Medallion On the Island Princess

[rsail203]

My wife told me today that if this cruise had been our first, it would also be our last.

   

Princess Medallion is a joke. Every other cruise line we've been on , you get your table the first night and go there every night after. Here, you have to stand in a reservation line every night and hope your table is available or do you have a table. People in the no reservation line get in faster. Both nights we had long waits to find out we didn't have an assigned table, even though we did have one. They had to scramble to finally get us a table. The line outside was very long because even people who did have tables still had to wait and show their medallion. We were told that Princess management deemed this was the proper way to run the restaurant even though the Maitre d did not agree.

 

 Several elevators were out of order on day 1. Safe's out of order (unable to be fixed and no new ones were available). $100 OBC for that, so you have to hide your money, passports and credit cards, so they won't be stolen One of our 2 tv remotes was missing and then replaced, One of our lamps was missing a light bulb. It's taken us 2 days to be very disillusioned with Princess.

 

Some small problems, but handicapped guests on day 1 had to wait for elevators to be repaired. I think there was a generator problem.

 

I feel the medallion idea in restaurant management should be scrapped.

 

On the good side the pizza on deck 14 was good even though the Sabatini pizza ovens had problems and delayed today's lunch. I don't know if they were repaired as we then went to 14.

 

We just had a medical emergency announcement where a guest has to be taken off, so that may affect our itinerary time tomorrow, but of course the guests health is the first priority.

 

 

 

[JF - retired RRT]

All those problems are unfortunate, but keep in mind...the ships have been "mothballed" for 2 years. Restart pains.

[skynight]

Agree regarding the dining. Princess fixed a dining problem that was not broken so they could use it as an app feature. We were happy with anytime dining and many were happy with fixed seating. Why put passengers through all this extra effort of booking dining times. The previous ways worked well.

Wonder how Dine My Way is rating in the post cruise surveys? 

Another point is that the Island Princess was originally built for 2,000 passengers. Back some time ago Princess added cabins to the entire aft section of the ship, but did not add any additional dining space. 

[Steelers36]

3 hours ago, rsail203 said:

Princess Medallion is a joke. Every other cruise line we've been on , you get your table the first night and go there every night after. Here, you have to stand in a reservation line every night and hope your table is available or do you have a table. People in the no reservation line get in faster. Both nights we had long waits to find out we didn't have an assigned table, even though we did have one. They had to scramble to finally get us a table. The line outside was very long because even people who did have tables still had to wait and show their medallion. We were told that Princess management deemed this was the proper way to run the restaurant even though the Maitre d did not agree.

 

 

I feel the medallion idea in restaurant management should be scrapped.

The Medallion is not the issue.  It is the MC App (software on smart device) and DMW that are the problems.  The programming cannot possibly deliver the Traditional Dining experience we all know.  Yes, the DMW App should be scrapped for TD at least.  Works fine for AT reservations, but they HAVE to set aside DR space for TD and set that up manually for those guests requesting it.  No other way is going to work despite "fancy software". 

 

Also, they should automate with Medallion scanners so guests who do have a known table assignment can scan in quickly.  Problem 1 - they didn't think of that to speed things up as DR mgmt needs to know who is a no-show.  Problem 2 - without any organized TD setup so folks do have the same table, they have to check the stupid system every night to see where everyone goes.  Used to be SO much easier with the old TD process.

 

All we customers can do is HAMMER PCL HQ and executives about it and hope they wake up to what needs to be done.