Check you account when sailing on a medallion ship

[FlaMariner]

First Princess cruise coming up....so forgive me if stupid...but....

 

We don't buy much onboard, can you just have a plastic key card that you hand to someone when you wanted to charge something?.....and could I just have a plastic key card to open my door and get on and off the ship?

 

Seems so much simpler and easier.

[IJustWantToGo36]

2 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

For those who are really worried about this there are a number of RFID blocking pouches or wallets that will keep your medallion from being read at all unless you remove it from the wallet. Check amazon for RFID blocking pouch.

Appreciate this info

[Torfamm]

1 hour ago, FlaMariner said:

First Princess cruise coming up....so forgive me if stupid...but....

 

We don't buy much onboard, can you just have a plastic key card that you hand to someone when you wanted to charge something?.....and could I just have a plastic key card to open my door and get on and off the ship?

 

Seems so much simpler and easier.

It is possible to request a plastic card

[Kmkub]

1 hour ago, FlaMariner said:

First Princess cruise coming up....so forgive me if stupid...but....

 

We don't buy much onboard, can you just have a plastic key card that you hand to someone when you wanted to charge something?.....and could I just have a plastic key card to open my door and get on and off the ship?

 

Seems so much simpler and easier.

 

I'm not sure why you think a card is simpler. Your door automatically unlocks when you get within three feet of it. No need to pull out a card, just turn the door handle.

 

 

[IJustWantToGo36]

1 hour ago, Kmkub said:

 

I'm not sure why you think a card is simpler. Your door automatically unlocks when you get within three feet of it. No need to pull out a card, just turn the door handle.

 

 

for the reason they started the thread.

Charged for things not yours

[gardenbunny]

I think it is the hand held device the crew has to use is the biggest problem for charge errors.

I have had charge errors using the former plastic cards, also.

 

But as far as them tracking where you go all the time, RFID isn’t a bad idea.  

But I do like to use it for opening door!  About the only thing I use it for except getting on and off ship.

[brisalta]

6 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

It is work they managed to finish during the Pauses.  Too bad they couldn't get the MC App right during the same period of time.

 

That would have meant employing experienced high quality software developers and QA people who actually know what they are doing and not afraid to question poor quality specifications and willing to learn the domain set that they are designing/programming for.

 

[brisalta]

6 hours ago, Steelers36 said:

It is unless the guest is using an avatar or a pet photo.  I think the wait staff see your personal photo and not the security photo.  Yes?

 

So you do not recommend cat pictures?

[Kmkub]

2 minutes ago, brisalta said:

 

That would have meant employing experienced high quality software developers and QA people who actually know what they are doing and not afraid to question poor quality specifications and willing to learn the domain set that they are designing/programming for.

 

I disagree.

 

My husband and I are both data nerds and software developers. This is a new type of technology that cannot be truly pressure tested without going live. You would need thousands of testers doing an actual cruise, multiple times, to work out every bug pre launch.

 

When everything goes 100% perfectly, there will still be bugs. Your phone has bug updates, All the time.

 

Also note, no development cycle in the history of development cycles has gone perfectly.

 

 

[smbt1]

46 minutes ago, gardenbunny said:

I think it is the hand held device the crew has to use is the biggest problem for charge errors.

I have had charge errors using the former plastic cards, also.

 

But as far as them tracking where you go all the time, RFID isn’t a bad idea.  

But I do like to use it for opening door!  About the only thing I use it for except getting on and off ship.

Have not had any problems when the hand held devices are used, since they require close contact. The problem is more with the built in sensors in the bar areas where they read everyone in the proximity.

[brisalta]

57 minutes ago, Kmkub said:

I disagree.

 

My husband and I are both data nerds and software developers. This is a new type of technology that cannot be truly pressure tested without going live. You would need thousands of testers doing an actual cruise, multiple times, to work out every bug pre launch.

 

When everything goes 100% perfectly, there will still be bugs. Your phone has bug updates, All the time.

 

Also note, no development cycle in the history of development cycles has gone perfectly.

 

 

 

Sorry but I used to work on a R&D team that developed much more complicated applications than this with extremely complicated database back ends that literally supported population size data sets. This application has multiple front end client types and worked fine. This particular application is deployed by many fortune 500 companies and governments. It is an application that very few people would have heard of.

 

It is just knowing how to do the various types of testing required. That is why you use a professional quality team as well as professional developers.

 

You do not take down working systems and replace them with alpha quality systems.

