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1 hour ago, Steelers36 said:

It's the old ID10T error with the Ocean App squad.  The whole bunch of them should have been forced to walk the plank ages ago.  Unbelievable - but believable knowing their past history.

Hopefully,  if it is a feature flag or experiment setting in production problem,  someone just needs to log into the production configuration server and set the right settings, and boom the app works.

If it's genuinely bad software then we are in a much bigger hole.

As a past leader of software engineers, here's what I would lay money on having happened.

In software you can wrap 'features' in either a feature flag or experiment condition that essentially turns the feature on or off. At some point they added this screen-reader accessibility mode, which is great. But in this release they either removed the flags/experiment, turned the flags/experiment to a default on state or didn't push the right flag/experiment settings to their production environment.

They likely tested in staging or a QA environment where said flags and/or experiments were set correctly and therefore never even saw this broken state.

HOWEVER - a good software development team will always sanity check their work in production immediately following a release - that has clearly not happened in this case.

I just saw this popped to the top of pg 238, so for anyone jumping straight to the end, this is in relation to VERSION 3.0.108702 of the Android Medallion app being stuck in screen-reader mode, which disables swipe actions and requires double tapping for 'click' input. Making the app unusable for normal users.

16 minutes ago, shutterbug12 said:

.... Since their check-in process and on-board service require the use of their mobile app, a non-functional android app is completely unacceptable.

 

Totally agree. It's quite shocking to me that this got cleared for release! I'm now dreading the cruise coming up this month!

Yeah, the phone agents are working from a 'script'. I told them the script isn't going to work, I need a supervisor. He took the details of the issue but I still sense he doesn't get it. They are so used to people calling in with bugs that they can't comprehend the thing is currently completely broken!

I've also emailed customer relations and tried to email some executives speaking to the customer support costs and customer happiness costs they are incurring - probably won't reach them, but I've tried. I've also notified them on twitter/X, where I got a generic scripted response.

Just now, MissP22 said:

I wonder how they address the problem of not being able to use the app for ordering things on the ship? I suppose you could tell a crew member what you want & have them order it for you.

Yup - if they don't fix it quickly, all Android owners will be cruising as if you have no smart phone, doing everything manually.

I have an old iPhone 4 laying around somewhere I bet the app won't even install on it saying it needs a later version of IOS.

This is a seriously mucked up situation. This one is not 'just another bug'!

8 minutes ago, kamelia said:

"Works" on Apple iPhone 13 Pro - at least I can navigate to the point of seeing the bugs that continue to plague my upcoming reservations still haven't been quashed.  🥴

 

Edit to add:  version 4.14 (108702)

Yes, this is an Android app issue, specifically version 3.0.108702, released Nov 1st.

1 hour ago, MissP22 said:

What type of phone do you have?

Mine is a Samsung S23+.

To the person in Australia saying their app is working, it's entirely possible the AU and US playstores have different versions. It's also possible the app behaves differently based on user locale. I'm in the US, so it appears to be broken for US users at the very minimum!

I believe the app is forced into screen-reader mode somehow, so it looks to be messed up accessibility modes. But I'm with you - how this cleared the release checklist is beyond me!

it's under the App Support section in the PlayStore, but it's gxistudio@carnival.com.

I did find the previous version of the app, installed it and it opens to a screen saying "There is an Update Available"

So you're right we are screwed either way right now!

1 hour ago, MissP22 said:

I just checked my husbands Android phone (he still has the old version installed) and unless you chose update it'll no longer work. 😄

I updated & mine no longer works either.

We're screwed either way. 😡

I have used the app support email to let them know they completely broke it. Hopefully they either fix it or roll it back pretty quickly. Otherwise I'll be sideloading an older .apk from one of the mirror sites. We cruise in 16 days!

Warning the latest, as of November 3, 2023, Android version of this app is completely broken. At least on my S23 it is.

Looks like they have tried to add voice prompting from the app, perhaps for visually impaired users,  but it has totally broken the app. You can't scroll or click on anything.

