What Did We Do Before Medallion Class

[Tedferg]

Just one simple question - not wishing to start another Medallion thread. What did passengers do prior to Medallion Class. I am thinking many people did not have PCs and booked and paid via local TA. Just as we did in 2007. I am guessing TA filled in our information and gave us Boarding Passes. So my thought is, there are still many passengers who have no awareness of Medallion App and will just turn up on Sail Day. TA would advise them of need for Covid-19 docs of course.

[maggie777]

2 hours ago, Tedferg said:

Just one simple question - not wishing to start another Medallion thread. What did passengers do prior to Medallion Class. I am thinking many people did not have PCs and booked and paid via local TA. Just as we did in 2007. I am guessing TA filled in our information and gave us Boarding Passes. So my thought is, there are still many passengers who have no awareness of Medallion App and will just turn up on Sail Day. TA would advise them of need for Covid-19 docs of course.

Before we were printing forms at home we received a packet in the mail from TA. The packet contained boarding pass, luggage tags and other pertinent info. Were these the good old days?

 

[Kay S]

1 hour ago, maggie777 said:

Before we were printing forms at home we received a packet in the mail from TA. The packet contained boarding pass, luggage tags and other pertinent info. Were these the good old days?

 

That was an exciting day when the packet arrived in the mail!  Life was simpler then.

[Lady Arwen]

We loved getting our cruise docs in the mail!  With HAL we received a (fake) blue leather  case and we still have some around.  Loved going through every piece of paper reading it over and over.  Never got old lol.  So much fun back then!

[Tedferg]

Ah yes, Docs in the mail. I remember now ! I also remember TA booking cheapest Balcony and insisting, 'Oh, you will get an upgrade'. We did and a week before we sailed another upgrade to a mini suite 🙂

[hpeabody]

Before this Medallion Class App I had no frustration filling out personal information on the cruise personalizer on the Princess website. It took less than 10 minutes and done!  When it came time I easily printed out my boarding pass and luggage tags. I am not able to have this Medallion Class App on my not so smart anymore phone running android 7.  This Medallion Class App seems to be a huge frustration, an inconsistent mess and generally does not work well for most folks.  IMO It seems it was just not tested and not ready for prime   Yes, I know this is "Covid times" but it did not have to be like this. Princess should be embarrassed.

[barrykel]

8 minutes ago, hpeabody said:

Before this Medallion Class App I had no frustration filling out personal information on the cruise personalizer on the Princess website. It took less than 10 minutes and done!  When it came time I easily printed out my boarding pass and luggage tags. I am not able to have this Medallion Class App on my not so smart anymore phone running android 7.  This Medallion Class App seems to be a huge frustration, an inconsistent mess and generally does not work well for most folks.  IMO It seems it was just not tested and not ready for prime   Yes, I know this is "Covid times" but it did not have to be like this. Princess should be embarrassed.

Yeah, I suppose it will be nice to be able to order a drink or make dinner reservations from anywhere on the ship, but it's not like it was ever real hard to find a bar or go up to the restaurant and signup at the table right outside, on any ship that I've been on. It really sounds like Princess is totally out of touch with their customers, and have fallen for the oldest mistake in the book - that of believing everything the salesman claims about their product.

[JF - retired RRT]

20 minutes ago, hpeabody said:

Before this Medallion Class App I had no frustration filling out personal information on the cruise personalizer on the Princess website. It took less than 10 minutes and done!  When it came time I easily printed out my boarding pass and luggage tags. I am not able to have this Medallion Class App on my not so smart anymore phone running android 7.  This Medallion Class App seems to be a huge frustration, an inconsistent mess and generally does not work well for most folks.  IMO It seems it was just not tested and not ready for prime   Yes, I know this is "Covid times" but it did not have to be like this. Princess should be embarrassed.

I'm one that can't get all of my boxes ✔️d, but I don't sail till 1/22, so not too stressed about it.

BTW: I remember the old saying, "if one person complains, 10 are not saying anything". This seems to be a little reversed here. Lots of us are complaining, but we're a small segment of the full cruise ship pax. 

I'm following the "live from" threads (3 and counting) and from what's been reported, most people are in the green lane (meaning no problems with the app) and very few in the blue lane.

