Harmony of the Seas Free Text Messaging – Royal Caribbean
I just got back from my cruise and wanted to put some confirmation to the rumors that you could get FREE text Messaging on some ships in the Royal Caribbean fleet. I can specifically confirm that as of June 2019, on the Harmony of the Seas Ship, I was able to get free texting on my phones. I made a quick video with all the details here since I had a real hard time finding this information on the internet. I just found lots of conflicting information and nothing concrete. Here’s my attempt at filling that information gap.
In a nutshell, it is an iPhone to iPhone only feature/bug/hole/whatever that will allowed passengers to text from iOS to iOS regardless of location. So Ship to Ship, Ship to Land and Land to Ship all worked for us while on board using only the free Wi-Fi. It was really great being able to communicate with everyone on such a massive ship. On our past Disney cruise, we had used the provided wave phones to communicate but we were limited to ship to ship only. Being able to communicate back to family at home was nice for checking in on things during our vacation.
We also got a fair amount of notifications on the phone from other app. Twitter, Home Assistant, Facebook etc.. but could not respond or dig into the content of the messages. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks Royal might let those notifications pass through to push you over the edge and compel you to buy the Voom internet package from them.
But we held firm and enjoyed our little iOS only text messaging bug over the free Wi-Fi they provided for the Royal App.
As an added bonus for reading to the end of this, if you are planning a cruise adventure, be sure to bring lanyards AND plastic holders for the Sea Pass cards. Apparently, they are full RFID circuits and if you punch a hole in them to attach to a lanyard, they will cease to function. I took one for the team and broke ALL FOUR of ours in search of a possible spot to put a hole into since the lanyards on ship are 8 bucks each. The links above have them for 50 cents each…
Happy Cruising!