DO NOT DOWNLOAD VERSION 3.0.108702 (Nov1 release) from the Playstore..

3 hours ago, EDDY0827 said:

Just book when you are onboard.

We've been on a 4day cruise where by the time we boarded, there were no open bookings at the Crown Grill,  and this was in response to the Suite Concierge asking. So just be careful with leaving CG bookings till on board.

The issues with being charged for comped meals across multiple bookings when booking with the app pre-cruise is well discussed on other threads. You can get charges applied as OBC once onboard if willing to spend time with guest services (or equivalent).

Princess really need to fix how their app works with their booking services. It's a real and inconvenient customer experience issue.

We just did a Med cruise mid-late June,  we found it hot and as others have said shade is limited at most historic sites.  Worse than the heat was the humidity in Rome, we come from a generally dry climate,  so the humidity made it all so much more intense. Make sure you carry water and keep hydrated if you're going to visit in summer. I personally would go in spring/ fall months if I were to do it again.

As many have said,  tourism is up and running with the decline of covid restrictions. We cruised Barcelona -> Rome mid June and saw crowds, but we expected them and booked tours and restaurants well ahead of time.  We stayed in Rome,  Paris, and London post cruise. Crowds and heat were worst in Rome but as long as you plan for it and manage expectations its all workable.

The most annoying thing I encountered were social media influences hogging space at monuments and locations. One of the funniest "kids are so innocent" moments was at the Trevi fountain where a young woman was throwing poses at the front of the crowd while another was taking her pictures. A young, 9-10yr old behind me, says to his buddy "Why are they taking so many pictures,  she's not even that pretty". That cracked me up on the inside.  We got to the front snapped our pics and moved on. Just be patient,  as others have said, be confident in crowds and you'll be fine!

This is a problem for me also. I can "clear" it by deleting Princess cookies and web cache, but that shouldn't be required. Modern browsers are enforcing more and more security around typical exploit vectors. I've seen these cause issues, particularly in Firefox. The intermittent nature of this and the cookie/cache resolution makes me think they have a bad server or two in their auth server pool that is not doing the right thing with regard to certificates and authentication.

All in all a very annoying situation, but if you encounter it, you can "fix" it by deleting the Princess cookie and clearing cache.

10 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

I disagree.  The guest reservation record should be flagged for a number of dining credits.  In fact, this particular one should not require anything at all since it can be derived from category of cabin booked.

 

However, perhaps this is what they went by in the past and there actually is a counter type field that contains the number of SD credits for guest.  In this situation, it should be set to 1 or bumped up by 1 if other credits exist.  As long as that field is passed to the Princess App (DMW process), that process knows by reference that guest has SD credit(s), so no charges should occur.

 

When a res is made in DWM, the counter should be reduced until it hits zero, at which time the guest is charged.  The cruise res system of record (POLAR) does not need to be updated by a back-feed as it contains the original grant of SD credits for the guest and DMW ought to be able to manage the res process once it is initialized with the SD credit count.  I do not see any need for touching "every software system" at all in this situation.

Yes, if they're just being lazy and not passing bits on requests then it is a pretty simple update.

I mentioned the other scenario, as I have experienced situations in the past where something simple like this ties all the way back to an ill fitting data-model that does bleed through every system.

14 minutes ago, JGmf said:

(That said, Princess really does need to upgrade the booking software so that suite reservations aren't charged for that night.  It seems to me like a basic coding fix).

As a past software developer I would tend to agree,  the only thing that would make this hard is if they have a really bad data model behind their systems. Given how everything seems keyed off booking ID once you're a booked passenger I could see a tangled database model making it hard to get back to basic customer metadata. Bad data models are one of the hardest and most costly things for any escompany to correct as you often have to rework every software system that works with any of those data objects.

They are likely balancing the cost of retouching all their software with the cost of addressing customer issues caused by these shortcomings.