[ontheweb]

27 minutes ago, JF - retired RRT said:

I'm one that can't get all of my boxes ✔️d, but I don't sail till 1/22, so not too stressed about it.

BTW: I remember the old saying, "if one person complains, 10 are not saying anything". This seems to be a little reversed here. Lots of us are complaining, but we're a small segment of the full cruise ship pax. 

I'm following the "live from" threads (3 and counting) and from what's been reported, most people are in the green lane (meaning no problems with the app) and very few in the blue lane.

But do you remember any complaints about using the personalizer pre-medallion?

[getting older slowly]

Right this Medallion thingie......

 

Before it.... we use a TA    we visit the TA she gave us all our travel docs in a nice folder... had a chit chat about cruise, any news she'd heard, asked about tours.. have be planed any ourselves....

 

The after cruise  drop for a chit chat.... and talked about the good and bad of our cruise

 

And we got a Cruise Card to add to our collection........

 

So   my take on this Medallion.... not needed... marketing ploy....   look at this new shiny thing...

 

will it enhance by cruising experience..... NO......

 

We live in a world with to much tech... and try to disconnect on holiday particularly a cruise....

 

example of tech getting out of hand.....

a refrigerator with a computer to connect to the internet ..... WHY        somebody in marketing

 

So on our next cruise... this Medallion thingie  is just a Cruise Card,  and no more

 

Don 

[JF - retired RRT]

3 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

But do you remember any complaints about using the personalizer pre-medallion?

Yes...ME! We could never get the website (not the Personalizer, but still related) to let us use our FCDs to book a cruise. Always had to call Princess. Since they redid the website for MC, it has been allowing us to use our FCDs. They fixed whatever was broken.

[SharkieRools]

Anytime Princess changes something you have the hordes of people complaining that "things were better the old way," "its cost cutting," "they're ruining my vacation," "I'm never sailing Princess again," etc etc etc.  Perhaps Princess should have just stayed with the original Island, Pacific and Sun Princess, never updating them or building new ships afterwards. 🤣

[Tedferg]

I would like to restate, I did not mean this as a critique thread, I genuinely could not remember how we handled Docs on our first cruise.

[billco]

4 hours ago, maggie777 said:

Before we were printing forms at home we received a packet in the mail from TA. The packet contained boarding pass, luggage tags and other pertinent info. Were these the good old days?

 

I did not think getting a package in the mail was the good old days by any means. I thought it was great when Princess stopped sending the packets and made it so everything could be done on a computer and even better on a smart device. I like Medallion Class and think Princess should be commended for going in this direction. 

[SharkieRools]

The Cruise Personalizer was around back in 2007, although I'm sure many TAs filled out the info for their clients.  If you're interested, you can see what the Princess page looked like back in January 2007:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070102112144/http://www.princess.com/

(Via archive.org)

Unfortunately because of the way they created the links on the page, many of them weren't archived. 

[JSandage]

3 hours ago, Kay S said:

That was an exciting day when the packet arrived in the mail!  Life was simpler then.

OMG yes it was!!!! 

[barrykel]

39 minutes ago, SharkieRools said:

Anytime Princess changes something you have the hordes of people complaining that "things were better the old way," "its cost cutting," "they're ruining my vacation," "I'm never sailing Princess again," etc etc etc.  Perhaps Princess should have just stayed with the original Island, Pacific and Sun Princess, never updating them or building new ships afterwards. 🤣

There's nothing wrong with introducing new technology, but there's a right way and several wrong ways to do it. And the simple fact is that Princess handled this one in probably the worst way possible.

Edit: OK, maybe not the worst way (that would have been not giving affected users any way to checkin at all). But still mind-numbingly bad.

Edited August 9, 2021 by barrykel

[MishelleMcc]

Oh the memory!  I started cruising in the late 80's!  My "docs" always came fed X cuz I always booked last minute!  Ha!  In those days, cabins were cheap at the last minute!  No internet!

 

These days, I obsess a bit with the planning...  booking early...  but I know I am not the only one!  Ha! 😉 

 

I am excited for our first Medallion cruise in January.  Do I feel like I have total understanding of all the processes?  Nope.  But I know that whatever I can't figure out, I can get help from other pax or crew.  In the mean time I will continue to play with it, lurk on these boards, pour over trip reports, and I will make sure everything is "green" before we fly out. 

