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Ocean Medallion


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So on Friday afternoon the FedEx truck arrived and delivered our Ocean Medallions for our Regal Crossing on April 15. Very attractive box included engraved medallions with our names, ship, and date. Included was a nice note thanking us for being Pilots on the upcoming cruise. There were no instructions anywhere to be found.

 

On one of the inserts were pictures of six different apps that can be downloaded from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The first app in Ocean Ready and is where you expedite the boarding process by entering all your information, including passport info, etc. I downloaded the app and my frustrations began. I could not for the life of me figure out the sign-in. It asked for your Ocean Credentials. As you will remember, there were no instructions included in the box. I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out the sign in and also searching google to see if I could learn any additional information. I must say all this effort was for naught so I called the Princess number for assistance. The young lady told me she would transfer me to the Medallion help desk. I held the line and finally got a message saying they were either closed or there was no one to help me. Not giving up that easy, I called back to the Princess number and insisted I needed to talk with someone. She was very polite and asked if she could put me on hold and see if she could locate someone to help. After several minutes, she connected me to a very nice young man and the frustration continued to build. He finally admitted the Ocean Ready is having severe problems but he would do his best to help me sign in. He told me the Ocean Ready app is required to use the other 5 apps. After about 30 minutes of him telling me exactly what to do with no positive results, he finally told me he could not help.

 

With my frustration at a high level and after wasting now about three hours, I told him I would just throw all this medallion stuff in the trash can. He did chuckle a little and said I understand. Never did he say the technology was not ready for deployment and I asked him this question several times. He did say that we should bring the medallions with us on the 15th as maybe something would be working by then.

 

So my question --- has anyone used the Medallions or any of the six apps available to make your life and cruise easier? I admit I am not very high tech, but this is ridiculous. I would love to hear any thoughts or comments. I am sure I will get flamed for this note but I really am frustrated. Maybe I will Come Home New from the cruise but I am surely leaving home feeling old and frustrated.

 

 

So no

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It is utterly mind boggling to me that Princess can't seem to get any of this stuff working. I have often disparaged the IT staff that handles their website but I had hoped they had hired "real" IT people for the Medallion project as they have committed such an incredible amount of money and hype to the project. I guess they are instead sticking with their previous IT hiring policy. I think their IT staff must be composed of people who failed as Walmart greeters and couldn't find any other job so Princess picked them up as "IT Professionals". Its sad. Very sad. I was so looking forward to trying out the Medallion and freely admit to having been a "fanboi" of the project. I am so very disappointed by the apparent incompetence displayed by the Princess IT people.

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Thank you for the testimonial. I do believe speaking as a former IT professional that ***** is still not quite ready for prime time use. I was not aware of the aps for smart phones which is yet another complication to an already disastrous rollout. I have frequently thrown barbs at what appears to be a not so competent IT department at Princess just based on their webpage failures (thankfully it appears to be working until the next big "update"). Princess really needs to pry loose the big bucks and hire competent IT people who have experience with what Princess is trying to do and get it right. Even when and if they get ***** working correctly, the bad press that they have endured for the last year will always impact what good they should get from the finished product.

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just off the Regal two weeks ago...:(...we did NOT have medallion

 

talked to a few people at outriggers bar who DID have the ***** and they stated it was basically worthless and more than a few times didn't even open the cabin door..

 

talked to a couple of the bartenders there, and they basically stated the same - very hit or miss..

 

didn't do any of the shops, so my information is limited to the above

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So on Friday afternoon the FedEx truck arrived and delivered our Ocean Medallions for our Regal Crossing on April 15. Very attractive box included engraved medallions with our names, ship, and date. Included was a nice note thanking us for being Pilots on the upcoming cruise. There were no instructions anywhere to be found.

 

On one of the inserts were pictures of six different apps that can be downloaded from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The first app in Ocean Ready and is where you expedite the boarding process by entering all your information, including passport info, etc. I downloaded the app and my frustrations began. I could not for the life of me figure out the sign-in. It asked for your Ocean Credentials. As you will remember, there were no instructions included in the box. I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out the sign in and also searching google to see if I could learn any additional information. I must say all this effort was for naught so I called the Princess number for assistance. The young lady told me she would transfer me to the Medallion help desk. I held the line and finally got a message saying they were either closed or there was no one to help me. Not giving up that easy, I called back to the Princess number and insisted I needed to talk with someone. She was very polite and asked if she could put me on hold and see if she could locate someone to help. After several minutes, she connected me to a very nice young man and the frustration continued to build. He finally admitted the Ocean Ready is having severe problems but he would do his best to help me sign in. He told me the Ocean Ready app is required to use the other 5 apps. After about 30 minutes of him telling me exactly what to do with no positive results, he finally told me he could not help.

