Well the good news is

[Peckishpixie]

I spent a few hours with Medalion IT on the travel agent line this morning trying to sort out some client bookings. Almost all people traveling in the next 2 months have to be manually debugged for their ap to work. So, if you travel soon and you are having problems you probably want to call or chat and make sure a ticket gets opened.

For everyone sailing after August 1, there is a massive update being worked on right now that should fix the problems for everyone. It is supposed to go through by August 1. IT recommended having all my clients sailing after the 1st of August delete the ap and just not try until after the update. 

I know that is super frustrating. My own cruise is for my birthday in November and I am anxious to get everything sorted. In the mean time at least we can order our drinks and shore excursions on the cruise personalizer.

[Steelers36]

Indeed good news - just wait a month.  I am wondering if this massive data fix includes purging out the DMW garbage and starting over with appropriate choices, shared dining after 1/1/2022 and all DR/table inventory.

[voljeep]

Princess has exactly 1 cruise before August 1 ... so everyone else is just swimming ?

 

j/s

[Peckishpixie]

Just now, Steelers36 said:

Indeed good news - just wait a month.  I am wondering if this massive data fix includes purging out the DMW garbage and starting over with appropriate choices, shared dining after 1/1/2022 and all DR/table inventory.

Dine my way is here to stay but you can 100% just do classic dining and request the same time in the same dining room every day on the medalion ap. Well, you can when the ap is working:) we just had a training call and when you go to the ap there should be a page under dining to let you select "classic dining" as an option. I can't confirm because I can't get the ap to go tht far 

[Peckishpixie]

1 minute ago, voljeep said:

Princess has exactly 1 cruise before August 1 ... so everyone else is just swimming ?

 

j/s

I meant to write 31st, but still only a few cruises. When you consider that someone has to manually touch most of those thousands of sailings though, it's a lot of work. 

I'm going to trust that they will get it figured out with the update that is scheduled. For my clients that are sailing next week they were able to get it fixed. I guess if they have to keep manually doing it they will but the hope is the update will fix it. 

[voljeep]

2 minutes ago, Peckishpixie said:

For my clients that are sailing next week they were able to get it fixed.

On Princess ?  Next week ??

[fluffybunny22]

If you already had traditional dining chosen by your TA do you have to do anything on the app? I'm a middle aged fuddy duddy who likes to dine at the same time with the same wait staff and there's an allergy in our party. Even without the food allergy they aren't going to convert any of us to Dine Your Way.

[Bgwest]

Thanks. Really appreciate your insider's perspective!

[Peckishpixie]

3 minutes ago, fluffybunny22 said:

If you already had traditional dining chosen by your TA do you have to do anything on the app? I'm a middle aged fuddy duddy who likes to dine at the same time with the same wait staff and there's an allergy in our party. Even without the food allergy they aren't going to convert any of us to Dine Your Way.

Your TA can go in and manually select your dining time.  Also, make sure your TA linked you with your companions. Your TA should also walk you through the medalion ap process. I always make an appointment with my clients to help them get Ocean Ready (take photos, upload docs.) just like when we used to give you your boarding pass and luggage tags. 

[Sea Hag]

16 minutes ago, Peckishpixie said:

Dine my way is here to stay but you can 100% just do classic dining and request the same time in the same dining room every day on the medalion ap. Well, you can when the ap is working:) we just had a training call and when you go to the ap there should be a page under dining to let you select "classic dining" as an option. I can't confirm because I can't get the ap to go tht far 

 

There is that option. It's under Preferences/Dining. You see a page with allergies and dietary limitations. There's a Next button. If you click Next, you get a page with Dining Pace (Slow, relaxed, fast) and Repeat Dining Location.  Our upcoming August cruise was set up when Traditional/Anytime were still in the Personalizer. That mapped over to the app as 5 something in the Concerto diningroom.

 

7 minutes ago, fluffybunny22 said:

If you already had traditional dining chosen by your TA do you have to do anything on the app? I'm a middle aged fuddy duddy who likes to dine at the same time with the same wait staff and there's an allergy in our party. Even without the food allergy they aren't going to convert any of us to Dine Your Way.

 

The dining preference put in by your TA should have carried through. You can verify this by going where I said above. I got email from Princess that said that requesting the same time every night would give you the same waitstaff. Maybe that will pan out, and maybe it won't.

[Peckishpixie]

1 minute ago, Sea Hag said:

 

There is that option. It's under Preferences/Dining. You see a page with allergies and dietary limitations. There's a Next button. If you click Next, you get a page with Dining Pace (Slow, relaxed, fast) and Repeat Dining Location.  Our upcoming August cruise was set up when Traditional/Anytime were still in the Personalizer. That mapped over to the app as 5 something in the Concerto 

Thanks for confirming! I'm a.little jealous you can access 

[ontheweb]

1 hour ago, Peckishpixie said:

I spent a few hours with Medalion IT on the travel agent line this morning trying to sort out some client bookings. Almost all people traveling in the next 2 months have to be manually debugged for their ap to work. So, if you travel soon and you are having problems you probably want to call or chat and make sure a ticket gets opened.

For everyone sailing after August 1, there is a massive update being worked on right now that should fix the problems for everyone. It is supposed to go through by August 1. IT recommended having all my clients sailing after the 1st of August delete the ap and just not try until after the update. 

I know that is super frustrating. My own cruise is for my birthday in November and I am anxious to get everything sorted. In the mean time at least we can order our drinks and shore excursions on the cruise personalizer.

I think the key words in your post are "SHOULD fix the problem" and SUPPOSED  to go through". Given their past performance, I would think it is a toss up that those expectations will be met.

