well, but I think that is due to us being on GoogleFi.  Once again, we were only on the ship's "non internet connected" WiFi, with mobile data turned off.  We were able to send photos through the messages and receive from land.  I do not think this was an Android thing, but a GoogleFi feature due to how it is able to send through WiFi.

 

i wish I had thought of that!  I have google hangouts and had we thought of that it would have helped us out immensly!    Oh well, we made do!

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bandjwayne

bandjwayne

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7 hours ago, soulbait said:



I was going to make a tips post about this.  We were on the same sailing (3 different couples) and were bummed that RoyalIQ app was removed from this ship and were fearful we would not be able to text each other.  I then remembered reading on here that iMessage has been able to work on some of the ships.  The problem is my wife and I are on Android and our other friends are on iPhones, so no iMessage for us.  I decided to try out what we all use to chat with each other to see if that would work: Google Hangouts.  And it did!  All we needed to do is be on the ships free wifi that you use for the app (none of us had the internet package).  We could message each other with no issue, but could not send photos.

The entire cruise we used Google Hangouts and it made meeting up a breeze.

Also a couple of other things.  My friends who were on an older iPhone could text message people off the ship, but not the ones with the newer phones.  This was not iMessage, but your standard sms text.  

We could use Google Hangouts to communicate with anyone off the ship as well.

My wife and I were able to sms text off ship as well, but I think that is due to us being on GoogleFi.  Once again, we were only on the ship's "non internet connected" WiFi, with mobile data turned off.  We were able to send photos through the messages and receive from land.  I do not think this was an Android thing, but a GoogleFi feature due to how it is able to send through WiFi.

Good point, I forgot about that, but the friend we were with also found that Google Hangout worked as she was getting messages from work where they use that.  

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bandjwayne

bandjwayne

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16 hours ago, mondsd said:

Thanks for posting the cruise compass.

 Do you know how much the ultimate beverage package was onboard the ship?

Sorry, I do not know the price onboard.  If you log into your planner you should be able to estimate it as the sales say things like "20% off onboard price".  We paid $49 for the ultimate beverage package. $47 was the cheapest we saw it and only for a day before it went back up in price.

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katiel53

katiel53

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On 2/18/2019 at 7:57 PM, cocoabeana said:

None of us could get the Apple IMessage to work!  There were 7 of us with the Iphone, and it just kept saying it couldn’t connect.  That was annoying.  We thought we would all be able to find each other!    

We were in 9313 closer to the back.  Loved the location.  Never felt the boat move, although it was a very smooth cruise!  

We were able to message back home while on Harmony.  We downloaded the app and it used Royal Caribbean Wi-Fi.  I did texts from my IPhone to other IPhones.  I guess we were lucky.

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myk249

myk249

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38 minutes ago, Friendofbillbob said:

do you know if the hammock will work on an inside balcony?  thanks 

Sorry, I do not. I only learned it would work in this post so I've never done it before.

Maybe you can find some pics of an inside balcony and see if there is a place to tie one up?

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MadamG2U

MadamG2U

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On 2/18/2019 at 7:42 PM, bandjwayne said:

I also had a couple more thoughts today:

 

Wow Bands:  For ~$5 you can get a wristband programmed with your account information and use this instead of your Sign & Sail card for onboard purchases & opening your cabin door.  We were able to get them on the first day on the Promenade (Deck 5).  We found this easy to wear (they're waterproof) and my husband much preferred this to wearing a lanyard with his card.  Note that on this ship you can NOT punch your card so you must have a lanyard with a plastic sleeve to hold the card.  Downfalls to the Wow Band are that you have to take them off to give to a bar waiter to scan & you can NOT used them to get on/off the ship.

 

Apple iMessage was still working on this trip w/out having to purchase wifi.  There has been some messages on this board saying that this only works on Harmony & might be going away.  As of 2/10 it still worked.  I was surprised to see that it worked for messages to people both on and off the ship. 

Thanks for all the information.  I do have a question, how does the WOW band work in the casino?

 

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katiel53

katiel53

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19 hours ago, MadamG2U said:

Thanks for all the information.  I do have a question, how does the WOW band work in the casino?

 

The slot machines do have a reader so putting the band up to the reader will sign you in.  There is one caveat though, at least to me.  If someone has left a machine shortly before you start to play, and they signed into a machine, even putting your band up to the reader, it looks like it's accepted, but it is not.  You are playing under the name of the other person.

 

It took a few times of putting my band up to the reader to get my band to work.  I am guessing there is some kind of time lag from when a person leaves and someone else comes to the machine before the band/card work.  A few times my band didn't work on the machine at all, so I used my card.  I think it was a lot easier using my card on the machines than using the band, even though it was the same thing when someone else's name was showing.

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