Imessages onboard..

[MomtherOfDragons]

Hello! We were on the Dream in January and our imessages worked on our phones, we did not buy the wifi plans… We are on the Breeze right now about to pull out of Galveston and I can’t send imessages if im in airplane mode anymore while connected to Carnival wifi.. Did they change something or am I doing something wrong? Thanks :)

[sanger727]

I don't know if they changed anything; but technically speaking; being connected to Carnival without the internet should never have allowed imessages to go through. Sounds like a technical glitch. Perhaps they fixed that. 

[BallFour4]

iMessage requires internet or data plan enabled cell service to work. Your Dream cruise might have been an anomaly, or you left data roaming on.

Not long after the ship leaves port phones are out of range. A third party (usually Cellular at Sea) pays Carnival a hefty sum to operate and maintain a satellite based service to couple cell provider signals.That isn't cheap.
 One option is to turn your phone on Airplane mode, subscribe to the WiFi plan and use iMessage. Only one device can be logged into each single plan. Another is using other services like WhatsApp to communicate. The shortcoming is you can only reach others that use the app.
 My wife and I cruise a lot, and we use iMessage, each of us with our own plans. I need it for my company and I don't argue with her why she wants her own. Forty years of marriage, pro tip.
 Check your phone display and see what is visible.

 

.

Edited June 1, 2023 by BallFour4

[Gamecock_Cruiser]

We have had it work on some cruises and not others while on airplane mode. And we never purchase wifi. 

[lesters]

Our last cruise on the Magic iMessages worked between my hubby and I even though only 1 of us that the wifi package working at any given time.  Somehow it worked.  Didn't question just enjoyed being able to connect when we needed to.

[Purvis1231]

2 hours ago, MomtherOfDragons said:

Hello! We were on the Dream in January and our imessages worked on our phones, we did not buy the wifi plans… We are on the Breeze right now about to pull out of Galveston and I can’t send imessages if im in airplane mode anymore while connected to Carnival wifi.. Did they change something or am I doing something wrong? Thanks 🙂

See if it works while out at sea, last June we discovered I-messages and Facebook Messenger worked for us between iphones on the ship and with others back in the USA. I was afraid of a big bill when we got home but discovered no charges.  

[illinoisfive]

was on the horizon end of april.  i had social package and imessage worked for the first three days and then not again.  my husband did not have any package and his imessage worked the entire 8 days.  i figured considered myself lucky if it worked at all with social package and especially no package.  whatsapp worked perfectly as it should.

 

[kelkel2]

I think if you got your iMessage to go though without paying for Wi-Fi, you’re lucky. You need to be connected to some sort of internet for those to go through. 

[Illbcruzn4life]

2 hours ago, illinoisfive said:

was on the horizon end of april.  i had social package and imessage worked for the first three days and then not again.  my husband did not have any package and his imessage worked the entire 8 days.  i figured considered myself lucky if it worked at all with social package and especially no package.  whatsapp worked perfectly as it should.

 

we were on the Horizon a year ago and it worked in the beginning of the cruise then stopped and started working towards the end again. We had no internet package.

 

On Celebration in April we had the premium package and still couldn't text people with android phones but worked fine with other iphone users.

 

Beats me, tech savvy I am not.

[CruiserLucas]

Maybe it's a recent technical glitch. We never had it work in the past, but on our cruise two weeks ago (on RCI) iMessage worked for me in Airplane mode with no internet package. It was intermittent on certain days, though. It also wouldn't send or receive picture iMessages, only text-based iMessages. I wouldn't rely on it being available guaranteed, probably just some network setting they'll patch at some point. 

[Sabalon]

iMessage, like many other things, uses the apple push service.  Most notifications on your phone use that, like my garage door, and like the Carnival Hub app.    And since that whole stream is encrypted between your device and Apple, Carnival can't distinguish between an iMessage or their hub app letting you know your table is ready.   That's why it works (sometimes).    Now...why sending works, I'm not sure, but there is two way communication on the notifications to acknowledge receipt, register for receiving, etc... so perhaps that is how it sends.

 

Our last cruise (March, Elation) it worked pretty well between my wife and I onboard (airplane mode, wifi only for the hub app, nothing paid)   Nothing like being out at a sea and knowing when your garage door opens and closes, or when a network switch at work goes haywire...always 2am.   

Pictures would not send or be received, so we had to wait til we were in port with cellular or find free wifi.  I did have an issue on the last day where my phone decided to sign me out of iMessage for some reason so it all stopped working.     Also, as CruiserLucas said - I wouldn't rely to heavily on it.  Sometimes I'd get it way later.  But we had the same issue with the hub app where my wife got notified our table was ready, but we were halfway through eating when I got the notification.  

