AstoriaPreppy

The current Royal Princess MedallionNet internet is absolutely not going to work for a proctored video chat COVID test. Oddly, upload speeds have been significantly better than download speeds, so I don’t buy the “going north” explanation. We shouldn’t be getting a download speed that is a fraction of the upload speed if the issues are based on latitude. I think something is out of whack with the onboard system, but no one has figured it out. No. It’s $29. The SkyTrain is 1/10th of that in USD, and usually much faster. Side note, re: the PA system failing for half of our day in Glacier Bay. With the exception of the captain, the staff has been tripping over themselves to apologize for this screwup. The cruise director apologized to the audience after the show the other night, and I actually received a call from guest services yesterday apologizing (since I’d reached out via crew chat during the failure). The captain has not mentioned the snafu during any of his announcements, only referencing the great weather we had in the park.

Service issues/ship quirks aside, we’re having a great time. That said, one thing I would note is that the MedallionNet internet service has been abysmal on this voyage. It’s almost like someone forgot to turn on the connection… it’s almost unusable, especially if you’re trying to do any work. We’re talking basic tasks: sharing photos in a family group chat takes minutes. Trying to download an app (or even connect to the App Store) is a total fail. Streaming anything (music) is inoperable. Even opening my work Outlook to download emails on my phone is a multi minute process. Not sure what the deal is, but we’re absolutely not receiving anything remotely “fastest internet at sea” speed. I wouldn’t recommend trying to use it for the emed test.

The fun part is that Sabatini’s being closed for dinner is not listed in the app, or in the Dine My Way system. I know this because I went into DMW on the stateroom TV (it has been completely non-functional in the medallion app for the duration of the cruise), and made a reservation for tonight. It was only this afternoon while chatting with another passenger on the deck that I learned from that passenger that Sabatini’s had been closed for the entire trip… yet is still accepting reservations. I did a crew chat, and they verified it was closed and they would be happy to cancel the reservation we made a few hours ago for us. 🙄

I haven’t posted in the thread since we sailed, but today was a *major* screwup by the Royal Princess crew. We’re sailing in Glacier Bay today, and were lucky to score spectacular weather. Having been here before, we know the drill with park rangers coming on board and narrating throughout the day. We were on the open decks, and got about 1/2 hour of ranger narration on and off, starting at about 8 am. Then, nothing. More nothing. A high pitched static. Then some sort of adult contemporary music. Then even more nothing. Apparently, the PA system went down, and the crew was unable to resolve the issue for *hours.* We didn’t get ranger narration back until about a half hour after we left Margerie glacier. Some of the other rangers were wandering the deck, and seemed p*asked when I asked about it. When I reached out using the medallion app crew chat, they seemed to know they narration was not working in the cabins on the bridge cam, but not that it wasn’t playing on the open decks. Eventually the narrating ranger came back on around 11:45 or noon, apologized for the technical issues, and narrated a quick trip into Johns Hopkins inlet and a bit on our way out of the bay. Still, this was exasperating as a passenger, and especially for the rangers with no real way to communicate with the 1,600+ passengers onboard. I felt especially bad for the Alaska newbies who had no idea all of the information they were missing.