Web-based OCEAN READY coming this Fall

[ebeluga]

16 minutes ago, voljeep said:

why doesn't Princess just re-install the backup disk they made before they gutted the personalizer on the website ??

Because the guy has been promoted! Lol.

[Rick&Jeannie]

Why does anybody feel that this is going to solve all of our issues?  It's likely to just be a "port" from one set of bad code to a web platform.

[ontheweb]

4 hours ago, voljeep said:

why doesn't Princess just re-install the backup disk they made before they gutted the personalizer on the website ??

An excellent question, it used to work on the personalizer; just reinstall it instead of redeveloping it.

[barrykel]

3 hours ago, Rick&Jeannie said:

Why does anybody feel that this is going to solve all of our issues?  It's likely to just be a "port" from one set of bad code to a web platform.

It's not going to solve all the problems, but I would say there is good reason to hope it will be far less buggy than the app. It's not going to be a port of the mobile app - mobile development and web development are two fairly distinct skills, and the company that was contracted for the app would have been chosen for their mobile skills, and would not be the ones developing the web-based Ocean Ready site (I also suspect the person who chose them is no longer a decision maker at Princess). Voljeep's suggestion to restore from the backup is probably closer to the actual strategy - while they can't just use the old code as-is (too many other changes since then, and they need new code to talk to the new Medallion database), there is probably a lot of working code they can just migrate over. We'll see. 

[Steelers36]

29 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

An excellent question, it used to work on the personalizer; just reinstall it instead of redeveloping it.

There is a lot of additional functionality to consider.  Perhaps part and concept, but see below:

 

27 minutes ago, barrykel said:

It's not going to solve all the problems, but I would say there is good reason to hope it will be far less buggy than the app. It's not going to be a port of the mobile app - mobile development and web development are two fairly distinct skills, and the company that was contracted for the app would have been chosen for their mobile skills, and would not be the ones developing the web-based Ocean Ready site (I also suspect the person who chose them is no longer a decision maker at Princess). Voljeep's suggestion to restore from the backup is probably closer to the actual strategy - while they can't just use the old code as-is (too many other changes since then, and they need new code to talk to the new Medallion database), there is probably a lot of working code they can just migrate over. We'll see. 

 

I would think the new Personalizer should have some look&feel similar to the MC App, so it is easy for guests to relate when using both platforms.

 

[BillK400]

 

I dont think the medallion app is a Princeess only product. If you put in a review with all the problems at the google play store -where you download the android app - you might  (I did) get a reply asking you to contact tech support at Carnival. My guess is Carnival is using Princess - and US! - to be beta testers of a product that will be rolled out to all Carnival brands.

 

I have never seen such a low rating for a product that I downloaded at the google play store; 1.4 out of 4. I would NEVER have downloaded a product with such a poor rating and hundreds of comments on a list of problems unless I was forced to by Princess. I had a host of problems, restarting my phone continiously and finally got it to work and as expected it stinks!  

 

So much for "customer service" at Princess. Just think they had about a year and a half with no cruises and it looks like none of the "open" time was spent on the crappy medallion app.

 

My advice is to wiat for the web product to do the check in and use the app only when you need to when on the ship.

[brisalta]

22 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

No.... Link My Booking is a feature on the left panel (pops out when you tap on your photo at top left) where your voyages are listed and you tap on the + (plus) sign to add another voyage.  Thing is that the system should pick up any new bookings automatically from POLAR.

 

 

The Medallion app does not show that option for me after tapping on the image at the upper left.

[pms4104]

35 minutes ago, BillK400 said:

 

I dont think the medallion app is a Princeess only product. If you put in a review with all the problems at the google play store -where you download the android app - you might  (I did) get a reply asking you to contact tech support at Carnival. My guess is Carnival is using Princess - and US! - to be beta testers of a product that will be rolled out to all Carnival brands.

 

I have never seen such a low rating for a product that I downloaded at the google play store; 1.4 out of 4. I would NEVER have downloaded a product with such a poor rating and hundreds of comments on a list of problems unless I was forced to by Princess. I had a host of problems, restarting my phone continiously and finally got it to work and as expected it stinks!  

 

So much for "customer service" at Princess. Just think they had about a year and a half with no cruises and it looks like none of the "open" time was spent on the crappy medallion app.

 

My advice is to wiat for the web product to do the check in and use the app only when you need to when on the ship.

