Medallion: use as a locator?

[Canuker]

1. Can the Princess medallion be used to locate another medallion(s), say, one's cabin-mate? Or a blue tooth device?

Or perhaps a mislaid medallion?

2. Are they programmable by users at all?

 

[mtnesterz]

#1 Yes to finding your cabin mate. I don't know about a Bluetooth device. A mislaid Medallion? Have your cabinmate use a wall panel to locate cabin mates, in this case your Medallion. The wall panel may tell you it's in your cabin, for example, but not exactly where it is.

#2 No. The Medallion carries only a code, like a car license plate, that connects to your account. No personal data. You cannot change it.

I have found Medallions on the ship. Turned them in to Passenger services. No, I did not run up a bar tab first.

[charliedalrymple]

I'd say it's a qualified yes in terms of locating other passengers. We found that there's a bit of a time lag, which meant you could head to the location indicated on the medallion and find that the person had already moved.  It obviously works better if the person is sitting in one place for an extended period.  Also, it seemed that the locator feature sometimes got "stuck" and showed people in a location long after they had left.  

 

In spite of all those caveats, it's a useful feature and we did appreciate having it.

[wallyj]

You will also get misleading information if the medallion has left the ship. It should show the location where the medallion was tapped out, but I have had cases where it showed it was in a cabin, but I knew the passenger had left the ship to explore the port.

[Pohra]

We were reasonably successful keeping track of our boys with their Medallions on the Sky Princess. Tracking was a bit spotty on the Lido deck due to the lack of walls and ceilings, which actually threw off mobile food orders up there sometimes - half the time our order ended up in our cabin because I guess they couldn't find us. 🤔

Edited June 4 by Pohra

[Thrak]

My wife and I use the "find" feature quite often. We aren't always together and it's handy to know where the other one is if trying to meet up. We also use WhatsApp for communication on the ship and it works quite well. Using those two things together has been a winning combination for us.

[SCX22]

Theoretically, the Medallion is like LoJack.  There are instances, though, when it doesn't work, like if a passenger leaves it in their cabin and is elsewhere on the ship.  The story behind this is purely anecdotal from a crew member on a cruise that I was on.  There was one instance where a woman couldn't find her husband, but the Medallion was showing in her room and despite attempts to find the husband, he didn't show.  Ship's company declared him missing.  Everyone had to report to their muster station and tap their Medallions; this part isn't anecdotal and was a pain.  Wife eventually found husband herself without his hearing aids, as well, roaming somewhere on the ship.

[NavyVeteran]

1 hour ago, Canuker said:

1. Can the Princess medallion be used to locate another medallion(s), say, one's cabin-mate? Or a blue tooth device?

Or perhaps a mislaid medallion?

2. Are they programmable by users at all?

 

1. No, the medallion cannot be used to locate another medallion or anything else.

2. They are not programmable. All they contain is a code that identifies the passenger.

 

The medallion app on a phone, or on a display screen on the ship, can be used to locate a medallion. The easiest way is to use the app on your phone. It will locate other members of your booking. It will also locate other passengers on the ship with their permission; you select their name and it sends a message to their app asking for permission to share locations.

 

As stated previously, it will generally show the location where you left the ship if you and your medallion are no longer on the ship. 

[ldubs]

We found the medallion "locate" feature was glitchy on one of our last four Princess cruises.  It still worked but sometimes took a few tries.   On the other three it worked great.  For example, it can be used to locate where a member of your party is sitting in a certain lounge or even where they are seated in the buffet.  One time I could see Mrs Ldubs moving in the wrong direction. Of course it takes screen refreshes to see this.  I called her and told her to go the other way!  Haha.   

[memoak]

34 minutes ago, ldubs said:

We found the medallion "locate" feature was glitchy on one of our last four Princess cruises.  It still worked but sometimes took a few tries.   On the other three it worked great.  For example, it can be used to locate where a member of your party is sitting in a certain lounge or even where they are seated in the buffet.  One time I could see Mrs Ldubs moving in the wrong direction. Of course it takes screen refreshes to see this.  I called her and told her to go the other way!  Haha.   

You can usually find at least what quarter of place like casino where they are very helpful 

[WisCruiser2]

We also found it helpful if we were waiting for our friends to see if they had left their cabin or where they were on the way. As someone mentioned above, we had given each other permission to do the tracking.