 

Thank you EVERYONE!  I've learned so much already!!

 

 

 

 

 

[c-boy]

3 hours ago, JF - retired RRT said:

I'm one that can't get all of my boxes ✔️d, but I don't sail till 1/22, so not too stressed about it.

BTW: I remember the old saying, "if one person complains, 10 are not saying anything". This seems to be a little reversed here. Lots of us are complaining, but we're a small segment of the full cruise ship pax. 

I'm following the "live from" threads (3 and counting) and from what's been reported, most people are in the green lane (meaning no problems with the app) and very few in the blue lane.

yep, there are thousands sailing out of ports who seem to have figured it out. 

Edited August 9, 2021 by c-boy

[getting older slowly]

Is this use of Tech.. trying to remove the need to deal with people ???

 

Just a thought........  Also I am not against Tech as such, but do we really need it everywhere...

 

If I remember Humans can walk around and talk to each other..... and not be glued to a screen...

 

or has our society gone to a point where one needs to be constancy connected......???

 

 

[caribill]

9 hours ago, JF - retired RRT said:

I'm following the "live from" threads (3 and counting) and from what's been reported, most people are in the green lane (meaning no problems with the app) and very few in the blue lane.

 

But in reading other threads, some of these people spent hours on their smart device and on the phone with Princess to be able to get that green status.

 

And, as someone pointed out, just to get accomplished what 10 minutes with the Personalizer could do.

 

Of course the app has additional features such as DMW and reserving a slot for every event on the ship, but these features are not needed to get green status for boarding.

 

As someone who has booked a new cruise I find I can not even accept the cruise contract anymore with the Personalizer. And as one with access to a "not-so-smart" phone with Android 7, I can not accept it with the app either.

[leck57]

9 hours ago, JF - retired RRT said:

I'm following the "live from" threads (3 and counting) and from what's been reported, most people are in the green lane (meaning no problems with the app) and very few in the blue lane.

 

I have two cruises coming up - one in March and one in August. I have put the exact same details in (that the App allows at this early stage) for both cruises. One cruise has me in the green lane and other in the blue lane. Why, I have no idea.

[Condocat]

In theory/concept the Medallion app probably is a great idea.  In reality, it has been a nightmare.

 

For someone who is working full time, I have spent countless hours (80+) on the phone with Princess trying to get resolve with numerous issues, many that were idiotic(not accepting my country of origin, crossing identity with my husband's, etc).  Much of that time was spent on hold.  Shamefully, the problems were too overwhelming for the staff to correct and additional phone calls were required.  Some issues were corrected for a time and then resurfaced all over again. 

 

Somehow through it all, I maintained my sanity.  Bottom line, this is not how a company  debuts a new product.  This will be my first cruise with Princess, one of many cruises  I've taken over the years with other lines.   After this annoying waste of my time, energy and personal resources, I highly doubt I will return to Princess.  There are too many options who make pre-cruise planning effortless for one's vacation. 

 

By the way, my Medallion still does not work, nor do I care .................. 

[ontheweb]

3 hours ago, Condocat said:

In theory/concept the Medallion app probably is a great idea.  In reality, it has been a nightmare.

 

For someone who is working full time, I have spent countless hours (80+) on the phone with Princess trying to get resolve with numerous issues, many that were idiotic(not accepting my country of origin, crossing identity with my husband's, etc).  Much of that time was spent on hold.  Shamefully, the problems were too overwhelming for the staff to correct and additional phone calls were required.  Some issues were corrected for a time and then resurfaced all over again. 

 

Somehow through it all, I maintained my sanity.  Bottom line, this is not how a company  debuts a new product.  This will be my first cruise with Princess, one of many cruises  I've taken over the years with other lines.   After this annoying waste of my time, energy and personal resources, I highly doubt I will return to Princess.  There are too many options who make pre-cruise planning effortless for one's vacation. 

 

By the way, my Medallion still does not work, nor do I care .................. 

Great summation of all that Princess had done wrong in the name of modernization.

 

Once again I will say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.".

[Ombud]

Except Covid broke it. Months ago I stated my belief that MC was created for contact tracing. I was flamed for it. But I was right. OM couldn't do this, MC can