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The first thing I do when I receive one of these offers is to scroll down to the footnote that explains what the "1" at the end of the phrase "onboard spending money" entails.

I think another option, if you care to cruise, would be to look at the luxury lines like Viking Ocean, Seabourn, or Oceania. Their prices are pretty much all inclusive. All of the mass market cruise lines use the base fare plus extras pricing model.

But not all eat at Alfredo's everyday or for every meal when it was included in the fare (maybe some did). The ingredients are purchased in bulk flour, water, and cheese which make up the bulk of the ingredients don't cost that much. Regardless, the savings are there when looking at the aggregate are there and given CCL's and Princess book and the massive debt service payments from the pandemic, any savings is good. I would like them to start investing more in actual passenger experience not related to the Medallion. Heck, it would be fine with me if Princess allocated any money gained from savings to crew salaries. Happy crew = happy passengers.

Nope. Look at the big picture. It's kind of like looking at a small investor vs George Soros or Warren Buffet. Taking the figures from my example...If Princess serves 500,000 passengers annually (they probably serve more), they would be saving $500,000 by switching to cruise cards ($1 per passenger savings x 500,000 passengers served). I think $500,000 would be enough to cover Alfredo's for all with unlimited covers. The ingredients for what is served at Alfredo's don't cost that much.

This is really getting to the crux of my peeve with the Medallion. This technology is costing Princess money. Let's be generous in saying that a cruise card has a total cost of 25 cents to Princess (probably less since they are buying in bulk). Let's be conservative and go with the figure proposed earlier in this thread that a Medallion has a total cost of $1.25 to Princess (if you factor in the stickers, lanyards, and packaging for the ship to home order, probably more). By switching back to a cruise card Princess saves 500% per passenger on cruise IDs. They also only have to maintain IT services for the App (no problem with Princess having an App as all cruise lines have them) and not the ancillary App technology that goes with the Medallion; another cost savings. With all the cost savings maybe Princess can use the money to make Alfredo's free an unlimited to all passengers again. Princess already only has a finite number of monetary resources and I don't think the Medallion is a good use of what they have. There's a YouTube video titled "The $2,000,000,000 Mistake of MyMagic+" which outlined the problem with the Disney MagicBands. The problems presented, IMO, extend to the Medallion.

What happens is she’s on another cruise line. She’s so helpless that she can’t open her door? What happens if she has her hands full at home and is trying to unlock open her front door?

Makes me wonder how people function off Princess ships. Are people this helpless?

The list of cruises were in final payment anyways. I wouldn’t have gotten anything back even with a refundable deposit. This cruise is over 28 days so final payment was at 6 months and last year.

The NFID readers can scan both Medallions and cards. There is actually a longer delay in getting the Medallions to register than cards. I used cards almost exclusively until late last year.

To the contrary, a booking with a non-refundable deposit will always have the non-refundable deposit verbiage in the payment details of the Booking Confirmation. I recently booked a heavily discounted cruise through the Future Cruise Desk with a non-refundable deposit and full payment required at the time of booking. It clearly states that the deposit is non-refundable.

Cruise is what you want it to be. If you want more, you will pay for it. There are plenty of cruisers who stick to the standard fare, don't eat at the specialty restaurants, don't drink alcohol, and don't purchase shore excursions directly through Princess. Personally, I don't eat at the specialty restaurants, have my alcoholic drinks at bars while in port, and book my shore excursions independently.

Try Celebrity, especially the Edge Class ships. Still part of RC Group, but more mature audience. Still tries to push the limits and break out of the box like RC.

I'm a guy so everything I need is in my wallet. Maybe it's different for the ladies. My gal always carries a very small purse. To her, less stuff = less stuff to keep track of. The removal of locks was hyperbole to drive home my point.

A lot order room service, as evidenced by the number of what to do with used dishes threads.

Rhetorical question...why has Disney pushed the MagicBand to the margins of their offerings? There are other way to tabulate usage which don't require such technological investment. Maybe the data isn't as useful as everyone makes it seem? Just thinking outloud.

Not a problem most Princess cruisers have given that Princess is known to cater to an older demographic.