My understanding:  this is a Carnival Corp program ... and, back in the day, Jan Swartz volunteered Princess to guinea pig it.

 

So, indeed, if/when it's up and running properly, this technological wonder likely will debut on some/all Carnival brands.

[Steelers36]

1 hour ago, brisalta said:

 

The Medallion app does not show that option for me after tapping on the image at the upper left.

Doo doo doo do.

[brisalta]

4 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Doo doo doo do.

 

buggy, buggy, buggy...the bugs are so large you can almost see them crawl across the floor..virtual ***** roaches.

Edited October 25, 2021 by brisalta

[caribill]

10 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

There is a lot of additional functionality to consider.  Perhaps part and concept, but see below:

 

 

Step 1: Restore the functionality that the Personalizer used to have. Do this ASAP.

 

Step 2: Add additional functionality. Not all at once, but as each feature can be developed and adequately tested before being announced to the world. They can take the time to do this properly.

[ontheweb]

3 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Step 1: Restore the functionality that the Personalizer used to have. Do this ASAP.

 

Step 2: Add additional functionality. Not all at once, but as each feature can be developed and adequately tested before being announced to the world. They can take the time to do this properly.

Sounds good👍, but entirely too logical and not geeky enough for the techies to want to do.🤦‍♂️

 

 

[GonzoWCS]

Yippee..?

[J&DMCG]

On 9/10/2021 at 4:34 AM, leck57 said:

 

They essentially already had this. It was called the Personalizer!

They should have left the Personalizer alone and added the Medilan  IF YOU WANTED TO USE IT!!

[mar2352]

I have to assume that Princess is monitoring this forum (or at least they should be).  So, these questions go to them.

There seems to be many passengers that are having a problem with the Medallion app. I am on the first cruise (Nov 10th). It is looking like the Medallion app will not be working my then, in any form. So what is the procedure for those of us that don't have the app, therefore don't have the medallions. How will we get into the embarkation building at the port.  We have noting to show - no medallion and no boarding pass.  Will the staff have a procedure in place. I assume we will get our medallions once we get in but will they be already there or will they have to be produced.  How long will that take.  Once we are on board we will not have any of the features that come with the Medallion app - too many to list.  Most important is access to the Medallionnet and all that comes with that, most important WiFi. 

 

What I want to know is, is Princess going to provide a pre-cruise document on the whole procedure and what we can and cannot do so we not going down there blind.

 

Princess, please respond.

Thank you

[Roberto256]

On 10/24/2021 at 6:05 PM, barrykel said:

It's not going to solve all the problems, but I would say there is good reason to hope it will be far less buggy than the app. It's not going to be a port of the mobile app - mobile development and web development are two fairly distinct skills, and the company that was contracted for the app would have been chosen for their mobile skills, and would not be the ones developing the web-based Ocean Ready site

 

In my ever-humble opinion, it is much easier to develop a browser based web application than a mobile application.

 

Most important: fewer targets.   There are only a handful of browsers that need to be tested.

 

There are a zillion phones with ga-zillions of combinations of hardware version, software version, other apps installed, etc.

 

It is also way easier to test web based apps, and generally pretty easy to duplicate a user situation.

 

And, Princess previously had a 'working' web application.

So, they already have all the credentials, session, etc. background stuff done.

 

 

[Twiga]

3 hours ago, mar2352 said:

What I want to know is, is Princess going to provide a pre-cruise document.

You can print out your Travel Summary from your online Princess account.  It provides your cruise information.  According to people who have taken Princess cruises and posted on this forum, you can check in at the dock without having used the Ocean Medallion App.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Twiga

[brisalta]

On 10/24/2021 at 4:41 PM, brisalta said:

 

The Medallion app does not show that option for me after tapping on the image at the upper left.

 

@Steelers36Today after clicking on the image it now shows on the left hand side of the page a blue ribbon with the text "My Journeys" with a date listed and then under it a + sign. + sign worked once and then not again. I can only assume that it will disappear again tomorrow.

Buggy, buggy app.

Edited October 26, 2021 by brisalta

[memoak]

8 hours ago, mar2352 said:

I have to assume that Princess is monitoring this forum (or at least they should be).  So, these questions go to them.