 

With my frustration at a high level and after wasting now about three hours, I told him I would just throw all this medallion stuff in the trash can. He did chuckle a little and said I understand. Never did he say the technology was not ready for deployment and I asked him this question several times. He did say that we should bring the medallions with us on the 15th as maybe something would be working by then.

 

So my question --- has anyone used the Medallions or any of the six apps available to make your life and cruise easier? I admit I am not very high tech, but this is ridiculous. I would love to hear any thoughts or comments. I am sure I will get flamed for this note but I really am frustrated. Maybe I will Come Home New from the cruise but I am surely leaving home feeling old and frustrated.

 

 

So no

 

The roll out of this built up a lot of anticipation with no payoff. I totally understand why you are frustrated. I don't get why Princess didn't test this with a control group before telling the world about it.

 

My 2nd ***** cruise is coming up this July, and we were not in the test group either time. At first I was disappointed, but now I'm kind of happy.

 

The good thing about ***** is that if you are platinum or elite, you will get free internet access (one per person/device), and the speeds were pretty decent.

 

I'm sorry you are having a bad experience, but please don':)t let it ruin your cruise.

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So my question --- has anyone used the Medallions or any of the six apps available to make your life and cruise easier? I admit I am not very high tech, but this is ridiculous. I would love to hear any thoughts or comments. I am sure I will get flamed for this note but I really am frustrated. Maybe I will Come Home New from the cruise but I am surely leaving home feeling old and frustrated.

We were on the first ***** preview cruise and had to pick up our medallions from the terminal so Ocean Ready wasn't going to work for us anyway. But we did download Social Ocean and Play Ocean and managed to use them via our Princess website logons. It wasn't plain sailing but were able to create a tagalong before we got on the ship. I posted some pics on our blog

 

Sandra

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So on Friday afternoon the FedEx truck arrived and delivered our Ocean Medallions for our Regal Crossing on April 15. Very attractive box included engraved medallions with our names, ship, and date. Included was a nice note thanking us for being Pilots on the upcoming cruise. There were no instructions anywhere to be found.

 

On one of the inserts were pictures of six different apps that can be downloaded from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The first app in Ocean Ready and is where you expedite the boarding process by entering all your information, including passport info, etc. I downloaded the app and my frustrations began. I could not for the life of me figure out the sign-in. It asked for your Ocean Credentials. As you will remember, there were no instructions included in the box. I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out the sign in and also searching google to see if I could learn any additional information. I must say all this effort was for naught so I called the Princess number for assistance. The young lady told me she would transfer me to the Medallion help desk. I held the line and finally got a message saying they were either closed or there was no one to help me. Not giving up that easy, I called back to the Princess number and insisted I needed to talk with someone. She was very polite and asked if she could put me on hold and see if she could locate someone to help. After several minutes, she connected me to a very nice young man and the frustration continued to build. He finally admitted the Ocean Ready is having severe problems but he would do his best to help me sign in. He told me the Ocean Ready app is required to use the other 5 apps. After about 30 minutes of him telling me exactly what to do with no positive results, he finally told me he could not help.

 

With my frustration at a high level and after wasting now about three hours, I told him I would just throw all this medallion stuff in the trash can. He did chuckle a little and said I understand. Never did he say the technology was not ready for deployment and I asked him this question several times. He did say that we should bring the medallions with us on the 15th as maybe something would be working by then.

 

So my question --- has anyone used the Medallions or any of the six apps available to make your life and cruise easier? I admit I am not very high tech, but this is ridiculous. I would love to hear any thoughts or comments. I am sure I will get flamed for this note but I really am frustrated. Maybe I will Come Home New from the cruise but I am surely leaving home feeling old and frustrated.