Through my 35 year old eyes the Medallion is dated. This concept debuted at US Disney Parks in 2013 via the MagicBands and really didn't do much to revolutionize the experience. Disney guests didn't mind it (not loved it) when it was free, but when Disney started to charge, very few actually bought into the Magic Band concept. As far as Princess goes, the benefits of the Medallion are trivial because cruise cards to the same thing at a much lower cost to the cruise line. The portals are a redundancy to the printed Event Listings, the Ship Schedule and deck plans section of the App on the phone and don't require use of the Medallion unless playing a game on the portal (unnecessary and I've never seen many people playing). For exit/entry on to the ship, there is a a few seconds delay in the readers pick up the Medallion's signal. With the cruise cards, there is no delay (can say this using present terms in the times I've had my Medallion swapped for a cruise card), which would speed up exit/entry onto the ship. My drinks still come to me faster if I go up to the bar and get them myself instead of ordering though OceanNow, and I'm guaranteed that I'm going to get them. The Medallion will unlock your cabin door but, you have to be extremely lazy to not want to pull out a key in what ever form to unlock a door. If you're too lazy to do that, just get rid of the locks all together. The find your shipmates feature to me is superfluous, most people always have phones with them so all everyone has to do is get on the messaging App and send texts to each other. As far as tracking venue usage, what venue on the Sphere Class ships was added removed because of Medallion tracking? Crooners was removed from the Majestic and Sky, but reinstated on future builds because passengers complained about it's absence. The Medallion didn't revolutionize cruising. None of the other Carnival brands adopted the technology. The RC Group is revolutionizing cruising through their builds and investors are taking note by buying their stock. Then again, the RC Group experience isn't for all and probably not for the Princess loyalist.

The Coral will use the old locks. The old locks are more interesting than the new locks. Not sure which locks the Jade will use. Also, Panama City is more interesting than Colon, which is a free trade zone with nothing to really to do but shop duty free. Princess has cancelled Nicaragua, Guatemala, and El Salvador due to government unrest for the past few years. Don't be surprised if Princess, down the road, nixes Puerto Quetzal from the itinerary. April and Alaska don't mix. It's still too cold because the ice has only begun to melt and most of the seasonal workers haven't arrived yet so many of the touristy things are still closed.

Exactly. That’s the problem.

I didn't purchase an FCP, but know someone who did. I asked if I could look at hotel bookings via their login. The prices aren't really that great. Randomly, I put in Manhattan for 3 nights in May 2024 and the prices below are what I got. Not sure if you can use your entire point balance to redeem hotels stays. I think, you can only use partial points, which decreases the cost of the stay. The Princess Promotions hotel booking engine very much resembles Expedia.

If Medallions are really that great, more passengers will want to purchase one than not. Also cruise cards cost cents to manufacture. Factoring in the battery and the chip, Medallions probably cost $5 to manufacture. Do the math and the thousands of passengers that Princess serves. I think around $30 for a Medallion would be reasonable. It puts it in line with an AirTag.

As far as what's wrong with the App, there's the basic principle of the data that's stored on the servers isn't 100% accurate. Some can't login to the App using both un/pw and booking/birthday. Loyalty levels are wrong for some. The new App requires authorization of your CC shoreside via a 3rd party in order to complete all check-in steps. On board, the OceanNow isn't deliverered 100% of the time. There are too many reports that orders show as delivered even though they have not. OceanNow has been a victim of it's own success. Too many people ordering via OceanNow and crew couldn't keep up, so in order to quell orders and raise revenue, Princess began charging for OceanNow delivery (one-time, a la carte, or through a package). Princess is using the Medallion as their flagship product and yet the technology isn't close to perfect, which should be the benchmark for App and technology releases. Personally, I think Princess should charge those wanting to use a Medallion over a cruise card. Cruise cards cost cents to manufacture as compared to Medallions which cost more because they require a chip, a battery (which has a poor service life), plastic housing, stickers, and lanyards. If were saying that at it's core, the Medallion functions the same as a cruise card in the sense that a passenger in the sense that all a passenger will use it for is for exit/entry of the ship and to open doors, then give the passenger the option to just use a cruise card to save the Princess money. This is one cutback that I wouldn't mind. Several years ago, Disney used to give away Magic Bands for free to those that booked all in packages. Now they charge $30 for the Magic Bands because those bands were costing them money and it didn't become reason enough for people to book all in packages directly with Disney. As far as tracking venue usage, it doesn't take a genius to figure that out. Princess venues are finite compared to RCCL's mega ships. They are pretty much always in use. If you want to figure out how well a dining/bar venue is doing, you can go back and look at the number of chits or covers you had. It's common knowledge that the library and promenade decks don't' make money because you can't sell anything there.

Princess has a warning about pacemakers and the Medallions. Maybe it's to cover themselves in case something comes up with pacemakers and someone decides to pony up a lawsuit. As the warning says all devices are different.

No idea about Google Voice, but I will say that everything is hinged on the Internet speed MedallionNet is providing. Even over cell carrier's wi-fi or on Apple Facetime, if the connection is slow, the calls will drop or not go through at all. Before the switch to Starlink, both of the aforementioned methods of communications didn't work well at all.

The tracking works to a certain extent. I was on a cruise were we had to go repeat the muster drill for a missing passenger because he could not be tracked--or should I say he wasn't where his Medallion was. Don't know the entire story and only repeating what I over heard from the crew...A lady was couldn't find her husband. The Medallion locator function was showing that he was in their cabin, but he wasn't there (I assume he left his cabin without his Medallion). Numerous announcements were made to make himself known (these I head with my own two ears), but no response from the "missing" passenger. All passengers were made to report to their muster stations to tap their Medallion. The story ends here. I assume that the passenger was found, but I personally never heard if he was.