donandmelissa

If you have an iPhone, you can use WiFi to text other iPhones through an Apple exclusive platform called iMessage. It is integrated with the iPhones operating system. But you can’t use it on an Android phone, nor can you use an iPhone to text an Android phone over WiFi You can text on an Android over WiFi but both the sender and the recipient have to have WhatsApp. We always make sure to establish before the cruise how we are going to communicate with the people we need to text when we are on the ship (pet sitter, our kids, etc). Most of the have iPhones, which makes it easy. We use FB Messenger for the others. Hope this helps.

Thanks. This info is really helpful. We are going on a Transatlantic, so for the majority of the trip the view is going to be nothing but open ocean for as far as the eyes can see. Having a little extra space on the balcony will be a nice perk. I doubt we will be doing anything on the verandah that will even remotely interest the folks on the decks above. LOL!!!

I had not. That is a great resource. It actually has photos of the balcony next door that definitely show a deeper balcony shaped just like in the deck plan. It looks like we did indeed stumble into a bigger balcony. Thank you for introducing us to that resource!

We are sailing on Nieuw Statendam for the first time this Spring. We are booked in cabin 5117. From the diagram, it looks like it has a deeper balcony than most of the others in the same category, as it is on the diagonal just before the bump out for the suites. Has anyone stayed in this cabin or a comparable one on this ship? We are going to be happy, no matter what, but are curious as to whether we stumbled into a bigger balcony. Thanks in advance for any information you share.