There seems to be many passengers that are having a problem with the Medallion app. I am on the first cruise (Nov 10th). It is looking like the Medallion app will not be working my then, in any form. So what is the procedure for those of us that don't have the app, therefore don't have the medallions. How will we get into the embarkation building at the port.  We have noting to show - no medallion and no boarding pass.  Will the staff have a procedure in place. I assume we will get our medallions once we get in but will they be already there or will they have to be produced.  How long will that take.  Once we are on board we will not have any of the features that come with the Medallion app - too many to list.  Most important is access to the Medallionnet and all that comes with that, most important WiFi. 

 

What I want to know is, is Princess going to provide a pre-cruise document on the whole procedure and what we can and cannot do so we not going down there blind.

 

Princess, please respond.

Thank you

There have been many posts here of people just showing up with docs and getting on board easily.  The app is really not needed once you are on board unless you have a desire to order drinks or food over the app or want to reserve dinner times.  The medallion itself is like you old cruise card to open the door and purchase things

[hokiefans]

Ten days left to Winter!

[donaldsc]

There are at least 10,000 posts on the Princess board about how bad the Medallion is.  They have had more than a year to fix it and they apparently still don't have it right.  What expectation does anyone have that this new program will be any better.

 

What I can't figure out and this is not just for Princess but almost every other cruise line WEB site is why none of them seem to get it right.  It isn't hard to create a good interactive product WEB site.  Companies do it all the time.  However none of the cruise lines have seemed to be able to do it.

 

One of the most ridiculous examples that I have ever encountered (I forget which line it was) was a failure of one part of the program to talk to another part of the program.  When you wanted to get into your account you had to enter your booking number which should connect you directly to your cruise.  However, this line set up their program so that after you entered your booking number, you then had to enter your name, the name of the ship and finally the departure date.  Come on !!!  Wasn't that idiotic.  The person(s) that wrote that program obviously flunked out of Computer Programming 101 and was then immediately hired by the cruise line.

 

DON

[I object 2]

25 days until we cruise and our cruise is not showing up in the app on my husband's iPhone.  Our following 5 booked cruises do appear.   On my iPhone, the correct sailing date appears, but shows the cabin number of our 2nd upcoming cruise and under "Traveling Companions", it lists both of our names but my photo and my gender under both.  Pretty crazy.

 

When I click on the "+" to add the upcoming cruise, I receive this message "This feature is currently unavailable to guests who have logged in with a Booking or Cabin Number.  Please log out and log in with a Login ID and Password to continue...."      Frustrating because I'm not able to access the app using my login and password.  When I do enter my login and password I receive this message "Your login attempt was unsuccessful.  Please check your credentials and try again."    I'm able to log in to my personalizer with the id and password.  Go figure.   

 

Princess please get the web-based application up and running asap.   

 

 

[caribill]

5 hours ago, donaldsc said:

There are at least 10,000 posts on the Princess board about how bad the Medallion is.  They have had more than a year to fix it and they apparently still don't have it right.  What expectation does anyone have that this new program will be any better.

 

 

One of the most ridiculous examples that I have ever encountered (I forget which line it was) was a failure of one part of the program to talk to another part of the program.  The person(s) that wrote that program obviously flunked out of Computer Programming 101 and was then immediately hired by the cruise line.

 

 

 

The problem in many cases (and not just the cruise industry) is the programming work is contracted out to people who have no concept of how the industry functions. More and more companies get rid of in-house expertise and contract the work to the lowest bidder. Often the contract is not for a fixed price, but for hours worked, so the more errors made, the more billable hours can exist to fix the problems that never should have happened in the first place.

 

Even with a set of specs which can range from a general outline to someone's thoughts about the details, common sense that would go into the program by someone intimately familiar with the product (cruising) is not available with contractors.

 

I once met a government software contractor who would receive a set of specs and knew there was no way software that exactly met the specs would work. He would return his bid with a write-up describing his interpretation of the specs along with a very low (unprofitable) price.  When he was awarded the contract with his low bid, he wrote the software to do exactly what the specs asked for. When it did not work after having met the specs exactly, he was asked to do what was necessary to make it work. And that is where he made a big profit.

[mar2352]

I looked up the company that wrote this app on the App Store.  It's name is Global Innovations.  I looked up in Hoovers and guess how many employees it has ....ONE!  He might be a little overwhelmed - ya think!

[Roberto256]

On 10/24/2021 at 6:33 PM, Steelers36 said:

There is a lot of additional functionality to consider.  Perhaps part and concept, but see below:

 

 

I would think the new Personalizer should have some look&feel similar to the MC App, so it is easy for guests to relate when using both platforms.

 

So, a lot of white screens, hangs, and general frustration?