Medallion app grade: D-

[Me&Red]

I returned today from a five-day LA-Cabo round trip cruise on the Royal Princess, a Medallion equipped ship. I give the app a grade of D-. 

 

I was was a part of a group of ten. All of us had downloaded the Medallion Class app on our smartphones before the cruise, and were fairly familiar with its features. We were expecting to be able to find one another and chat with each other using the app, as well as order drinks, etc. About half of us had iPhones and the other half had androids. 

 

One person in the group had great success with the app.  Her phone connected easily with the Medallion net signal and once she logged on, she didn’t have to do so again unless she had closed the app. She could easily find others in the group, order drinks, and get directions via the app. She was the only one. The rest of us had trouble with it, ranging from spotty connections to complete failure. When the IT person in the Internet cafe tried to fix mine, she couldn’t, so she deleted the app, and tried to reload it. It took two hours for the app to reload onto my phone,  and it didn’t work any better. When I tried to locate shipmates, it just said that function wasn’t working. 

 

Three of of us eventually deleted the app, as it was more frustrating than it was worth. So out of ten In our group, one had a good experience, three found it completely useless, and five had spotty and frequently frustrating experiences with the app. All the tech person could say was “there are a lot of people using it right now.”

 

The chat feature on the app was poorly designed. It doesn’t give any notification when a chat is received, so you have to go into the app and look for messages.  The messages don’t have a time/date stamp, so there is no way of knowing if the message is two minutes, two hours or two days old. 

 

Princess claims that that bar staff will have devices to scan medallions or recognize you when bringing drinks ordered through the app. That is simply not the case on the Royal, at least not now. If ordering directly from wait staff, they had no scanner, but they asked for your cabin number. If ordering via app, they could get the drink to the right table, but had no idea who had ordered it other than calling out the name. Perhaps I misunderstood how that was supposed to work, but I didn’t see any improvement in service or efficacy using the app. One person in our group ordered a drink to be delivered to the room. An hour later, the app said that it had been delivered, but it never arrived. 

 

The medallion worked great for opening the cabin door. It was surprisingly nice to have the door unlocked upon arrival at the door. It was pretty easy using the compass feature on the large screens in public areas, like at the elevator. 

 

Over all, the Medallion was a nice feature, but not worth the hype. The Medallion app is definitely not ready for prime time. They should pull it out of service and go back to the drawing board until it works seamlessly and consistently.  It’s very clear that the Medallion net signal is nowhere strong enough. I hope that you have a better experience than our group did, and suggest you temper your expectations about the app if you have a Medallion class cruise scheduled in the near future. 

 

Happy sailing!

[cherylandtk]

I agree with everything you said.  We were on Royal Jan. 25 -Feb.1.  App has since been upgraded to include the Ocean Compass feature.  Our access to the WiFi seems to have been better than your group’s (perhaps a younger demographic on your 5 day sailing with greater use of the WiFi and streaming?), but aside from that we still experienced the same troubles you did.  Works great for opening the door, though. 🤷‍♀️ 

 

 

[Potstech]

Fully agree. Very intermittent functions and what would be normally used items are spread out over several sections.  Activity section is way more cumbersome than it could be.  Typical IT program with little thought on how all users need it .  D- is about right. Was on Jan 11 Sky cruise.

[Thrak]

I've seen some great reviews of the system on other ships. I've also seen some pretty poor reviews of the system on Royal.

[pablo222]

8 hours ago, Me&Red said:

The chat feature on the app was poorly designed. It doesn’t give any notification when a chat is received, so you have to go into the app and look for messages.  The messages don’t have a time/date stamp, so there is no way of knowing if the message is two minutes, two hours or two days old. 

 

There are posters here who claim this is intentional.

 

This was a (mis) feature of the original princess messenger.

 

I thought others had posted that the new, medallion version did give notifications...

 

Princess says they will be giving you alerts to enhance your cruise experience.

If the alerts are silent, I don't think my cruise experience will be all that enhanced.

[5:00_Somewhere]

I agree, the Medallion app is terrible. We were on the Sky in December and had nothing but problems with the app to the point that I quit using it altogether.  I will say that on the Sky the Medallion itself worked very well. It was wonderful for opening our cabin door; in less crowded areas, we didn't even have to pull it out for a bartender or waiter to identify us; and in more crowded areas - such as pool deck bars or the Int'l Cafe in the morning - you simply had to tap your Medallion on a pay pad; and waitstaff and bartenders were always able to locate us.  But, yeah, the app is terrible. I hope they fix it, but won't count on it. 

[franktown]

It must really be hit and miss.  Had wonderful experience on the Regal.  All applications worked as advertised. 

[wrongwaywatson]

I thought everything worked pretty well, except the ordering drink function.   It kept telling us that we were in an area that it wasn't supported, but we were (we were trying to get our free drink).  When we finally did place the free drink order, it took about 45 minutes and we were sitting very close to the bar area.   We were passing time waiting for the show to start, so it really didn't matter, as we were just people watching anyway.  But, if we had really wanted a drink, it would have been unacceptable.  