[TexasJohn82]

2 hours ago, Sabalon said:

iMessage, like many other things, uses the apple push service.  Most notifications on your phone use that, like my garage door, and like the Carnival Hub app.    And since that whole stream is encrypted between your device and Apple, Carnival can't distinguish between an iMessage or their hub app letting you know your table is ready.   That's why it works (sometimes).    Now...why sending works, I'm not sure, but there is two way communication on the notifications to acknowledge receipt, register for receiving, etc... so perhaps that is how it sends.

 

Our last cruise (March, Elation) it worked pretty well between my wife and I onboard (airplane mode, wifi only for the hub app, nothing paid)   Nothing like being out at a sea and knowing when your garage door opens and closes, or when a network switch at work goes haywire...always 2am.   

Pictures would not send or be received, so we had to wait til we were in port with cellular or find free wifi.  I did have an issue on the last day where my phone decided to sign me out of iMessage for some reason so it all stopped working.     Also, as CruiserLucas said - I wouldn't rely to heavily on it.  Sometimes I'd get it way later.  But we had the same issue with the hub app where my wife got notified our table was ready, but we were halfway through eating when I got the notification.  

The way the services are designed is you keep a connection open for a period of time (it goes to sleep for lack of a better term) to help throttle connections.  So it may work for a period of time as you had a good connection before joining and Carnival is blocking internet access via a gateway (the screen you get to login) so existing connections will still work until they have to re authenticate or re connect at which point it stops working.  So that is why you are hit or miss or worked at the start and not the end.  Android (or at least iPhone to Android) is SMS so no service connection just an old school SMS hence why it won't work even with WifI as Carnival has blocked the call over wifi.  So the services like Ring, your garage door, and Messages are using a always connected service that doesn't require DNS authentication every time.  

I guess long story short there is no guarantee that iMessage will work without Wifi but it does work with Wifi!

[Illbcruzn4life]

1 hour ago, TexasJohn82 said:

The way the services are designed is you keep a connection open for a period of time (it goes to sleep for lack of a better term) to help throttle connections.  So it may work for a period of time as you had a good connection before joining and Carnival is blocking internet access via a gateway (the screen you get to login) so existing connections will still work until they have to re authenticate or re connect at which point it stops working.  So that is why you are hit or miss or worked at the start and not the end.  Android (or at least iPhone to Android) is SMS so no service connection just an old school SMS hence why it won't work even with WifI as Carnival has blocked the call over wifi.  So the services like Ring, your garage door, and Messages are using a always connected service that doesn't require DNS authentication every time.  

I guess long story short there is no guarantee that iMessage will work without Wifi but it does work with Wifi!

thanks for the thorough explanation. Makes sense.🙂

[dallasdan]

My last several cruises I message worked so we didn't need to pay the $5 for hub app chat feature.  Sometimes you do get kicked off I message.  If it shows green when you are texting, it will not work and it only works on I phone to I phone.  If you get kicked off, you will need to restart your phone.  

 

 

[thodges]

We were on Horizon last month and discovered that we could send and receive iMessages from 'home'.    

 

This almost ruined our cruise.   We had been dealing with a family medical emergency with my sister/father prior to the cruise.   We were relieved that we would be unreachable for a week on the cruise.  (Other family members would handle things in the meantime.)

 

Later that evening after sailing, my phone suddenly receives a text from my other sister.   In hindsight I should have ignored it, but instead replied.   Once we figured out we were not unreachable, I told my sister not to tell anyone else.   Thankfully, she kept communication to a minimum after that.   We did enjoy the cruise.

 

FYI, the medical issue is resolving itself, but my older sister will no longer live alone and has moved in with our father.

[CruiserLucas]

1 hour ago, TexasJohn82 said:

The way the services are designed is you keep a connection open for a period of time (it goes to sleep for lack of a better term) to help throttle connections.  So it may work for a period of time as you had a good connection before joining and Carnival is blocking internet access via a gateway (the screen you get to login) so existing connections will still work until they have to re authenticate or re connect at which point it stops working.  So that is why you are hit or miss or worked at the start and not the end.  Android (or at least iPhone to Android) is SMS so no service connection just an old school SMS hence why it won't work even with WifI as Carnival has blocked the call over wifi.  So the services like Ring, your garage door, and Messages are using a always connected service that doesn't require DNS authentication every time.  

I guess long story short there is no guarantee that iMessage will work without Wifi but it does work with Wifi!

 

4 hours ago, Sabalon said:

iMessage, like many other things, uses the apple push service.  Most notifications on your phone use that, like my garage door, and like the Carnival Hub app.    And since that whole stream is encrypted between your device and Apple, Carnival can't distinguish between an iMessage or their hub app letting you know your table is ready.   That's why it works (sometimes).    Now...why sending works, I'm not sure, but there is two way communication on the notifications to acknowledge receipt, register for receiving, etc... so perhaps that is how it sends.

