Princess MedallionNet internet access

[james.lau]

Can anyone tell me whether the Princess MedallionNet internet security protocols block access to remote connection sites like GoToMy PC?

[Matco]

Best bet in this situation is to either call or use the princess chat on their website to confirm with them about remote desktop access. Better to be safe than sorry..

[james.lau]

Thanks. I did call and could not get a definitive answer.

[Matco]

which ship are you sailing on?

[james.lau]

Emerald Princess

[Matco]

ah soon to be a medallion class ship with the medallion net wifi, as far as I understand they only have the standard wifi on that ship, I could be wrong tho, when are you sailing the ship will be a medallion class ship in august of 2020 

[james.lau]

Sailing 2-1-2020. Ship will not be Medallion Class at that time, but will have MedallionNet internet service.

[Hlitner]

5 hours ago, Matco said:

ah soon to be a medallion class ship with the medallion net wifi, as far as I understand they only have the standard wifi on that ship, I could be wrong tho, when are you sailing the ship will be a medallion class ship in august of 2020 

You are partially wrong.  While the Emerald has not yet fully implemented the Medallion program, it does now have Medallion Net!  What does that mean?  On our 25 day cruise that ended on Monday the Internet was generally quite slow.  And for the better part of 2 Sea days the entire system was down!  There were many unhappy cruisers when they could not even access the Internet to check-in and print out airline documents the day before docking in Ft Lauderdale.

 

During our cruise, there were technicians aboard converting the cabin door locks over to the Medallion system.  In the beginning of our cruise we were still using the old cruise cards that you had to insert in a door slot to unlock the door.  By mid-cruise these locks had been replaced with the new Medallion locks.  But since Medallions are not yet issued for this ship we had to swipe our cruise cards over the Medallion screen (on the bulkhead near the cabin door) to unlock the door.  The old slots had been eliminated.  We had previously been on the CB where the entire Medallion system was up.  By the end of the cruise we decided we prefer the old system and see no real benefit to the Medallion system other then allowing the cruise line to track everyone's movements.

 

Hank

[CruiseVA]

Where was your cruise - MedallionNet depends on the geographic location of your ship. It has nothing to do with the Medallion System, but, all to do with the satellite connections.  Every MedallionNet ship we've been on has had super-fast Internet, yet, if you got way north or south it will drop off. It also depends on if the ship can see the sky clearly without mountains, etc.

Oh, and, there are many benefits to the Medallion system for those that wish to take advantage of them.

[CruiseVA]

8 hours ago, james.lau said:

Can anyone tell me whether the Princess MedallionNet internet security protocols block access to remote connection sites like GoToMy PC?

I doubt that they block anything. I've used a VPN on our last cruise without issues.

[Hlitner]

19 hours ago, CruiseVA said:

Where was your cruise - MedallionNet depends on the geographic location of your ship. It has nothing to do with the Medallion System, but, all to do with the satellite connections.  Every MedallionNet ship we've been on has had super-fast Internet, yet, if you got way north or south it will drop off. It also depends on if the ship can see the sky clearly without mountains, etc.

Oh, and, there are many benefits to the Medallion system for those that wish to take advantage of them.

Please understand that we do a lot of cruising (sometimes over 100 days a year) in waters all over the world.  The location excuse has been used by cruise lines as long as there has been onboard Internet.  The CB cruise (in August) was a cruise out of NYC (Brooklyn) to Canada and over to Greenland and return.  Internet was slow the entire cruise including just off of the East Coast of the USA.  We have previously cruised on similar northern routes with HAL, Cunard, RCI, and even Princess (Regal and other ships) where Internet has been much faster.  The other cruise (just returned this week) was on the Emerald which was a typical Med itinerary that ended with a TA crossing along the normal routing from the Azores to Florida.  We have cruised on this route many times (on many ships and lines) with few Internet problems.  The Emerald actually had zero service for the better part of two sea days (including when we were only a few hundred miles off the Carolinas).

 

As to the "ship see the sky clearly without mountains" we assume you are aware there are no mountains (at least not above the sea) in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!  I guess your argument would "hold seawater" if Princess was obtaining their Internet from the bottom of the sea and had interference from the mid-Atlantic range :).

 

We have been on 6 Princess cruises  (more then 80 days) since 2018 ...most with Medallion Net.  On only one of those cruises which was a Regal crossing from Copenhagen to NYC was the Medallion Net anything close to fast and reliable.  Ironically, on a subsequent Regal cruise (only a few months later) the Medallion Net was awful.  

 

As to the Satellite connections this depends on the system selected (and paid for) by the cruise line and whether they are willing to pay the higher fees associated with better services and higher bandwidth.  It does appear that Princess is wedded with MTN which does have a pretty decent reputation.  The downtime we experienced (this week) on the Emerald was an internal problem (even the onboard systems were not functioning) and even became the butt of some jokes delivered by the entertainers. It was not a big problem for me since we do not pay for Internet on Princess (if we did I would have asked for my money back) and do not depend on cruise ship Internet for business (we met 2 cruisers who were distraught since the lack of decent Internet caused them business problems).  Ironically, we were trying to book a future cruise with Princess (online) when we lost Internet :). Still have not made that booking.

 

Hank

P.S.  Waiting until Sunday afternoon to get the Saturday College football scores was a bummer

[Thrak]

On 11/21/2019 at 10:32 AM, Matco said:

which ship are you sailing on?