The find my shipmate function was great, I thought.   

[rollingjay]

I agree.  We were on the Royal in December and nothing worked.  The IT people blamed it on the Iphone 6 but people with other phones had the same problems.  I think they should just throw the darn thing overboard and go back to cruise cards or do it over and do it so it works on all phones.  

[bookmama22]

I described it in my evaluation to Princess from recent trip on the Regal, "a solution in search of a problem". Worked will opening cabin door but so did a key card on past cruises and any hotel you stay in. On Regal there were waiters on pool deck to take any drink orders and at Vines, the only bar we went to, the waiter asked our cabin # when we ordered a drink. Pretty easy.

 

It was just my husband and I and so we didn't need to locate one another on the ship for any meet-up. 

[M2ice]

Just got off the Crown and other then opening the door it was useless.   Will be a long time before we sail Princess again for other reasons but I don't like the big brother aspect of it and will avoid it and Princess in the future.   Maybe they should spend their money on upgraded generators so the ship can make it to all its stops!!

[crimmj]

Was just on the same cruise as me&red - also with 10 people - and about the same experience 🤨.  Good for doors and that’s about all. 

[mosenga]

My experience on CB in December was also hit or miss. I had times where a drink was delivered in 5 minutes. I had times where it never came and was simply marked as "canceled" after 20 minutes or so. The app is spotty for location, so that may have been part of the problem. In many spots where people hang out a lot (MUTS), the app said I couldn't order a drink. If I moved 10 feet in one direction, it would work fine. The other strange thing was that about half the bartenders and waitstaff would not even need to scan the Medallion because I would automatically show up on their system. The other half would have to manually record my cabin number because the system wasn't working for them either.

I completely agree about the texting. It was so irritating to have members of my group send a message and later ask why it wasn't responded to. I would look and see that I had one, but there was no notification at all. And no way to tell how old the message was.

For locating other shipmates, it worked pretty well. That was definitely it's best feature.

So, I agree with your assessment. If they ever get this working properly, it will be amazing. At this point, however, it is not yet ready for implementation and is a source of frustration.

[MissP22]

I've been following the problems associated with the Medallion class app & submitted a question to them concerning the fact that I can't even load the app on my older Samsung S6 android phone.

btw- the Ocean app it did work for me last Dec. but has been replaced by the Medallion class app.

I just received an email this morning that their going to have an update of the app by the end of this week. Hopefully this will resolve some other problems as well. 

 

Good morning.

We apologize for the challenge you've been experiencing.

This issue should be resolved by the end of this week when an updated version of the MedallionClass app is pushed to the respective app stores.

Thank again for your patience.

Kind regards,



MedallionClass Support Team

Customer Service Center:
844/525-0942 (Mon-Fri) or 1-800/774-6237 (Weekends)

[vampiress]

i was on the royal in october and the medallion and apps worked perfectly on the iphone 11 and xs.  the free drink we ordered in the outrigger, but we were sitting off to the side and the waiter had a bit of trouble with it, but got us our drinks no problem. we used the app to order drinks a couple of times in the aft theater (i forget the name but where the magician usually was at night)

 

as for using the medallion to order drinks, i think it depended on how busy the bar staff were, it was 50/50 whether they asked for medallion or not, mine was on a lanyard and they didn't always want to take the lanyard  and would just take the room #.  next cruise is not on a medallion ship and i'll be sad the door doesn't open the same.  we really enjoyed watching the door open and seeing which of our medallions would win.

[SharkieRools]

I feel bad - had no issues with it in November on the Royal.  Actually I take that back, had troubles initially installing the app several months prior to the cruise, but when they updated the app it resolved that issue.  

[pablo222]

On 2/17/2020 at 8:51 AM, MissP22 said:

I've been following the problems associated with the Medallion class app & submitted a question to them concerning the fact that I can't even load the app on my older Samsung S6 android phone.

btw- the Ocean app it did work for me last Dec. but has been replaced by the Medallion class app.

I just received an email this morning that their going to have an update of the app by the end of this week. Hopefully this will resolve some other problems as well. 

 

 

Again?!?!?  This is like a weekly event for the ocean innovators.

 

It seems like they need to hire some ocean testers...

 

Another case of 'stand by for a fix':

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2731328-medallionclass-app-on-samsung-galaxy-s8/?tab=comments#comment-59311760

[MissP22]

11 minutes ago, pablo222 said:

 

Again?!?!?  This is like a weekly event for the ocean innovators.

 

It seems like they need to hire some ocean testers...

 

Another case of 'stand by for a fix':

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2731328-medallionclass-app-on-samsung-galaxy-s8/?tab=comments#comment-59311760

I'll try it again to see how it goes. I'm sure that if it does get fixed something else will get messed up along the way.

The only features I'll be missing out on that I want is the location feature (without having to find a board) and the account charges (without having to go to pass services.)