Need Walkie-Talkie advice-cruising with a 14 year old

[metzfan64]

We are a family of 3 taking our 3rd Disney Cruise, but this is our 1st 7 day on the Magic, western itinerary...this is the first time we are cruising without a group, so I'm a little concerned with how to communicate with my 14 year old daughter on the ship...i'm sure she is going to meet a lot of teens and will want to go off a do a lot of the activities...I want to give her the freedom to explore, but also want her to be able to contact us and vice versa so we have a general idea of what she is up to and set up meeting times...our cell phones never work and the 2 way radios (talkabouts) never work well...does anyone have any suggestions?

[mommasita]

I am moving this to the main cruise forum. You will get a lot more answers there. I have no teenagers yet ;) , so I don't know the answer...

[wayneg]

We took W/T on 1st cruise and they were useless, he had to go out onto balcony to have a chance, indoors anywhere they were not good. Cruises after that we just told him where we would be, roughly know where he will be and never a problem but we are lucky he is like a homing pigeon. He has been going to WDW and cruising since he was 3 (now 13) so he knows the ships and parks better than his home town.

[disneyholic family]

we were on two cruises when DS was 15 and 17...

we had two rules:
rule 1: if he wasn't with us he had to be with the teen club...
if he wasn't with the teen club, he had to tell us where he was....but he was always with the teen club...

rule 2: all meals were eaten together with us, unless prearranged otherwise (like on Castaway Cay he said he would eat with the teen club - so we ate at the adult beach - but he knew he could find us there if he needed us)...
we set a time he had to be back at the cabin to dress for dinner....and we set a time to meet for lunch...

he actually also joined us for the big shows, since he enjoyed watching them with us, so we knew to save a seat for him....