 

BTW, do any of your clients  not have smartphones? If so, how are their issues being handled?

[Peckishpixie]

3 minutes ago, ontheweb said:

I think the key words in your post are "SHOULD fix the problem" and SUPPOSED  to go through". Given their past performance, I would think it is a toss up that those expectations will be met.

 

BTW, do any of your clients  not have smartphones? If so, how are their issues being handled?

My clients have smart phones and we were able to set everything up once IT went in and fixed it. A coworker has clients who don't have smart phones. Most of the stuff like uploading documents can still be done via a program called polar, but the passenger will still have to check in at the port and will be given a medalion. Without a smart phone the medalion is functionally the same as a room key. 

[Steelers36]

1 hour ago, Peckishpixie said:

Dine my way is here to stay but you can 100% just do classic dining and request the same time in the same dining room every day on the medallion app. Well, you can when the app is working:) we just had a training call and when you go to the app there should be a page under dining to let you select "classic dining" as an option. I can't confirm because I can't get the app to go that far 

Wish I knew you had the training call as I would have tried to have you get them to answer why DMW doesn't allow/support table size selection.  They may try and tell you it does, but it doesn't.  Guest cannot select and the system only offers one option coming back to fit your dining party and it is the minimum size still available.  That is not "classic dining" and the word "classic" and the word "traditional" do not appear in DMW.  

 

Also, I wonder if this AUG 1 update will include all missing dining table inventory.  And will they flush out pre-existing dining res and we start over?  I just don't see how it can work until/unless they put in table size.  We also don't know if they will marry up cabins and keep them the same each night.

[suers515]

We have a large party going in January 2022.  When we book the travel agent put us with Traditional Dining.  Looking around DMW, would I have to link my bookings with all the group and select a dining to be together with all my friends?  So unclear and a little annoying.  YouTube video about medallion and DMW says it would be in the app already.

[cruzsnooze]

55 minutes ago, Peckishpixie said:

 A coworker has clients who don't have smart phones. Most of the stuff like uploading documents can still be done via a program called polar, but the passenger will still have to check in at the port and will be given a medalion. Without a smart phone the medalion is functionally the same as a room key. 

Which is a work around and again confirms you won't need a smart phone to cruise on Princess. 

[capriccio]

4 hours ago, suers515 said:

We have a large party going in January 2022.  When we book the travel agent put us with Traditional Dining.  Looking around DMW, would I have to link my bookings with all the group and select a dining to be together with all my friends?  So unclear and a little annoying.  YouTube video about medallion and DMW says it would be in the app already.

That is what I did a couple of days ago for the others in our groups on our 2022 cruises (March and July).  You first need to designate your friends as your traveling companions by entering their booking numbers in Traveling Companions section.  Then when you make the reservation in the Dine My Way section click on each name to add them.  Your reservation will give the Dining Room, Table Size, Time, and your avatar(s) + number of other people in your group. 

[Mary Ann 2]

I watched the Medallion Mondays presentation.  This week it went over dining.  I really recommend that you find that and watch it.  I finally understood how to change my week-long preference in the dining room to allow us to add specialty dining for just one day.  I had gotten an email yesterday saying our Alaska cruise's dining was ready to pick, but hadn't figured out how to add specialty dining.  I had already done the week-long fixed seating for 2 at 6:00 several weeks ago on the app, so I just had left to add some specialty dining.

 

I'm sure glad we are not having all the trouble that some people are with the app.  We have our Arrival Group and docs loaded.  We are just waiting now for closer to the cruise to add our vaccination card and answer the health questions.

[ontheweb]

12 hours ago, Peckishpixie said:

My clients have smart phones and we were able to set everything up once IT went in and fixed it. A coworker has clients who don't have smart phones. Most of the stuff like uploading documents can still be done via a program called polar, but the passenger will still have to check in at the port and will be given a medalion. Without a smart phone the medalion is functionally the same as a room key. 

Thank you for answering right away; it looks like I just missed your answer as I was going off line at the same time.

 

I watched the replay of the webinar and saw one of the chat questions THAT THEY DID NOT ANSWER was how someone without a smartphone would know what their boarding time was. I also saw the reference to the polar program for getting more answers, but when I tried to find it, it seems it is only available to travel agents.

 

If the medallion without a smartphone is functionally the same as a room key, could we just ask for the normal cruise card and politely say no medallions for us?

[AF-1]

Does Club Class Dining change in any way or do you just show up in the club class section of dining room?

[Sea Hag]

2 hours ago, AF-1 said:

Does Club Class Dining change in any way or do you just show up in the club class section of dining room?

My understanding is that this is true. I read this somewhere in Princess-world. Just show up like you always have. We don't have Club Class until October, so we won't find out for absolute sure until then.

[AF-1]

17 minutes ago, Sea Hag said:

My understanding is that this is true. I read this somewhere in Princess-world. Just show up like you always have. We don't have Club Class until October, so we won't find out for absolute sure until then.

I too am sailing in October;  on Grand Princess out of San Pedro

[Sea Hag]

1 minute ago, AF-1 said:

I too am sailing in October;  on Grand Princess out of San Pedro

We're on the 10/31 sailing of the Ruby out of San Francisco. 

[AF-1]

15 minutes ago, Sea Hag said:

We're on the 10/31 sailing of the Ruby out of San Francisco. 

Oct 4th going to Cabo

[MountainEER74]

One of the things I like about traditional dining is that you make new friends with your table mates. So far on the few cruises we have been on we have really enjoyed our table mates. I usually request a table for six so that we have a good chance of that happening. As Steelers36 (go Steelers) stated, table size is no longer a selection you make. If we pick a fixed dining time with DMW will we have the same table mates each night?