Princess@sea Has any one used it?

[floridalover5623]

Now people can scream into their walkie-talkie:

 

CHECK YOUR MESSAGES

 

That is a good one. :D

Although the walkie talkies are terrible to get consistent reliable communications they are decent enough to do what you said.

 

It's sad that Princess comes up with a way to eliminate the walkie talkies & yet falls flat with the notification alert.:(

[pablo222]

Although the walkie talkies are terrible to get consistent reliable communications they are decent enough to do what you said.

 

This should certainly placate the folks who are concerned about phone notifications.

[napunani]

Hubby and I both used the APP last year on the Royal and the Emerald.

LOVE IT!!!

[DrivesLikeMario]

Now people can scream into their walkie-talkie:

 

CHECK YOUR MESSAGES

 

Totally LOL!! :D

[OzKiwiJJ]

My memory may be failing me, but when we used it in December, I seem to recall that the principal difference between using the app and simply accessing the service via the intranet was that:

 

if you use the app, you get notified of incoming messages from friends etc. (this notification can be silent / vibrate or not so there is no issue about noise)

 

BUT

 

if you used the intranet service, then you didn't get to know if someone had sent you a message until you checked.

 

As I say, may be wrong in my recall of what actually happened, and things may have changed since December, but what I do remember with some degree of certainty is that the above difference was the reason I chose to download the app.

 

We used the app on a cruise in April and there were no notifications of messages. The app was a bit unreliable and dropped out regularly.

 

On our recent cruise last month, we used Princess@Sea through browsers (both on Samsung Galaxy 4s) and that worked fine. We just got in the habit of checking our phones regularly when we were in different parts of the ship.

[hopestotravelmore]

Was wondering if anyone has used this app.

 

Hi. I used this great little app in February. I wrote about it in my cruise review with pictures:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=2322939&page=2

 

I found it great to use.

[floridalover5623]

Hi. I used this great little app in February. I wrote about it in my cruise review with pictures:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=2322939&page=2

 

I found it great to use.

 

Didn't you fine the lack of a sound made it not that useful?

[Cvochristi@comcast.net]

We used Princess@sea on Coral Princess during our recent Panama Canal cruise (September 24th, 2016), here's what I can say about it....

It took a little while to get the hang of it, but after we did, it was very nice. I think it's worth the time to figure out. It don't think it's an app, it's available through your internet app (Explorer, Safari, etc). There are directions that direct you to something like "login" or coral.princess.com (use your ships name), and from there you set up an account. We didn't see the directions for setting up our user name, so kept failing on that. Look for that info or ask for help at the internet lounge. Actually, that's a good way to do it. Go to the lounge area to set it up, then ask if you have trouble. Others will be there having issues also and you can over hear solutions. 🙂

We appreciated having the daily event schedule/locations and messenger info with us by carrying our phones. We were able to leave messages for others in our group as to our plans and where we were hanging out.

The down side is that the message service doesn't alert you when you have a new message. You have to check for messages in order to see what is there.

We had great connectivity every where except in out room. I had to stand in the entryway of our room to have good service. Sometimes could get it on the balcony. The wifi router wasn't that far from our room either. The rest of the ship was strong connections. Maybe that's why I felt it worked better on my iPhone than my iPad. My iPad is too big to carry around.

 

In order to get messages from other you are traveling with, you have to get their "ID" from them. It's not the user name that you create. Your ID is located in a small box under your "account" section and looks something like "kg47yd", it's a random mix of numbers and letters. Once you share that with the other party, you can connect as individuals or even create group messages from those which you've added to your contacts.

Access to the "outside" internet is also through Princess@sea, and that worked fairly good too. We bought internet minutes for checking email. Just don't use it where you might lose connection with wifi (like in your room) and then have to re establish it. You are burning minutes until you "disconnect" and log out. You physically have to do that and get the minutes "summary page" to know you aren't still burning your minutes.

While using the service on our phones, we had our phones in airplane mode and wifi turned on. There is no charge to you phone when it is done this way.

 

One more note on buying internet service. I bought the minutes and they were only available to me, unless my husband signed onto my account to use them. If you both are going want to use them, you each should buy some, for simplicity, IMHO.

 

The ship had plenty of computers available and the internet speed and use was way faster than I remember on previous cruises. I was very happy with it.

Hope this is helpful!

 

Christina

[tiessa]

I didn't find it useful or reliable.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[hugger]

We used Princess@sea on Coral Princess during our recent Panama Canal cruise (September 24th, 2016), here's what I can say about it....

