Staying in touch with co-travelers on board?

We are going on a cruise to Alaska in a few weeks. I was wondering how you stay in contact with each other while on board? I am sure my son would want to roam around, but I would like to be able to reach him to check in or ask him to join us for dinner.

We are going on a cruise to Alaska in a few weeks. I was wondering how you stay in contact with each other while on board? I am sure my son would want to roam around, but I would like to be able to reach him to check in or ask him to join us for dinner.

It looks like you are on a Holland cruise. If so, you might want to consider posting this on the dedicated Holland forum. There may be communication options specific to Holland that folks on the other forum would know about. Also mention the ship you will be taking.

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=171

Same stateroom? Post-it notes on the mirror. Different stateroom? Room-to-room phones have voicemail.

The ships are not that large to make that too difficult. Arrange meeting times and places, discuss plans and activities in the morning / evening with "check in" plans, post its on doors, voicemail in rooms, check likely hang out locations, set meal times with plans to meet, etc. BTW, you don't say how old your son is, but I would hope joining you for dinner would be a given or at least understood in advance what the alternatives are.

All good suggestions above. There's no special way to keep on touch in HAL.

Surely you will have at least 1 meal together daily...and that's the time to coordinate your future plans! If everyone has an idea of where everyone else will be, then it's easy to find each other! You can leave messages not he cabin phones, too.

If your son is under, say 17, then I'd have him check in with me PHYSICALLY frequently... its always good to actually SEE your kids.!

Thanks for the tips. I was more wondering in case of change of plans or emergencies. I am lazy enough to not want search the whole ship for him when we need to adjust plans.

You should post on the cruise line forum to get more info. On Disney, they have wave phones which is really cool. Each cabin has 2 small wireless phones usable anywhere on the ship.

On Celebrity, we got the unlimited data packages as a perk so our son just use his iPhone and we can talk to him using Whatsapp.

We have been sailing with my Grandson and the various friends he's brought with us on cruises for a number of years from when he shared a cabin with us to having a separate cabin.He's now beyond the age of checking in with us but it worked over the years and we never experienced any problems. He always knew that he had to have dinner with us and he and his friend were usually waiting at the table when we arrived. They knew that we had a few "favorite" spots where we could be found...our cabin or an area around the pool, etc. We left voice messages and they left messages for us. He also had his phone and we had the unlimited data package so text messages took care of any emergency or change in plans.

This doesn't help if you are on HAL, but on Celebrity normally everyone in our group has the internet package and we've found that facebook messenger was the most reliable platform for sending messages to each other.