 

 

So no

 

I feel your pain. Same thing happened to us. Arrived on Friday and has been nothing but a nightmare for loading. The Ocean Medallion rep had no idea how to fix the issue. The thing is with ours ...my husband was able to load all the info for his to be Ocean Ready. He had no issues other than taking a very long time to do. Mine let me enter info until it got to where it wanted me to scan my passport. Then it told me that I needed to complete all information on the Cruise Personalizer before I could continue. Ummm...Its been completed for months and have been issued an EZ air ticket which is not possible if the cruise personalizer is not completed. After 47 minutes on hold to speak to the ***** rep...the ***** rep looked at my personalizer and agreed it was all good and complete. He had no idea why my ***** wouldn't work. Not even there yet and already having issues. I'm sure it will take forever and a day to get checked in at the pier. The ***** rep told me that there is a special line and to please bring my patience because it takes a longer time them normal to check in as each person takes a long time to process. He also said there are 160 cabins that have Ocean Medallion. He agreed that there are a lot of problems and it is far from being ready to expand to the entire ship let alone any other ship. In the state that it is in right now it is basically worthless.

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I get such a chuckle every time I read something new about this worthless "high tech" solution to opening a cabin door and purchasing items onboard!

 

I was on the last "non-*****" cruise on Regal in December and while we were waiting to get off the ship, we were watching all the big-wigs play games on the MUTS screen....they were having a pep rally to get all excited for the grand opening of *****! Boy, what a bust it turned out to be.

 

They've surely wasted so much money on this ridiculous program....too bad they couldn't have instead used that money to improve their food quality and hired more staff so they aren't so overworked.

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We had the medallion for our 12/3/17 Regal sailing. I had downloaded the apps and finally got the ocean ready to work. Scanned in our passports, did all that we were told to do. And of course, it meant nothing and I had to go through all the steps at the port anyway.

 

It’s just flabbergasting that they havent gotten any further with the medallion than when we were on there 4 months ago.

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My hope that is once all the bugs are sorted out, roll out to other ships in the fleet should be quick and bug-free. I wonder how long that will take!

Based on it taking years to get their less technologically advanced Princess@Sea system fully functional, it won’t be anytime soon. Even on the Royal in October 2017 sometimes P@S wasn’t working.

 

The Royal was scheduled to be the second ***** ship in January 2018. They finally acknowledge their promises could not be fulfilled & had to offer compensation to Regal passengers & sent emails to other scheduled ***** passengers. In mid-December they informed us that our May 2019 cruise on the Royal would not have ***** available. By notifying passengers long before a cruise, they’re not offering any type of compensation.

 

That’s a minimum 16 month delay in implementing it on the Royal and when stating it’ll be available in the future who knows when it will be available.

 

Who’s to blame for this embarrassing rollout: it’s probably a combination of top management, the tech company hired to implement the system and a marketing department overhyping *****.

 

It may improve some passengers cruise experience but even if everything eventually functions as promoted it won’t greatly improve my experience because the primary function is to make it easier to spend our money.

 

Bottom line is they’re spending a lot of money & expecting to make even more money.

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We were on the Regal for 10 days at the end of Oct into Nov...and our ship had a large group of contractors working on the wiring necessary for the *****. This stockholder wonders just how much money Princess has already invested is this new technology...that will actually unlock a cabin door. Wait! I thought we already had technology to open cabin doors (a key card). The expense of this project must be immense. Think about it, each cabin has at least 2 wired sensors (one in the cabin and one in the bathroom) and there are additional sensors scattered all over the ship. And then each and every lock has to be changed over to the new technology. And this is just the basic hardware part of the equation...which is actually the easy part. But finally, they must get everything functioning properly via onboard servers and software which means sophisticated software...much more sophisticated then basic web site software.....which has kicked the rear of Princess (and several other lines) for many years.

 

And once this is all functioning, Princess will be able to test their expensive system by asking for a printout of how much time each passengers spends in the bathroom :). Makes a lot of sense to me.

 

Hank

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Hank...apparently you feel like me that spending millions (we’ll never learn how many millions) for things such as staff calling us by our name to sell us something is a waste of money.

 

Posts said that function was immediately available to sales staff & is more evidence to me that greatly increasing sales is their primary goal. And as their VP of marketing & sales boasts to add other cool things that won’t greatly improve my cruise experience.

