Grislap

6 hours ago, JimmyVWine said:

How is a big ball of burning gas not a sphere?

"Big Ball of Burning Gas Princess." Now *there's* a name! After all, LNG!

Cruisedeckplans.com has photos. Might be viewable by members only, but here's the link just in case:

Sky Princess Cabin A734 Video and/or Picture (cruisedeckplans.com) 

We were in B734 at the end of May, northbound Alaska. Loved it! Huge balcony. Saw a tiny amount of soot one day. Wouldn't have even known what it was if I hadn't read about it. Not an issue at all.

On 8/9/2022 at 3:42 AM, Prefdavid said:

Apologies in advance for not reading the previous 146 pages but is the medallion App really as bad as all the reviews on Google Play show. I've never been prepared to load an app that has an average of 1.4 (out of 5) from previous reviewers.

So many state that A) it doesn't work and B) it's very memory intensive

 

Is it essential to have and use the App both prior to boarding and when on board?

Whilst we are Elite with Princess our last cruise with them was pre Medallion in 2016.

Got a few months to sort this as it's February 2023 before we sail.

I gave it a 1 star review. Had multiple two-three hour phone calls. Never did get it fixed until we got to the port. Had to go see a tech person at one end of the counter. He had to call people in Florida and walk them through what needed to be done. Took about 20 minutes. Why couldn't it have taken 20 minutes months earlier? 

I think the vast majority of bad reviews are from terrible experiences people had before they ever got on board a ship. In our case, once we were on board we used the app a lot. It wasn't perfect, but overall we really liked it. Used it a lot to order food and drink in particular. Worked fine except for two issues: 1) in the Piazza staff found it hard to pinpoint which level we were on if we were sitting near the railing; so we worked around that by ordering from a specific location such as Crooner's; 2) when I ordered food and an alcoholic beverage at the same time they got totally screwed up because those orders are filled in different places; so I learned to order one of them, and as soon as it was being processed I would order the other. It always worked.

Here's what we had on the Royal (B734) at the end of May. Very comfortable, even when we didn't use the cushions.

3 hours ago, MissP22 said:

That's exactly why I can't understand their new system is expected to work. How can it be possible to take reservations for a specific time  when you'll never know what the available seating capacity will be at that specific time - No less promising a specific table and waiter. 

Some group dreamed up this idea at headquarters thinking it sounded good on paper and now the DR crew has to try and make it work. 😄 

I know that at 5 PM my seat will be empty until I arrive. 

We like to eat at 5 p.m. at home, and that turned out to be perfect on the Royal just over a week ago. Granted, we were in Club Class, too, but we were always the first ones there and often were there a while before anyone else entered.

On 6/11/2022 at 6:12 AM, wowzz said:

Every table in Club Class dining had a plain white tablecloth on our cruise a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, this also was our experience on the Royal just over a week ago. We stayed in a suite and ate in the Club Class section of the Concerto dining room. All the tables had a white tablecloth and gray napkins with stitched "CC" lettering.

To the point of the OP: This was our first Club Class experience and we loved it. We eat early, typically around 5 p.m., and usually were the only ones there for a while. Never felt crowded or hurried. We got spoiled and intend to do Club Class from now on. Plus, being in a suite (again, first time), we had breakfast at Sabatini's each morning which was wonderful and again uncrowded. Add in the other suite benefits and I think we're pretty much ruined for life. We may travel less because of it, but it will be more relaxing when we do it.

I'm not sure if this is the best place for the following or if I should put it out as its own post. But in any case here are several tips about using the app onboard, based on our recent experience in Alaska aboard the Royal Princess. 

Once we got on the ship, the medallion and its phone app were great. The medallion unlocked our door as we approached,  and the phone app helped us find each other onboard and allowed us to order food and drink whenever we wished. We didn't use it to make dining reservations; in club class you don't need reservations, and for the specialty restaurants we made one ourselves shortly after boarding, and our concierge made the other one.
 