 

[grizzle-bizzle]

I'm not sure about billing errors, but I sure am looking forward to not having to get a new card made a couple times because the magnetic stripe got scrambled and I can't get into my cabin any more. I've had that happen a few times on previous cruises. That's one big advantage of the tags versus a card.

Edited February 2, 2022 by grizzle-bizzle

[Kmkub]

32 minutes ago, brisalta said:

 

Sorry but I used to work on a R&D team that developed much more complicated applications than this with extremely complicated database back ends that literally supported population size data sets. This application has multiple front end client types and worked fine. This particular application is deployed by many fortune 500 companies and governments. It is an application that very few people would have heard of.

 

It is just knowing how to do the various types of testing required. That is why you use a professional quality team as well as professional developers.

 

You do not take down working systems and replace them with alpha quality systems.

 

We will have to agree to disagree. I’ve never in my life have a programmer tell me they successfully deployed something on budget, without any delays, that operated bug free, right out of the gate. Congrats to you on that.

[Level six]

36 minutes ago, grizzle-bizzle said:

I'm not sure about billing errors, but I sure am looking forward to not having to get a new card made a couple times because the magnetic stripe got scrambled and I can't get into my cabin any more. I've had that happen a few times on previous cruises. That's one big advantage of the tags versus a card.

I have been on over 35 cruises with cards and recently went on a medallion cruise.  I had to go to the desk 5 times to replace my medallion.  I couldn't get into my cabin each time and then they would say it was okay and it would not work after a few hours.  So, it is just the same as a card if not worse.  With a card they just give you a new one, with a medallion they try not to just give you a new one........many trips to the service desk, until they give you a new one.

[brisalta]

Just now, Kmkub said:

We will have to agree to disagree. I’ve never in my life have a programmer tell me they successfully deployed something on budget, without any delays, that operated bug free, right out of the gate. Congrats to you on that.

 

Well I have worked on multiple high performance software development teams over the years.

I have also worked on various applications over the years that had multiple different types of clients accessing the same database back end.

 

I could go into more depth on process and methodology but that would bore the bulk of the readers, be off topic and be too much like work.

 

By the way I have only herd amateurs call themselves nerds. Perhaps that is a Floridian affectation.

[Kmkub]

16 minutes ago, brisalta said:

 

Well I have worked on multiple high performance software development teams over the years.

I have also worked on various applications over the years that had multiple different types of clients accessing the same database back end.

 

I could go into more depth on process and methodology but that would bore the bulk of the readers, be off topic and be too much like work.

 

By the way I have only herd amateurs call themselves nerds. Perhaps that is a Floridian affectation.

Thank you for the lesson.

[caribill]

5 hours ago, brisalta said:

 

That would have meant employing experienced high quality software developers and QA people who actually know what they are doing and not afraid to question poor quality specifications and willing to learn the domain set that they are designing/programming for.

 

 

Programming contracts are of two varieties.

 

1. Fixed price. If delivered meeting poor quality specs, then the contract is fulfilled. Then the contractor can get paid mucho $$$$$ to make the software actually work. Thus no incentive to question poor quality specs.

 

2. Pay for hours spent on the project. If delivered meeting poor quality specs, no matter how lomng it took to do so,  then the contract is fulfilled. Then the contractor can get paid mucho $$$$$ to make the software actually work. Thus no incentive to question poor quality specs.

[GonzoWCS]

Just a good habit.  Check your account..

 

Enchanted Inaugural we had some minor issues.

 

Sky 21 dayer had zero issues.

 

Cheers

[Steelers36]

5 hours ago, caribill said:

 

Programming contracts are of two varieties.

 

1. Fixed price. If delivered meeting poor quality specs, then the contract is fulfilled. Then the contractor can get paid mucho $$$$$ to make the software actually work. Thus no incentive to question poor quality specs.

 

2. Pay for hours spent on the project. If delivered meeting poor quality specs, no matter how long it took to do so,  then the contract is fulfilled. Then the contractor can get paid mucho $$$$$ to make the software actually work. Thus no incentive to question poor quality specs.

But lots of times the team or contractor has BA's or SA's that are involved in the design and spec development and get requirements from the client or Business Users.  So, the contractor firm bears a lot of responsibility for what is developed and aren't just programming to a provided specification.  

