My wife and I recently cruised on the Ruby Princess and had a chance to experience MedallionClass® for the first time. We were doing a wonderful 2 week Back to Back Cruise over the Christmas Holidays and New Year.
MedallionClass® & Medallion
Princess Cruises says, “MedallionClass® vacation offers the ultimate in effortless, personalized cruising. It begins with your Medallion®, a quarter-sized, wearable device that enables everything from touch-free boarding to locating your loved ones anywhere on the ship, as well as enhanced service like having whatever you need, delivered. Spend more time connecting with each other and doing what you love on a Princess MedallionClass® vacation.”
What to expect
The Medallion® disk
The Medallion® is a quarter-sized disk printed out with your name, ship, and sail date. The Medallion disks come in colors that reflect your Captain’s Circle loyalty status. A lot of people keep them as souvenirs since they are printed with your name, ship, and sail date.
Checkin was a snap with the Medallion; we simply handed our Medallion, which was on a lanyard, along with our cruise card attached and the staff log us in. Plus, we got to choose our arrival time window so everyone wasn’t trying to board at the same time.
Hands-Free Room Entry
As we approached our cabin, the screen/keypad next to our door “recognized” us and unlocked our cabin door for us. All hands-free!!
This was very convenient, especially since I usually put my cruise card on a lanyard and usually end up fumbling around trying to scan us in. I can’t think of a better way for room entry than “hands-free”, especially when your hands are full on your return trip from the Lido deck with food and drinks in hand.
OceanCompass™
OceanCompass™ replaces the former Princess@Sea messenger service. OceanCompass™ is a great way to message other passengers on the ship, without any additional cost. So, if you don’t want to use the internet while you are on a cruise, you can still benefit from messaging your family members or new cruise friends. Although very handy, there is no notification of a new message; you have to occasionally log in to see if anyone has messaged you.
The “Find Shipmates” feature on OceanCompass portals, is another great part of the Medallion experience. It makes it very easy to find other people from your cabin or party. So, if for some reason you “lost” your husband or wife, you can now find them without a lot of frustration.
MedallionNet®
While MedallionNet®, Princess’ Internet WiFi, is not directly connected to the Medallion disk, you’ll notice that this technology is, as advertised, the “Best Internet at Sea.” It’s fast, very reasonably priced, and it’s everywhere, including your cabin.
Our price was $10 per day for unlimited internet. We took advantage of the 50% discount for purchasing it on the first day. There are set prices for multiple devices.
Tip: You are able to share the plan between more than one device if you wish, however only one person can log on at a time.
PlayOcean®
Throughout the ship there are Medallion portals; some with interactive maps to help you find your way to a lounge, dining room, or activity, and others with activities listed to help you decide what you want to do around the ship. I am not, and probably never will be, a game player, however, we saw children, and sometimes families, playing some of the games found on the Medallion portal screens.
JourneyView™
Using one of the ship portals or the MedallionClass app on a smart device, we were able to view all of the onboard events that were scheduled to take place during our voyage. We could then bookmark activities we were interested in, thus creating a personalized itinerary. We also used JourneyView to book shore excursions and view our folio.
Room Service
On our cruises, we frequently ordered breakfast via the phone in our cabin, to be delivered the next morning at a scheduled time. Although this room service was not functioning on our last cruise, we learned that future MedallionClass cruisers would be able to order a variety of room service options that were not limited to breakfast. Princess Cruises is one of the cruise lines to still offer complimentary room service which makes them, in my opinion, better than the others.