The Medallion does have its glitches, though, and I would advise people to be patient. Also, a couple of tips for better success: 
 

1) Don't order food or drink while seated in the Piazza. Deck 5 might be fine, but if you're on 6 or 7 the servers find it very hard to locate you, as the app cannot tell between deck levels in the Piazza. 
 

2) Success is much more likely if you're seated in an identifiable place, such as Crooner's or the Wheelhouse Bar. But when placing your order make sure the app shows your location (in the upper left) correctly. Ours often said we were in our staterooms. So we would back out of the app and then open it again, and it would be correct.
 

3) If you want to order both some food AND an alcoholic drink, don't place them both into your cart and order at the same time. We found that this combination confuses them, because the food comes from one place and the alcoholic beverage from another. So only one would arrive. So we started ordering the food first. Then, once the app said they were starting to prepare that order, we would place a second order for the drink. (We didn't have this problem when the beverage was soda.)

I've posted before about the truly awful time we had with the app from September right up to boarding. No need to rehash that. I realize now that it was a tremendous waste of time and mental energy, because they finally fixed it at the terminal and other than a delay of about 20 minutes we had no problems getting onboard. My advice to everyone having terrible troubles using the app before your trip: let it go, bring your documentation with you, and you won't have trouble boarding.

40 minutes ago, AF-1 said:

Ok I get what you guys are saying.  Let me clarify something.  I have my iphone with me always; so I guess it was hard for me to see which was actually opening cabin door;  the medallion itself or the app. Sorry for any confusion; I get what you're saying about the app itself.  As for carrying my iphone always;  well I do a facebook family blog on every cruise; and I post from all over the ship.  Thus my phone is always with me.  I know; I am tethered to tech;  which I actually like

Oh sorry for cluttering things with my last response. Somebody else had just said the same. Anyway, nothing wrong with carrying your phone around, taking pictures and posting on FB. At least there'd better not be anything wrong with it, or I'm in trouble! 😄 I was happily surprised at how quick my photos uploaded into FB on our May 28 Alaska trip on the Royal. I kept reading from people on CC that the WiFi was super slow north of Vancouver. For us, it was only a little slower than at home, at least for FB. 

4 hours ago, AF-1 said:

I am confused by your response.  If opening the cabin door is not part of the app;  then how does my door open when my app comes in close proximity to the cabin door?  

It's the medallion that opens the door. It would open the door whether or not you have your phone with you.

1 hour ago, grak said:

My booked cruise changed ships. The medallion app doesn’t reflect the new booking. I’ve tried accessing with the new booking number but won’t allow me….still has old number and says the cruise was cancelled.  Suggestions?

This happened to me, although I don't believe my app said the old cruise was cancelled. Instead, it kept the old booking number and the cancelled ship. This was last September, when Princess cancelled the Sapphire for our Alaska cruise and replaced it with the Royal. 

First the bad news (followed by much better news). Between September and early May (our cruise began May 28) I tried chats, emails and phone calls. In fact I had three phone calls that lasted three hours each. Every time I left with the sense they would fix it. When they made it possible to put key information into the web version of the personalizer, I was able to get all the key documents uploaded. The website had my correct booking number and ship, but even the website personalizer did not, so I couldn't order the medallion because it had the expired booking number and ship attached to it. Finally, just in time to order the medallion, they did indeed at least correct that. But my phone app still showed the old booking number and ship when we showed up at the terminal in Vancouver on May 28. I was concerned this could cause a major problem.

They pointed us to the corner counter, where someone worked with technical issues. It took about twenty minutes of him trying things and working with their tech people in Florida. Finally, it was fixed, and we were able to board.

So the very good news? They'll fix it at the terminal. It wasn't worth all the wasted hours I put into trying to get it fixed ahead of time. We just brought copies of all the key documents, and at the gate they finally had someone who knew what he was doing. Why in the world couldn't they have solved this in twenty minutes months ago, I'll never know, but if this happens to us again I'll know it's not worth worrying about, and will spend more of that time getting excited for the trip. 