 

On 11/21/2019 at 10:36 AM, james.lau said:

Emerald Princess

 

We just did 14 days on Emerald Princess - Barcelona to Fort Lauderdale. Absolutely abysmal Internet service. We just used our free minutes - and lost over an hour farting around with things that didn't work. Sometimes even lost the intranet let alone the Internet. Spoke with someone who went down and complained about the horrible service and got his money back for the always-on Medallion Net service he had paid for. It was a total joke.

[caribill]

13 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

 

We just did 14 days on Emerald Princess - Barcelona to Fort Lauderdale. Absolutely abysmal Internet service. We just used our free minutes - and lost over an hour farting around with things that didn't work. Sometimes even lost the intranet let alone the Internet. Spoke with someone who went down and complained about the horrible service and got his money back for the always-on Medallion Net service he had paid for. It was a total joke.

 

When the connection was also poor on the Emerald last December, a visit with the Internet manager was all it took to get lost minutes put back into the account.

[CruiseVA]

On our CB cruise from FLL to Quebec City - up the Eastern Coast of the US we had great Internet access & speed except for 1 day. Location has everything to do with access to the Satellite systems used for Internet. Watch this to see how it works (instead os listening to people that don't know jack). https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/ocean-medallion/medallionnet/ about 1:20 in it explains what will cause issues. Of course, onboard issues with the tech can casuse other issues.

We've been on many cruises with MedallionNet, all have had excellent connections, with an occasional outage/issues. We've watch Netflix and placed phone calls & facetime calls from those ships with no buffering or other issues.

None of this has to do with the original post.

Once you get far enough north (Alaska/Greenland) or far enough South, you will switch over to the 'old' slower sat's. 

[lx200gps]

On 11/21/2019 at 7:59 PM, CruiseVA said:

I doubt that they block anything. I've used a VPN on our last cruise without issues.

Interesting. Any chance you could share some details such as your VPN provider and which server/country you were connecting through? I'm currently on the Regal around the Western Caribbean, and could not connect at all through any NordVPN server in Canada, US, Mexico or Panama. The built-in VPN provided by BitDefender also would not connect. Thanks.

[stepmor99]

We were on Regal Princess from 10/31 to 11/10 of this year. Not at all impressed with MedalionNet experience. I could not connect to the internet with my device (Kindle) as I had been able to do on my previous 4 cruises on this ship before this upgrade was installed....used over 100 minutes of my free included internet minutes trying to do so. Unfortunately, the Princess computer room rep (expert?) offered no assistance. He finally told me that MedallionNet performance is a "unknown" with the Kindle device I had (new Fire model purchased in 2019) but he could help me if I had an Apple product.......

Also...a suggestion. Go to the computer area and get the pamphlet there that gives you the full info on how to connect while on board. The info in the stateroom "manual" was confusing and incomplete. (I don't understand why Princess could not include this pamphlet in the room at arrival. This info could have eliminated the 45 wait for assistance in the computer area after embarkation....)

Just set your expectations accordingly. Also, I did not experience any noticeable improvement in the internet response speed when using the ship's provided computers. 

[Hlitner]

On 11/23/2019 at 4:49 AM, caribill said:

 

When the connection was also poor on the Emerald last December, a visit with the Internet manager was all it took to get lost minutes put back into the account.

The Internet Manager was literally throwing his arms up in frustration as even the hard wired computers in the computer room were all down.  They even had a printed sign at the entrance of the computer room saying "No Internet Service."  Getting lost minutes restored does little good when the entire system does not work.  We walked off the ship with about 400 minutes remaining (or our original 1000 free Elite minutes) not for lack of trying.  Our 2nd Princess cruise in 2 months (total of 41 days) with awful Internet.  Fortunately, my phone account is with T-Mobile which works in just about every port on earth.  Although T-Mobile throttles down data to 2G in foreign lands (unless you pay for faster service) that 2G was lightyears faster then what we had on the CB and Emerald....even when the system was up.

 

Hank

[Thrak]

On 11/23/2019 at 1:49 AM, caribill said:

 

When the connection was also poor on the Emerald last December, a visit with the Internet manager was all it took to get lost minutes put back into the account.

 

It really wasn't worth the effort. I knew I could go complain and get the minutes back but the service was to totally horrible I didn't even ask. It would just give me more time from frustration. I really hate the new system. If you don't pay for unlimited service you have to login over and over and over and over and... I had to enter my stateroom number and the day month and year of birth every time. Pathetic tech.

[paradiselivin1]

It looks like there were a few of us who suffered through the abysmal service on that crossing. I purchased the unlimited minutes and won't make that mistake again. When my free minutes are over; that will be the end of it.The note they sent out was pathetic….

[satxdiver]

The ship internet gurus can block specific services in the internet router for services they do not want to support or they can throttle it. 

[Haboob]

31 minutes ago, satxdiver said:

The ship internet gurus can block specific services in the internet router for services they do not want to support or they can throttle it. 

Yup.   Well, except for the shipboard IT folks are rarely gurus.  😲

[billcod]

On 11/23/2019 at 10:06 AM, lx200gps said:

Interesting. Any chance you could share some details such as your VPN provider and which server/country you were connecting through? 

Agreed. We are now on Emerald Princess in Cartagena, and Nord VPN does not connect (tried many countries). And at first, trying to set up MedallionNet with NordVPN already on, stopped the Medallion Net connection. 

[Thrak]

1 hour ago, billcod said:

Agreed. We are now on Emerald Princess in Cartagena, and Nord VPN does not connect (tried many countries). And at first, trying to set up MedallionNet with NordVPN already on, stopped the Medallion Net connection. 

 

Emerald is know to have (at least at this time) some of the absolute worst Internet connectivity known to Princess. You can expect it to range from very bad to horrible to non-existent.