Does Harmony offer free iMessage texting?

[chiguypaul]

Sailing on the Harmony soon. Heard you could iMessage on phones without buying data plan. Is that still the case?

[Biker19]

Not any more since they switched to the RCI app.

[flamingos]

So will the RCI app work for messaging without buying VOOM?

[Clarea]

18 minutes ago, flamingos said:

So will the RCI app work for messaging without buying VOOM?

 

Eventually there will be a free chat feature (no VOOM purchase needed) with the RCI App, however I believe only Allure has that now.

[CeCe_]

We will be sailing on Symphony in January.  Does Symphony have any kind of free messaging?

Edited December 22, 2018 by CeCe_

[Clarea]

3 minutes ago, CeCe_ said:

We will be sailing on Symphony in January.  Does Symphony have any kind of free messaging?

 

Not presently, but possible by the time you cruise.

[WeExplore]

10 hours ago, chiguypaul said:

Sailing on the Harmony soon. Heard you could iMessage on phones without buying data plan. Is that still the case?

Just sailed on Harmony on December 9th and iMessage worked for us without buying the internet. We were told that eventually the message feature on the Royal app will be added for Harmony. 

[Clarea]

8 minutes ago, WeExplore said:

Just sailed on Harmony on December 9th and iMessage worked for us without buying the internet. We were told that eventually the message feature on the Royal app will be added for Harmony. 

 

From what I understand, the Royal App has very recently been implemented on Harmony, which supposedly plugs the free iMessage hole.

[chiguypaul]

Just back from Harmony. Texting with iMessage worked without data plan, but very inconsistent. A few times we had to reactivate iMessage by enabling wifi service on the device, and reactivating iMessage. Given the consistency and reliability issues, my wife and I determined that going forward we would just suck up the basic Internet package for our family of four. Having texting with the family was invaluable. 

[Ourusualbeach]

28 minutes ago, chiguypaul said:

Just back from Harmony. Texting with iMessage worked without data plan, but very inconsistent. A few times we had to reactivate iMessage by enabling wifi service on the device, and reactivating iMessage. Given the consistency and reliability issues, my wife and I determined that going forward we would just suck up the basic Internet package for our family of four. Having texting with the family was invaluable. 

Going forward the app will have free texting available for ships other than the Allure.  It worked well on the Allure 2 weeks ago.

Edited January 8, 2019 by Ourusualbeach

[Loud_curly]

16 hours ago, chiguypaul said:

Just back from Harmony. Texting with iMessage worked without data plan, but very inconsistent. A few times we had to reactivate iMessage by enabling wifi service on the device, and reactivating iMessage. Given the consistency and reliability issues, my wife and I determined that going forward we would just suck up the basic Internet package for our family of four. Having texting with the family was invaluable. 

 Another one just off Harmony. We set our iphones to Airplane mode plus Royal wifi, and had no trouble communicating via iMessage during the cruise. We were also able to text back home to folks that had iphones. We went with another family that had Android phones and did not purchase Voom. They were able to receive all of our texts, but could not text back. It worked well for letting them know where we were and times to meet without calling the room.