Need Help with iPhone settings for texting only on ship

[chipmaster]

Walkie talkies no longer work?

 

That's one of the only things I liked about Disney...the Wave phones...they were an amazing addition and I hope that other lines follow suit.

 

Old school, rofl, they work but poorly and are frowned on by many :)

 

Believe it or not I've survived by just walking around and finding them, the ship isn't that large not are there that many places to hide.

Edited May 4, 2014 by chipmaster

[DrivesLikeMario]

My post was directed to the original poster. :)

I copied your post by mistake. DUH

 

That's perfectly okay. ;) You obviously need a wonderfully relaxing cruise to help you get over doing things like that. Sounds like a tax write-off to me. :D

[Loonbeam]

The ships wifi costs minutes to use technically, not just for internet. If Princess has not run the ports that imessage uses through the pay gateway, it may work.

 

Either way, you would still need to connect via internet to start the chat.

 

The way iMessage works is that when you start a chat, it connects to the iCloud servers and gets a temporary 'address' that is assigned to your device(s) attached to an account. That ID is unique to that chat session. Once both devices have their IDs, they communicate directly in many cases, which is why the ships wifi may work without minutes after that. However, if the chat goes idle for a period of time, that will reset the ID, which will require resynching via internet (because the phones need to talk to apple again)

 

I called the AT&T International Customer Service which is a totally different department, yesterday and got some clarification, but I'm going to call again today and talk to someone else to verify the info. If they both give me the same answers, then I will post it.

 

But what I was wondering, for the ships wifi, in order to use the Internet, you have to purchase the Internet minutes, but if you only want to connect to the wifi to use iMessage, which is free, then technically you won't need minutes, just access to the wifi, right? I'm going to ask that to AT&T too.

[Linda the Book Lover]

Times have changed and it is nice to be able to check in quickly without having to meet up or search for someone. Sometimes it is helpful for me just to find the DH! LOL

[duck addict]

From experience :mad: leave your phone off unless you are in a US port.

 

My Iphone (ATT) worked fine in Alaska and on Hawaii (as well as

St Thomas USVI).

 

BUT YOU HAVE TO BE CAREFUL When I did my recent Hawaii cruise, I was able to use my phone with no problem. BUT I forgot to turn off roaming. One our three hour stop in Ensenada, I stupidly forgot I had not changed the settings.... I turned it on and 'saw' the roaming come on. The phone was on less than one minute...cost me $15 from cellular at sea and another $15 for roaming.

 

I did not make that mistake in Canada on my Alaska cruise. I left it off in Vancouver and all sea time. Only on when tied up in Alaska Ports (and remembered not to turn it on when I took the White horse tour to Canada). No charges:)

Edited May 4, 2014 by duck addict