Taking UK mobile phones to Orlando

[amf]

Hi.....with 2 kids (DD - 10 & DS - 7) who like different rides in the parks, it seems like we'll be splitting up quite a bit. We had considered buying 2 way radios in Florida, but have been put off by the fact that they would not be usable in UK and the reception area would not allow us to go to 2 different parks and remain in touch.

DW and I have just bough a tri band phone each, intending to use these to keep in touch. We will be using Virgin SIM cards and they are linked with T Mobile in Florida. We've never done this before. Has anyone else got experience of using their UK mobile in Florida? Any problems we should be aware of?

TIA.

Alex

 

[GO2209]

Unbelievably expensive! I think... Even though you may be stood beside each other, your calls will be international rate (effectively, you will be calling the UK each time, and the receiver will be paying for the call from the UK!). A 1 minute call will cost the caller 90p and the recipient 70p !!! Texts are 40p each!

How loud can you shout?

 

[GO2209]

Oops - I was wrong - the prices I used were t-mobile, virgin's pricing is much more simple - £1/min to make a call and £1/min to receive!

To add further insult, calls are not charged per second, but per minute!

 

[amf]

Thanks for your swift and helpful response

Owing to the costs of calls made and received we had intended our primary contact method to be text messaging (free to receive). Sorry, I should have made that clear in my first post. With the cost of say one text a day each for 21 days, the overall cost would be acceptable. Just so long as the texts are received pretty quickly.....otherwise voice calls (and the attendant costs) would be the alternative

 

[GO2209]

Text messages are 35p(?) each on virgin - and yes they are free to receive. However, I did find them to be a bit more erratic than in the UK. Most arrived within a minute or so of sending, but some took hours!

I remember there were a few blackspots around the parks... But overall coverage was okay.

 

[UKDEB]

We've used mobiles to keep in touch for the past two trips. I think it cost us around £40 each time. We're with O2 and we were able to pay £3 for a cheaper tariff. We found texts very slow the first time (last October), but almost instantaneous last time (May).

With some service providers, you have to be asked for International Roaming to be switched on.

Due to the voltage difference the phones take ages to charge and they don't charge fully. In May we took an in-car charger and that worked much better.

 

[Claire L]

My Nokia on Orange worked fine in California and my charger has variable voltage from 110 to 230 so no problem with charging. Also the texts were the same price (10p) as at home and were able to come off my talk plan at no extra cost. The only problem was I sometimes got a message saying 'please try again later' when in fact the text had sent so got billed twice for it butconsidering it cost the same as at home I'm not too worried at least the person I sent it to got it twice rather than not at all!!
Claire

 

[amf]

Many thanks, all

We have 100 - 240 volt chargers, so hopefully we'll be OK in so far as fully charging the phones is concerned.

I'm very tempted to give it a go....maybe a couple of text message dummy runs before we split up might allay our fears. As our phones are completely unlocked I wonder if another possibility might be buying a SIM card across there. I've tried to read up on this but can't find a definitive answer. Anyone tried this method of keeping in touch?

Thanks again

Alex

 

[matty624]

We went for three weeks last year, used our tri-band phones perhaps 6-10 times a day, very brief calls though, and it cost us about £50. It was T-mobile.
This year, (sorry, a bit off topic) we're going to buy 2 trac-phones from Walmart, $48 each, 60 minutes of calls (you get 10 with the phones) $23. That way, in the future, all we'll need to buy is the new call card. A far cheaper option (eventually), I hope!
Ian

 

[amf]

Thanks Ian......as we've booked accommodation in Orlando for a total of 9 weeks over the next 3 years, that is an interesting suggestion Apart from anything else it avoids potential damage to our main 'phones whilst on holiday.

As the trac phone is basically PAYG do they not need calls made to/from them every so often, to preserve a connection - like most PAYG phones in UK? If they don't they are cetainly worth serious consideration, in our circumstances.

Alex

 

[matty624]

You're quite right Alex. Just like all mobiles in the Uk use to be, you have to make calls/buy a new card every 60 days (for most of the call cards anyway). However, if I understand it correctly, all you need to reactivate your 'dead' phone, is to buy a new card. The one draw back to this, and it's only a relatively minor inconvenience, bearing in mind the hopeful savings at stake, is that they issue you a new number everytime you reactivate your phone! See link below.
http://www.walmart.com/cservice/ca_tracfone.gsp
Since we're going on Friday, I'll let you all know how it goes when we get back at the end of August... Yeehaaaa. Sorry...
Ian

 

[amf]

Thanks again Ian.....I've saved the link in my favourites so I can have a good look at it tomorrow.

As we're following your route in September (MAN-IAD-MCO), please let me know how the journey went. Remember - if you get on one of the mobile lounges (the busses on extendable legs) at IAD, you've probably gone the wrong way

Have a great time

Alex

 

[amf]

For those having tri band phones interested in purchasing a US SIM card I found a few sites who sold these.....they were all much of a muchness. This is one of them here

A tad more expensive than a Trac phone, methinks.

Alex

 

[benny2bunny]

Hi,

i would be very careful, we used our phone whilst in Orlando, and came home to a whopping 1000 plus bill i think by the time the call had been added up we amounted to about 1600 pounds. You get charged for incoming and out going calls the two way radios are only about $15 each at walmart I would go with them, we do now and save $$$$$.

If you do take the tri bands be careful and restrict use.

 

[matty624]

How on earth did you spend £1600 on mobile calls? You must have been having some very long meaningful conversations to rack that little lot up! DW and I only spent £50 last year, perhaps that's an indicator of the health of our relationship, lol.
Ian

 

[benny2bunny]

Hi,

It was mainly incoming calls we used it as contact for my husbands parents who were calling from the US, also we have 3 businesses here in the UK and we had a number of incoming calls from there, very few out going calls we usually used a phone card, it was a very scarey bill, mind you the phone company were chuffed I am sure.