It took a little while to get the hang of it, but after we did, it was very nice. I think it's worth the time to figure out. It don't think it's an app, it's available through your internet app (Explorer, Safari, etc). There are directions that direct you to something like "login" or coral.princess.com (use your ships name), and from there you set up an account. We didn't see the directions for setting up our user name, so kept failing on that. Look for that info or ask for help at the internet lounge. Actually, that's a good way to do it. Go to the lounge area to set it up, then ask if you have trouble. Others will be there having issues also and you can over hear solutions. 🙂

We appreciated having the daily event schedule/locations and messenger info with us by carrying our phones. We were able to leave messages for others in our group as to our plans and where we were hanging out.

The down side is that the message service doesn't alert you when you have a new message. You have to check for messages in order to see what is there.

We had great connectivity every where except in out room. I had to stand in the entryway of our room to have good service. Sometimes could get it on the balcony. The wifi router wasn't that far from our room either. The rest of the ship was strong connections. Maybe that's why I felt it worked better on my iPhone than my iPad. My iPad is too big to carry around.

 

In order to get messages from other you are traveling with, you have to get their "ID" from them. It's not the user name that you create. Your ID is located in a small box under your "account" section and looks something like "kg47yd", it's a random mix of numbers and letters. Once you share that with the other party, you can connect as individuals or even create group messages from those which you've added to your contacts.

Access to the "outside" internet is also through Princess@sea, and that worked fairly good too. We bought internet minutes for checking email. Just don't use it where you might lose connection with wifi (like in your room) and then have to re establish it. You are burning minutes until you "disconnect" and log out. You physically have to do that and get the minutes "summary page" to know you aren't still burning your minutes.

While using the service on our phones, we had our phones in airplane mode and wifi turned on. There is no charge to you phone when it is done this way.

 

One more note on buying internet service. I bought the minutes and they were only available to me, unless my husband signed onto my account to use them. If you both are going want to use them, you each should buy some, for simplicity, IMHO.

 

The ship had plenty of computers available and the internet speed and use was way faster than I remember on previous cruises. I was very happy with it.

Hope this is helpful!

 

Christina

 

airplane mode effectively doing the same thing?

[floridalover5623]

 

The ship had plenty of computers available and the internet speed and use was way faster than I remember on previous cruises. I was very happy with it.

Hope this is helpful!

 

Christina

 

They increased the internet speed sometime around the beginning of last year- I was told. It has improved somewhat but still slow compared to what everyone is used to.

[RNRcruisers]

There was a group of 4 of us on the Star in August and we used this. It was handy for looking up activities but useless for messaging because they didn't go through consistently. Sometimes it would be hours before the recipient received it. And it gave our friend an excuse to be looking at her phone all the time :(

[ecs66]

For those that have blackberrys it works on them as well. Used it on the Royal princess in august. Just make sure you have your data off so it is not using the ships mobile network. Left mine on and was charged 14.00 f even though had a roaming plan.

Do you know if it will work with BlackBerry Classic, or will I have to dig my BlackBerry Priv android out of the drawer for the cruise?

[fishywood]

Do you know if it will work with BlackBerry Classic, or will I have to dig my BlackBerry Priv android out of the drawer for the cruise?

 

In the 20 months that has passed since this thread was active, Princess at Sea has become totally intranet-based. You no longer have to download any app, just open your browser once onboard and follow the prompts. You do not have to be signed onto the world wide web, or purchase any internet minutes at all if you wish.

 

Current details here: https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/onboard-experience/activities/princess-at-sea/

[trbarton]

I was recently on the Ruby & was using my phone instead of the Patter. I did casually look at it each day until I realized that there was some things missing. I was in-line one day for a Pub Lunch when I found out that this as the 2nd one as they had one earlier in the cruise which was never on my phone.

Tom😎

[ecs66]

In the 20 months that has passed since this thread was active, Princess at Sea has become totally intranet-based. You no longer have to download any app, just open your browser once onboard and follow the prompts. You do not have to be signed onto the world wide web, or purchase any internet minutes at all if you wish.

 

Current details here: https://www.princess.com/ships-and-experience/onboard-experience/activities/princess-at-sea/

Thanks for the quick response. It should work fine. Am I understanding the following correctly? Since you basically go to Airplane Mode to use P@S, if using that feature, you can't receive calls/texts via Cellular At Sea. We like to be available to receive cell calls/texts from house sitter in case of emergency. Is it a "one or the other" type of situation?