We were on the Royal on its May 28th voyage out of Vancouver. After checking out our suite (B734, it was great) we wandered around the ship. So we just dropped by Sabatini's and made a reservation in person. It wasn't at all crowded, so we probably didn't need one.

18 minutes ago, jvaka said:

We sail in seven days and Medallion app show one cabin # and Princess.com shows are actual cabin #. Does that mean are medallions are programmed wrong?

We sail tomorrow and our app still has us on the wrong ship! This after months of trying to get them to fix it. It seems to be a database problem rather than an actual app problem. In terms of showing up at the port and getting on your ship, just bring paper copies of all your correct info and you shouldn't have any trouble. It will be easier if your Medallion itself is connected to the proper info. In our case they finally got that part fixed, but not the app.

My wife and I will have to bring our test results to the port, as I won't be able to enter them digitally. Perhaps the online personalizer would let me do it tomorrow afternoon for our Saturday sailing, but I won't have computer access. I can't do it on the app, because since LAST SEPTEMBER the app has continued to put us on the wrong ship. Right date and location, but wrong ship. It's because on September 1 they cancelled the Sapphire and put us on the Royal. I have had multiple two- and three-hour sessions with Princess people at various levels. They finally DID at least get the medallion itself correctly connected to the right booking, but still have not fixed the database issue in the app.

At least we were able to do most of it online, but we can't do the final covid testing stuff, or set an embarkation time, or try to reserve anything else, because the app thinks we'll be on the Sapphire. I wonder if we'll even be able to use it for anything on the ship.

We get to Vancouver tomorrow and intend to get to the port early on Saturday. We're in a suite, so perhaps that will help. And we'll have all our documentation. I'm not worried about any of that, and we are really looking forward to a vacation. But I must say, I have never in my life had any experience even close to this one in terms of pre-vacation stress. It has been months, and lots of promises that have not been realized. At least our 2023 cruise looks to be accurate in the app as well as online, at least so long as they don't switch ships on us again. 

I am known to be very easy-going. I've used a lot of apps that have caused at least some degree of frustration, and have always managed workarounds or simply given up on the app. But this Medallion app is by far the worst app I have ever had to use.

14 hours ago, sirclean said:

Any ideas on alternatives to deleting the ap and going all the way back to the op store and starting over?

Is this a common problem?

Before deleting the app, go into your phone's settings. There should be a section for apps. Go into it, click on the MedallionClass app, and then delete the data and clear the cache. That way, after you get rid of the app and then download it again, your phone will be a blank slate.

But you may find it easier to do all this on the new pc web version of the app. Go into the main page of your booking at princess.com and where it says to download the app there is now also a link so you can do it online.

4 hours ago, clan said:

Did any of you book EZ Air?  If so, are your flights showing up on your Travel Summary?  Mine are not there yet.   Makes me nervous!

Yes, our flights are showing.

7 hours ago, akcruise07 said:

Just a note to keep an eye on the new itinerary that you have seen, or check your cabin if given your new number from a Princess rep. On Monday I was given my new cabin number by a rep and could see it by using the backdoor trick to see my summary. However, upon checking tonight, my room has been changed and not for the better.

Good advice. I just went back in and took a photo of the travel summary, making sure it included the time and date on the lower right end of my computer.

15 minutes ago, DiRonT said:

Okay now, you all have peaked my interest - what is the "backdoor" access and how do I get to it?  21 Cruises with Princess and this is the first time I have heard about it.

If you log on, then go to your cruise and open it to the summary page, you'll probably get a mostly black screen, as I still do. BUT: replace "summary" in the url with "itinerary" and you will get to see the itinerary for your trip. Then at the top of your screen, click on the "Boarding Pass & Travel Summary" link. That takes you to another page. Go down just a bit and you'll see the option to "Print Travel Summary." Click on that, and you'll see your stateroom assignment (if it has been given yet) and all kinds of other stuff.

 

29 minutes ago, Thrak said:

 

It's especially hard as many (most?) of the Princess reps have never been on a ship at all let alone cruised in a suite. They have no understanding at all regarding what makes one cabin more desirable than another.