 

Princess did put together some assemblage of a business team, but IDK who all was on it and I suspect they selected the wrong people - or at least did not get enough of the right people.  Probably too many marketing types and not enough of people who would actually use it.  One key thing missing for the entire process was actual end users - the Princess Customer.  (I am thinking more of the pre-cruise aspects here and not so much the on-board aspects).

 

[Steelers36]

10 hours ago, brisalta said:

 

That would have meant employing experienced high quality software developers and QA people who actually know what they are doing and not afraid to question poor quality specifications and willing to learn the domain set that they are designing/programming for.

 

Yes.  There was poor representation for the Princess Customer (no actual customers).  There was clearly a lack of breadth to the test sets to cover complex situations and there was a complete fail to understand dining habits.

 

10 hours ago, Kmkub said:

I disagree.

 

My husband and I are both data nerds and software developers. This is a new type of technology that cannot be truly pressure tested without going live. You would need thousands of testers doing an actual cruise, multiple times, to work out every bug pre launch.

 

When everything goes 100% perfectly, there will still be bugs. Your phone has bug updates, All the time.

 

Also note, no development cycle in the history of development cycles has gone perfectly.

 

 

I don't see the issue as delivering a perfect system at launch - and I agree that not likely any IT project has gone perfectly from end to end.  Your comment about thousands of testers (pressure testing) seems to be about the on-board experiences - which have not really been where the big problems are.  And there are ways to simulate multiple users at once with sophisticated testing packages (AFAIK).

 

That said, they launched last June, so almost 8 months (will be that on Feb 7).  The biggest issues were pre-cruise functions. 

 

They had a monstrous fail in data conversion of existing reservations to the new system.  That could have been avoided with more careful QA and data audits on comparing old data to new.  Pretty basic and I have extensive experience in this implementing payroll systems.  It's tedious yes, and requires diligence and thoroughness.  Payroll is not something to be messed up when a new system goes live.  All the dollars and cents better be right as an example of data integrity. 

 

They had a lot of issues around multiple linked voyages which indicates either not thought of very much or glossed over in testing.  I have no info/insight on the type of testing they did, but seems to me the main focus was on the on-board aspects and not the pre-cruise aspect.  I see the tossing of the website interface as indicative of a lack of concern over the pre-cruise functions.

 

With DMW, they demonstrated almost a complete lack of what guests expect from the dining experience and seemed to only understand the dynamic booking for dining on demand while virtually ignoring set dining (traditional).  In both cases, they ignored table size options.  What they did deliver didn't work very well for quite some time.  So, just a smattering of examples.

 

I wouldn't expect perfection at launch, but there was so much wrong in design and execution that it just was not a "normal" sort of launch with a few bugs to address.  They are still dealing with some of the original issues to this day going by guest experiences (pre-cruise). 

 

[FlaMariner]

14 hours ago, Torfamm said:

It is possible to request a plastic card

 

Good to hear. 

 

From reading these threads and posts, the big advantage to the medallion seems to be the ability to approach your door and it unlocks.   Also, the ability to find me around the ship as I summon for food and drink.

 

Neither of those features is needed or appealing to us. 

 

Are there any other advantages to the medallion over the key card?

 

(Minimizing the possibility of having to deal with a trip to the front desk to deal with bogus charges would be reason enough to forget this medallion thing and keep it simple and old school...but perhaps there is something I am missing?)

 

 

[Kmkub]

3 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

Yes.  There was poor representation for the Princess Customer (no actual customers).  There was clearly a lack of breadth to the test sets to cover complex situations and there was a complete fail to understand dining habits.

 

I don't see the issue as delivering a perfect system at launch - and I agree that not likely any IT project has gone perfectly from end to end.  Your comment about thousands of testers (pressure testing) seems to be about the on-board experiences - which have not really been where the big problems are.  And there are ways to simulate multiple users at once with sophisticated testing packages (AFAIK).

 

That said, they launched last June, so almost 8 months (will be that on Feb 7).  The biggest issues were pre-cruise functions. 

 

They had a monstrous fail in data conversion of existing reservations to the new system.  That could have been avoided with more careful QA and data audits on comparing old data to new.  Pretty basic and I have extensive experience in this implementing payroll systems.  It's tedious yes, and requires diligence and thoroughness.  Payroll is not something to be messed up when a new system goes live.  All the dollars and cents better be right as an example of data integrity. 

 

They had a lot of issues around multiple linked voyages which indicates either not thought of very much or glossed over in testing.  I have no info/insight on the type of testing they did, but seems to me the main focus was on the on-board aspects and not the pre-cruise aspect.  I see the tossing of the website interface as indicative of a lack of concern over the pre-cruise functions.