 

Other cruise lines have updated & improved their cabins which is something overdue with Princess.

 

Guess they’re attempting to pay for ***** with recent cutbacks such as the dinner option of Waffles & Chicken. :rolleyes:

 

CCL boasts that financially they are doing great so why are there so many cutbacks...maybe to pay many millions for *****??? :confused:

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So on Friday afternoon the FedEx truck arrived and delivered our Ocean Medallions for our Regal Crossing on April 15. Very attractive box included engraved medallions with our names, ship, and date. Included was a nice note thanking us for being Pilots on the upcoming cruise. There were no instructions anywhere to be found.

 

On one of the inserts were pictures of six different apps that can be downloaded from Google Play or the Apple App Store. The first app in Ocean Ready and is where you expedite the boarding process by entering all your information, including passport info, etc. I downloaded the app and my frustrations began. I could not for the life of me figure out the sign-in. It asked for your Ocean Credentials. As you will remember, there were no instructions included in the box. I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out the sign in and also searching google to see if I could learn any additional information. I must say all this effort was for naught so I called the Princess number for assistance. The young lady told me she would transfer me to the Medallion help desk. I held the line and finally got a message saying they were either closed or there was no one to help me. Not giving up that easy, I called back to the Princess number and insisted I needed to talk with someone. She was very polite and asked if she could put me on hold and see if she could locate someone to help. After several minutes, she connected me to a very nice young man and the frustration continued to build. He finally admitted the Ocean Ready is having severe problems but he would do his best to help me sign in. He told me the Ocean Ready app is required to use the other 5 apps. After about 30 minutes of him telling me exactly what to do with no positive results, he finally told me he could not help.

 

With my frustration at a high level and after wasting now about three hours, I told him I would just throw all this medallion stuff in the trash can. He did chuckle a little and said I understand. Never did he say the technology was not ready for deployment and I asked him this question several times. He did say that we should bring the medallions with us on the 15th as maybe something would be working by then.

 

So my question --- has anyone used the Medallions or any of the six apps available to make your life and cruise easier? I admit I am not very high tech, but this is ridiculous. I would love to hear any thoughts or comments. I am sure I will get flamed for this note but I really am frustrated. Maybe I will Come Home New from the cruise but I am surely leaving home feeling old and frustrated.

 

 

So no

We just got off the Regal two weeks ago and we were in a medallion cabin. I had a very similar experience to you with the Ocean Ready App. I could not for the life of me get it to work. I spent several hours on it before giving up. When we got to the ship the medallion group had a meeting with some of the masterminds behind the medallion. I asked about the app and I was told point blank that it did not work. I think Princess should let people know from the beginning that the apps are not operational yet. It would save a lot of people wasted time if Princess told people in the test exactly what they need to do and what to expect.

 

One note of caution to you - we had no problem using the medallion to open our cabin door for the whole cruise except for the very last morning. I went up to the buffet to get breakfast and when I returned to my cabin it was as if the medallion technology was turned off. Neither my medallion nor my cruise card would open the door. The medallion screen next to my door acted like I wasn't there. I had to get my cabin steward to let me in. As I was waiting someone else walked by and said she had the same problem. I mentioned this in my survey. I told Princess that they should wait for us to disembark before turning off the medallion. I felt like they were kicking me out.

 

I did like the medallion for opening the cabin door. It was very useful. My medallion did not work in the casino and that's about the only other time I tried to use it other than opening the door.

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Hank...apparently you feel like me that spending millions (we’ll never learn how many millions) for things such as staff calling us by our name to sell us something is a waste of money.

 

Posts said that function was immediately available to sales staff & is more evidence to me that greatly increasing sales is their primary goal. And as their VP of marketing & sales boasts to add other cool things that won’t greatly improve my cruise experience.

 

Other cruise lines have updated & improved their cabins which is something overdue with Princess.

 

Guess they’re attempting to pay for ***** with recent cutbacks such as the dinner option of Waffles & Chicken. :rolleyes:

 

CCL boasts that financially they are doing great so why are there so many cutbacks...maybe to pay many millions for *****??? :confused:

 

Here's an open secret: Ocean Medallion is not for the pax's benefit. It's for the

ship's benefit... Turn lights off when there's no one there (including in the cabin

bathrooms), noticing in real-time long lineups (whether at the Trident Grill or

outside the Princess Theater restrooms), tracking down SOLAS drill no-shows

or B2B'ers who stay aboard when they're zeroing the ship, ...