Yeah. And I imagine it's hard to do training at the moment since so much is still in crisis mode. Thrak, was it you who posted about the "back door" trick? I am grateful! And if it wasn't you, I'm grateful to you anyway because I've learned quite a bit from your posts.

Thanks to the "back door" trick I learned my assignment today. It seems whoever does these reassignments for Princess assumes all S3s are the same. I was assigned one of the Aloha S3s on the Royal--when our original suite on the Sapphire was the S1 Grand Suite. We were so disappointed at the change in ships, as this was our first time scheduling a suite and a special occasion. But then to be reassigned to a suite with virtually no balcony! This seemed so unfair. So I called about an hour ago, and it seems like late afternoon on a Friday may be a good time to call because I got a live person in about ten minutes. Unfortunately, she did not seem to know what she was doing. She had a hard time understanding what I was even getting at about the S3 suites having vastly different balconies depending on the deck. She said she would investigate....and about 10 minutes later we got cut off.

I almost gave up, but finally decided to give it one more try. Again, got in after maybe 7 or 8 minutes. This time I got someone who understood the problem right away, and knew exactly what to do. And within five minutes max he had changed our assignment to one of the S3s on the Baja deck.

For a while there, it was really stressful. But he saved the day, and now once again we look forward to our trip next May. 

9 minutes ago, Cypress201 said:

We also booked the Grand Suite for our cruise as it was a retirement cruise and also bringing along the grandkids and DD and SIL in connecting balconies on opposite side.  Picked smaller ship as well.  As Grislap said, nothing comparable on Royal.  Although the aft corner wraparound balconies do give the advantage of seeing wake and side view - there is also the possible soot issue on Royal class.  We will see what we are assigned.    We really would like to take this cruise!

Looking around a bit, seems like people are most likely to complain about soot on the Dolphin deck. Found this image which helps you visualize those aft balconies better. 

3 hours ago, memoak said:

I do not believe you will get to choose a stateroom.  Princess will assign a cabin based on your original cabin category and then we will all scramble to move to our preferred location.  The biggest issue will be for those of us who have categories on the Sapphire that don't exist on the Royal.  We have an aft vista suite on the Sapphire - vista suites don't exist on the Royal.  I would like to know if they are going to give us an aft penthouse suite, a forward premium suite or a midship suite which tend to be smaller with very narrow balconies.   My PVP is currently on the Majestic so I guess I will wait till next week to contact her or just wait till the 17th of September

We're wondering, too. Booked our first suite ever for a 65th birthday celebration: the S1 grand suite. There's nothing comparable on the Royal. I wonder what they will offer us. I'm guessing one of the S3s with larger balconies. I would think we'd get a price reduction, too, as the grand suite is significantly costlier than the S3 suites found on the Royal.

We went in 2006 with an 18-year-old boy, a 16-year-old girl and a 14-year-old boy. We were on the Diamond, which is the sister ship of the Sapphire. Our kids loved it. Of course they had each other to hang out with and didn't really interact with others. I suspect it depends on how easily your teen gets bored, along with how social he or she is. Our kids loved to wander around exploring the ship, or get pizza (I swear our youngest ate ten slices a day). They also played ping pong, mini golf and shot the basketball. They loved just watching the scenery, too.

My wife and I are going back next May for the third time, and chose the Sapphire over the others. If you like to spend time walking outdoors on the promenade, the Sapphire and Diamond have widest ones in the fleet and you can walk all the way around the ship.  This is especially great for viewing the glaciers and other scenery on the two days devoted to that. You can walk all the way around on the Grand, too, but it's not as spacious. The Majestic doesn't have one. We haven't been on the Majestic yet, but as a bigger ship it might have more to offer for a teen. 

Happens to me too. At this point I'm just glad I can actually log in....

We actually saw a grizzly once in Glacier Bay National Park, near Margerie Glacier. But you're more likely to see them if you are able to spend some time on land before or after the cruise. Denali National Park, for example. Kenai Fjords.