 

With DMW, they demonstrated almost a complete lack of what guests expect from the dining experience and seemed to only understand the dynamic booking for dining on demand while virtually ignoring set dining (traditional).  In both cases, they ignored table size options.  What they did deliver didn't work very well for quite some time.  So, just a smattering of examples.

 

I wouldn't expect perfection at launch, but there was so much wrong in design and execution that it just was not a "normal" sort of launch with a few bugs to address.  They are still dealing with some of the original issues to this day going by guest experiences (pre-cruise). 

 

 

Thanks for that. I've extensive experience in converting data to go from one system to another. Often times, it was Excel spreadsheet data to regular database. It isn't easy, to be sure, and I've seen it done awfully more than a few times. I had to quit my last job because they were so terrible at it, that my expertise was not understood as expertise. 

 

My husband did some consulting for Carnival in Miami a few years back on some tracking software implementation in Tableau. We did have some good laughs over their idea of quality data. LOL.

 

 

[Torfamm]

1 hour ago, FlaMariner said:

 

Good to hear. 

 

From reading these threads and posts, the big advantage to the medallion seems to be the ability to approach your door and it unlocks.   Also, the ability to find me around the ship as I summon for food and drink.

 

Neither of those features is needed or appealing to us. 

 

Are there any other advantages to the medallion over the key card?

 

(Minimizing the possibility of having to deal with a trip to the front desk to deal with bogus charges would be reason enough to forget this medallion thing and keep it simple and old school...but perhaps there is something I am missing?)

 

 

We find the “find your shipmates” very helpful when we plan to meet. For example if I am in the gym and finish, I can easily see where my husband is rather than him sitting somewhere waiting for me. We’ve also had much less trouble with incorrect charges with the medallions than with key cards. 
 

For me, I also like the wristbands since I don’t have pockets or like lanyards

[caribill]

1 hour ago, Steelers36 said:

But lots of times the team or contractor has BA's or SA's that are involved in the design and spec development and get requirements from the client or Business Users.  So, the contractor firm bears a lot of responsibility for what is developed and aren't just programming to a provided specification. 

 

 

No outside contractor knows the details of a business as well as employees of the business themselves.

 

In addition, outside contractors are not as concerned with the success of the company the software is for.

 

I worked for a company in an area that did its own software development. The people doing the software were both very knowledgeable about what needed to be done and the true needs of the users. They also needed the software to work properly or their careers could suffer.

 

There were some times software development was outsourced, rarely with good results. When I complained to one outside contractor that a person assigned to the project had no practical experience in our industry, the response was "how much less should we charge for him to remain on the project?"  My response was even if they charged $0, it was unacceptable.

 

I remember another very major project using purchased commercial specialized software. The executives in the various corporate divisions were given the products' brochures and each exec agreed the software would do what they needed for their division.

 

The problem was that picking what options to use was like purchasing a car. The equivalent would be that one exec agreed a car with a 6 cylinder engine car would exactly meet his needs while another exec said that a 8 cylinder engine fit his needs perfectly. But just as you cannot get a car that has both a 6 and an 8 cylinder engine, the software package could not be customized to meet each division's needs since each division wanted different and conflicting options.

[Kmkub]

1 hour ago, FlaMariner said:

 

Good to hear. 

 

From reading these threads and posts, the big advantage to the medallion seems to be the ability to approach your door and it unlocks.   Also, the ability to find me around the ship as I summon for food and drink.

 

Neither of those features is needed or appealing to us. 

 

Are there any other advantages to the medallion over the key card?

 

(Minimizing the possibility of having to deal with a trip to the front desk to deal with bogus charges would be reason enough to forget this medallion thing and keep it simple and old school...but perhaps there is something I am missing?)

 

 

 

The live patter is on the app. (Timeline format of what's going on.) There's a google maps style feature. Find a place on the ship that you want to be, then click "take me there."  Like you can tell google maps not to do tolls, you can tell the app to avoid stairs.

 

Instead of flashing our card at the spa, they knew instantly who we were and that we had Enclave access.

 

Someone mentioned the "Find a friend," service.  I could tell which table my husband was at in the casino, or which slot machine he was at.

 

You can do instant chat with a crew member, or order extra towels to your room.

 

Oh, and it's currently the only way to place a bet on professional sports.