 

Our last cruise (March, Elation) it worked pretty well between my wife and I onboard (airplane mode, wifi only for the hub app, nothing paid)   Nothing like being out at a sea and knowing when your garage door opens and closes, or when a network switch at work goes haywire...always 2am.   

Pictures would not send or be received, so we had to wait til we were in port with cellular or find free wifi.  I did have an issue on the last day where my phone decided to sign me out of iMessage for some reason so it all stopped working.     Also, as CruiserLucas said - I wouldn't rely to heavily on it.  Sometimes I'd get it way later.  But we had the same issue with the hub app where my wife got notified our table was ready, but we were halfway through eating when I got the notification.  

 

Interesting. Those explanations make sense - they can't fully limit notification receipts, so it allows some other unintended services through. And the service times out so that's why we lose functionality after a while until it reconnects. Again, we were on Royal for our previous cruise but I assume Carnival is using similar networking tech, thought it's never worked on any of our Carnival cruise or other prior Royal cruise. And while it worked for me, my partner never got or could send iMessages like I could, and he has the same iPhone and updates installed it was only my device that worked. 

[sanger727]

35 minutes ago, thodges said:

We were on Horizon last month and discovered that we could send and receive iMessages from 'home'.    

 

This almost ruined our cruise.   We had been dealing with a family medical emergency with my sister/father prior to the cruise.   We were relieved that we would be unreachable for a week on the cruise.  (Other family members would handle things in the meantime.)

 

Later that evening after sailing, my phone suddenly receives a text from my other sister.   In hindsight I should have ignored it, but instead replied.   Once we figured out we were not unreachable, I told my sister not to tell anyone else.   Thankfully, she kept communication to a minimum after that.   We did enjoy the cruise.

 

FYI, the medical issue is resolving itself, but my older sister will no longer live alone and has moved in with our father.

 

Just FYI in case this happens again. If you wanted to remain unreachable, you still could have. If you go to your settings -> Messages -> you can toggle "imessage" off. Then it will no longer attempt to get or receive imessages, just SMS texts. As long as you are in airplane message, SMS texts can't be received. 

[Drose716]

I was on celebration in Feb & 2/3 had the social plan & 3rd had no internet plan. iMessage worked just fine for all 3 of us.

 

I was on radiance in March & had social. Daughter did not. Both our iMessages worked fine. 

[JenSDCA]

Just got off Panorama with my family. All 4 of us have iPhone 14s. 3 of us could send and receive iMessages at the beginning of the cruise; at the end of the cruise 3 of us could not. It didn’t matter to us as we’d paid for the $5 chat feature in the Hub app, but it was just odd. I continued to receive push notifications for my Ring, but couldn’t iMessage after day 3 or 4. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[Saint Greg]

I’m hearing people on Venezia saying iMessage, WhatsApp, and some other messaging apps on the iPhone work without the internet package.

 

[mz-s]

Carnival has probably figured out how to close that loophole. It was never guaranteed to work, just a happy accident.

[Purvis1231]

I was on the Glory 6/18/23 to 6/25/23. We found that I messages and. Facebook Messenger at times worked. Also, we received notifications from our security cameras and SnapChat without being corrected to the paid Carnival Wifi.

 

My daughter had the mid-range paid Wifi on her device and found SnapChat text and video calls worked most of the time while we found that Facebook would not work too well in the cabin but worked ok in the ship's interior areas. 

[dmet0225]

Just got off the Celebration yesterday.  We never buy the internet package, and only the use the Hub app with the chat feature.  Therefore, we had our phones in Airplane mode and used the ship’s Wi-Fi. We were quite surprised to find that we could get texts (and no pictures) with other iPhone users.  At times, I had to tell my family that I was putting the phone away so that I could enjoy my vacation.

[Colorado Beach Bum]

On Luminosa and iMessage is working for all 6 in our group with no purchase of WiFi plans. 

[momof3cruisers]

On 6/1/2023 at 3:09 PM, Gamecock_Cruiser said:

We have had it work on some cruises and not others while on airplane mode. And we never purchase wifi. 

Same here. In October last year, I could iMessage my sisters and a couple of friends and receive responses while out at sea. Phone in airplane mode, all data roaming turned off, no additional charges. We were on the Spirit for 14 days and it worked the entire time. 
 

This past Feb, I was on Paradise for five days and it mainly worked but sometimes went in and out. 
 

Sometime in between there, I was on Breeze and it didn’t work. Wonder if it’s more frequent on smaller ships.