[JF - retired RRT]

Thanks for the quick response. It should work fine. Am I understanding the following correctly? Since you basically go to Airplane Mode to use P@S, if using that feature, you can't receive calls/texts via Cellular At Sea. We like to be available to receive cell calls/texts from house sitter in case of emergency. Is it a "one or the other" type of situation?

If you don't go to Airplane Mode, every time your phone searches for a signal and connects to Cellular at Sea, you'll be charged...by the ship AND your cell carrier. That could get very expensive.

There have been posts on CC by people who didn't realize they had to change their cell phone settings and got hit with a whopping bill when they got home.

[caa]

Thanks for the quick response. It should work fine. Am I understanding the following correctly? Since you basically go to Airplane Mode to use P@S, if using that feature, you can't receive calls/texts via Cellular At Sea. We like to be available to receive cell calls/texts from house sitter in case of emergency. Is it a "one or the other" type of situation?

 

It's not "one or the other". Your cell phone can connect to the ship's WiFi network and to it's cellular network at the same time. As long as you are prepared to pay the charges, there's no problem using both networks (and the Internet) at the same time if you want to.

[retiredtoday]

It's not "one or the other". Your cell phone can connect to the ship's WiFi network and to it's cellular network at the same time. As long as you are prepared to pay the charges, there's no problem using both networks (and the Internet) at the same time if you want to.

 

 

 

We were on the regal in March and had princess at sea. I was in airplane mode the whole time and received texts from home. Is this different from what everyone is talking about?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[Haboob]

We were on the regal in March and had princess at sea. I was in airplane mode the whole time and received texts from home. Is this different from what everyone is talking about?

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

If you were on the Regal in March, did you have the unlimited MedallionNet (and

remain logged in 24/7)? If so, is "wi-fi calling" enabled on your phone?

 

Answer "yes" twice, and your phone was delivering texts and calls via the internet

rather than the Regal's cellphone tower. Whole bunch cheaper ...like free.

[coopco]

Love using Princess@Sea. Tried walkie talkies in the past and could never get through the metal hulls to communicate with anyone (maybe we book too far aft because it's cheaper!). Any time my husband and I go in separate ways, we know to check our messages frequently so we can meet up. And I love having the Patter and account information at my fingertips. Understand the limitations and I believe you will love it too!

[JoRoy218]

I've used it on the Crown, Emerald, Royal, and Regal. It's great! It doesn't replace the Patter because not every activity is listed, but it's a nice supplement. I couldn't find my hubby for the IM function, but he was able to find me. It stupidly doesn't alert you when you get a message, though, so it's kind of useless. It has made the Internet a lot easier to log in and out of; you launch it from Princess@Sea. I also really like seeing all onboard spending on it.

 

Wholeheartedly agree -- we've used it on the Coral and just recently the Crown. You do need to download the Princess@ Sea app and go from there. Saves time checking on your onboard account, activities for the day

and sending messages to others on board. We used it quite a bit, makes life easier on board.

[JoRoy218]

Love using Princess@Sea. Tried walkie talkies in the past and could never get through the metal hulls to communicate with anyone (maybe we book too far aft because it's cheaper!). Any time my husband and I go in separate ways, we know to check our messages frequently so we can meet up. And I love having the Patter and account information at my fingertips. Understand the limitations and I believe you will love it too!

 

Loved using it as well. We tried it last year on the Coral and two weeks ago on the Crown. Very helpful to keep up with your onboard spending and the messages came in handy, though as mentioned above, there is no notification, just have to check frequently.

[retiredtoday]

If you were on the Regal in March, did you have the unlimited MedallionNet (and

remain logged in 24/7)? If so, is "wi-fi calling" enabled on your phone?

 

Answer "yes" twice, and your phone was delivering texts and calls via the internet

rather than the Regal's cellphone tower. Whole bunch cheaper ...like free.

 

 

 

I believe yes to both but I’m not sure. Medallion wasn’t working and we didn’t get a “trial” one either. They told us to go to regal.princess.com and stay on airplane mode

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[ecs66]

If you don't go to Airplane Mode, every time your phone searches for a signal and connects to Cellular at Sea, you'll be charged...by the ship AND your cell carrier. That could get very expensive.

There have been posts on CC by people who didn't realize they had to change their cell phone settings and got hit with a whopping bill when they got home.

"If you don't go to Airplane Mode, every time your phone searches for a signal and connects to Cellular at Sea, you'll be charged...by the ship AND your cell carrier. "

On Royal Princess in 2014, we kept our cell phones on 24/7 and we only were charged for any texts and phone calls made/received. We weren't in Airplane Mode. It didn't incur any charges every time a signal was received. Maybe the process has changed since then. Hope not.