23 hours ago, david63 said:

Cancel the booking and then book when onboard

Don't do this. Those specialty bookings get filled quickly. You can find that once on board there are no reservations left.

We just went through a similar situation. We had a group of seven,  and booked the crown grill pre-cruise via the app. Ended up having to pay for five. Called customer service,  come to learn that the app is not coded to recognize package or even suite perk comps for specialty dining. They recommended 2 things.

1. Cancel through them, get a refund and then book on board. No way were we going to do that after experiencing the scenario where there were no speciality bookings left when the ship boarded on a cruise a few months earlier.

2.Once on board go to guest services and notify them of the booking issue. Their system has a record of your booking and the dollar amounts paid,  you then have  2 further options:

  a. Get refunded as OBC

  b. Roll the credit over to another specialty dining booking.

This is our experience of just a few weeks ago. It's up to you what you'd like to do, until they build some smarts into that app.

We are sailing on the Enchanted Princess right now and premium gelato deserts covered by the Plus package are available (2 per day).

On the Enchanted right now.  Ate at Rudy's last night at 9pm, which was the restaurants listed closing time so it was odd this booking was available.

To clarify the location questions. On the Enchanted,  The Catch by Rudy, is where Sabatinis used to be. An abbreviated Sabatinis has been moved to where the French bistro was located.

I don't know if our experience was impacted by being so "late" but in multiple people's opinions it wasn't living up to the expectations of a specialty dining experience for an upcharge. Some food items were great, too many were just OK.

Service had some slips, and the table we had for 6 almost made it impossible for 2 of our group to get proper service.

On the positive side, it's great to have so many seafood options.

Based on our experience we would not go back. But as I opened with, this may have all been a result of starting our meal when the restaurant is supposed to be closing.

3 hours ago, tootsiescurly said:

We are in a full suite. 

Are you already sailing? The 360 Experience,  as we've experienced it,  is offered by princess maybe a couple of months before sailing. First time we were called,  2nd time we were emailed.

Not all ships have it and I've no idea if all suites were filled to capacity if they would prioritize seating opportunities due to their being more people than available seatings on a short sailing.

3 hours ago, tootsiescurly said:

Wonder if they do the 360 dining experience on 4 day cruises?

If the ship has it, and you're in a full suite, you should be offered it (numbers allowing). We were on a 4-night out of LA and had our first 360 experience. They were running 2 seatings per night.

4 hours ago, marden1970 said:

Yes, we were in a suite for the South Pacific cruise and breakfast in Sabatini's was wonderful.  I like how the staff greets you and remembers what you like.  

Much easier for them to recall what you've previously ordered now they can look you up via the Ocean Medallion as soon as you walk in 😉

But the Sabatini breakfast is one of the better suite perks for sure,  though the 360 dining experience puts it to shame on the ships that have it!

5 hours ago, nini said:

You are so very right. The charges can be reversed onboard which seems like a waste of everyone's time.

Yes, this whole thing is rather messy and ultimately has to be a cost sink for Princess, how many others other than myself and those commenting on this thread have taken agent time with either phone calls or live chat sessions and after discovering "it is what it is until you get on board", how many of these people will be eating into onboard guest services agents time? It should not be hard to modify the app to respect across party charging and have it consume dining credits if they exist.
Not only does this sour the customer experience but it means you start your cruise with a trip to guest services, not the best way to start your vacation.

After experiencing the Crown Grill multi-party booking for myself I sent a long techincal email to Princess Customer Relations. Who knows if they action on those messages, but I did emphasize the two things they should care about - COST to them in terms of agent/call-center time and burnt customer experiences.

-Dave

17 hours ago, brisalta said:

 

An Irish pub that serves Scotch eggs 🤣 As my Irish friends say not another plastic paddy pub. (Actually they are not as polite in their choice of words).

Yeah, I saw a Princess post on twitter with a picture of the new pub, it looks far from what I'd cal ll an Irish pub. Probably another disappointment in pursuit of the shareholder value.