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just off the Regal on 3/25...last morning I had to go to customer service to get a charge for a bottle of wine removed -had the PBP-

 

my card would NOT work trying to get back into the room - and this was before 8, maybe even closer to 7:mad:

 

wife was still in cabin..

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Here's an open secret: Ocean Medallion is not for the pax's benefit. It's for the

 

ship's benefit... Turn lights off when there's no one there (including in the cabin

 

bathrooms), noticing in real-time long lineups (whether at the Trident Grill or

 

outside the Princess Theater restrooms), tracking down SOLAS drill no-shows

 

or B2B'ers who stay aboard when they're zeroing the ship, ...

 

Those are some of the positives which will be primarily paid for by increasing sales.

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Here's an open secret: Ocean Medallion is not for the pax's benefit. It's for theship's benefit... Turn lights off when there's no one there (including in the cabin bathrooms)

some land based hotels is doing this, requiring you to insert something in a slot next to the door to turn on the electricity. other cruise lines like Norwegian have this too.

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some land based hotels is doing this, requiring you to insert something in a slot next to the door to turn on the electricity. other cruise lines like Norwegian have this too.

 

Have been on cruise ships and hotels that require you to put your room key in a slot to activate the lights. Usually take an old gift card or loyalty card from a store. Works well. Slot does not recognize the difference. :D

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Here's an open secret: Ocean Medallion is not for the pax's benefit. It's for the

ship's benefit... Turn lights off when there's no one there (including in the cabin

bathrooms), noticing in real-time long lineups (whether at the Trident Grill or

outside the Princess Theater restrooms), tracking down SOLAS drill no-shows

or B2B'ers who stay aboard when they're zeroing the ship, ...

 

People figured out really fast to bring an old cruise card with them and stick in the light switch thing, LOL.

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We just left the Regal this morning. We were assigned a Medallion class cabin on a guarantee interior. We picked up our medallion at the port and here are some of my comments on the program:

 

We had our picture taken at least 3 times and they still couldn't recognize us getting on and off the ship. We had to before to switch to a regular card to get resolved. Wasted a lot of time in line over 3 days trying to get this straight.

 

We never tried to use the app/website or attend the class so I don't know if that was working.

 

I hated that they took away the mailbox from the cabin door. Everything was placed under the door at all hours of the day and night.

 

I didn't like how they tracked you! I would be waiting for the dining room and my picture, name and cabin number would appear on a screen for everyone to see. But I was also able to use this in my defense when the customer service rep said it had only taken a few minutes to resolve card issue .... Check my medallion location for last 30 mins...

 

We had to take it out of the cabin when we left or they wouldn't clean (they thought you were in the cabin) so you had to carry a card and the medallion.

 

So like everyone has pointed out, the only thing it did was open the door and if you wanted to keep the lights on you needed another key.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

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We just left the Regal this morning. We were assigned a Medallion class cabin on a guarantee interior. We picked up our medallion at the port and here are some of my comments on the program:

 

We had our picture taken at least 3 times and they still couldn't recognize us getting on and off the ship. We had to before to switch to a regular card to get resolved. Wasted a lot of time in line over 3 days trying to get this straight.

 

We never tried to use the app/website or attend the class so I don't know if that was working.

 

I hated that they took away the mailbox from the cabin door. Everything was placed under the door at all hours of the day and night.

 

I didn't like how they tracked you! I would be waiting for the dining room and my picture, name and cabin number would appear on a screen for everyone to see. But I was also able to use this in my defense when the customer service rep said it had only taken a few minutes to resolve card issue .... Check my medallion location for last 30 mins...

 

We had to take it out of the cabin when we left or they wouldn't clean (they thought you were in the cabin) so you had to carry a card and the medallion.

 

So like everyone has pointed out, the only thing it did was open the door and if you wanted to keep the lights on you needed another key.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

Question:

Did the medallion control only the lights or the lights AND the outlets?

 

...not that I'd ever admit to leaving a smartphone behind, charging. ;)

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