What is Princess Cruises
Ocean Medallion and what are the pros
and what are the cons for cruisers?
I'm Gary Bembridge, this is another of my tips for travellers.
I'm here in my cabin on board Sky Princess.
First of all let's talk a little bit about
what exactly is Ocean Medallion.
Well this is what it looks like,
it's a small round device,
and this replaces your cruise card.
The actual medallion itself integrates
with a couple of key things.
First of all, there's Medallion Net,
which is the wifi system which is being introduced
by Princess which claims to be the fastest wifi at sea
and certainly, cased on my experience,
it is phenomenally fast, it's land speed
and really good land speed capability.
It also integrates with some smart interactive screens
and a couple of Apps.
So, let's talk about what do I think the big pros are
of this system and what are they things that
you can actually do with that whole integrated system.
There are seven things that this whole system does.
Some of which are things that are important to you
as a cruiser, some of which are more behind the scenes.
So first of all, what does it do?
The first thing it does is make you Ocean Ready.
So through a combination of the app
or online you can actually upload your photograph,
you can upload your travel details,
like your passport and they have all
the information that you need.
Certainly it was one of the quickest
experiences I've ever had of getting on a ship
which the Medallion because
you've uploaded everything in advance
and you are ready to board the ship.
So you get through really, really quickly.
The second thing it does,
is it replaces your old traditional cruise cards,
that little plastic card,
and this becomes your device that you would use
for everything that you used to use your card for,
so it's what you log in and off the ship with,
it's what you open your cabin door with,
but importantly, what the Medallion does,
is it recognises when you're close to the cabin
and unlocks the door by itself,
so you don't have to hold your card up,
so particularly handy if your hands are full.
You also use it to make all your purchases
so you use it to pay on board
and so it does all the things that your plastic card does,
however, I personally think it's much more convenient
than a plastic card, because first of all, it's wearable.
So, the standard default is you get it as a lanyard,
but you can also buy various devices
so you can wear it as a watch,
you can wear it as a broach,
you can wear it as a pendent.
Another big plus is it doesn't get demagnetized,
so you know, with the plastic card,
if you put it in your pocket
or your bag or what ever with your mobile phone,
it often get wiped out and you have to go
and have a new card issued.
The third thing that it does for you
which is particularly good for some people I know,
like some of my family on cruises,
they find it really hard to find their way around a ship.
Either by using the screens that are around the ship,
or actually the mobile device,
is you can find your way around the ship really easily
by using what's known as, Ocean Compass.
So this will help you decide where you want to go
and tell you how to get there,
but also very importantly, you can set it up
through the App to connect to with the people in your group.
So, you can actually find where people are
and go and find them.
Now this is particularly important if you're with family
and friends, and you looks track of them,
and want to find them, so you can either go and ask
a member of crew to help locate where they are,
so you can go and seek them out,
or you can do it yourself with
the feature in one of the apps
which is around finding your friends and family.
Another great feature, although you do have to have
the App to use it so you do have
to have your phone with you.
Is location sensitive ordering,
so you could be by the swimming pool,
or in the hot tub, and you can order drinks,
or you can order food, or you can order sunscreen,
and it's expanding to other things so in the shops,
so where ever you are, you can then place an order,
but you do have to have your mobile phone app with you.
Can't actually do it off the actual device,
but then the staff are able to locate exactly where you are.
So even if you order a drink in one spot
and you move somewhere else,
they can find you and deliver the service to you.
Also, if you want something in your cabin,
you can do the same thing,
you can just then simply place an order
and your cabins stewards know when to come.
Also linked to that whole location process,
is the cabin stewards able to tell
whether you're in the cabin or not in the cabin,
so it certainly makes the cabins stewards life
much, much easier because they know when not to disturb you.
There are couple of other features
that are linked to the whole system again.
It's partly linked to the fact
that the Wi-Fi is so strong,
so they have a thing called Ocean View,
where both before you come on the cruise
on your television or on your app,
you can watch a series of programming
which is unique to Princess Cruises.
Most of it seems to be destination focused,
and if you watch it say on your app,
before you come on the cruise,
if you put on your television,
it knows where you are and keeps playing.
It's a bit like if you've got,
something like Netflix or Amazon Prime video
where it knows across your different devices
where you've stopped watching,
so you can watch all that programming.
They also have a casino app which is a separate app,
so you can also play bingo or gamble,
and then they also have a whole series of ocean play,
which is a series of games.
So you can set up your own little
avatar which will interact with you when you're
on the various screens around the ship.
The other thing which you don't really see
as a passenger is there's a huge amount of data
being collected behind the scenes,
so they know how many people are in a particular location,
so if they need to put more crew,
they can see flow, they can see where people are,
but one of the things that I think is very interesting
is from a safety perspective,
so actually one of the big things it adds
is more security and safety on board.
So they're able to track in real time,
for example, if there's an emergency
they know exactly where people are,
if there's people missing they can
see exactly where they are
because of the device which tracks them,
and also they know what they look like
from their pictures so people can go hunting for them
if there's an issue,
so certainly they're able to track people
in say muster stations
and around the ships, so they're able to react
and know exactly who they're looking for.
So that's the sort of things that it does,
but what do I see as the big Pros
and what do I see as the Cons of this whole process?
So let's take a look first of all at the pros.
One of the biggest pros of this process
is actually the Wi-Fi,
so it is incredibly fast and it's really efficient,
and I was able to do all sorts of things
on the ship that I couldn't do before.
It was really, really excellent quality,
it's streaming quality and I think that's a big plus
cause also that enables you to be connected,
it's unlimited, it costs $9.99 for one device
in a day, $49.99 for up to four devices per day.
I think the simplicity of the actual medallion itself
and replacing the plastic card,
the fact that it's wearable
and it does have some of those features,
should you decide to use it with an app,
but the simplicity of getting on, off the ship,
being able to wear it,
the fact that it unlocks your door,
they fact that you're able to do location
based ordering, I think is all a really big plus.
The third area of Pros obviously
because the ship is able to start
to collect lots of data, where you are,
what people are doing, how often they're doing it.
If they need to move people around
to provide more service,
and also the fact they're able to address you by name
and overtime the crew are able to put little notes,
and so they'll know your preferences.
You know, these ships are big,
it's 3660 passengers for example on Sky Princess.
If you're on smaller ultra luxury ship,
the crew will have time to learn everyone's name.
This means the crew are able to
start give you a much more personal service
because they're able to build up a more of a profile
with you using technology so I think that's a plus.
What are the cons? Well I think one of the big
downsides is the fact that ready to unlock
a lot of the potential you do really need to use an app.
So some of the big pluses like the location
based ordering and some of the interactivity
like tracking people is much more difficult to use
if you don't have a smart phone,
it's very you know, reliant on you using your phone
to have those extra benefits and features.
So the downside really is that you need a device,
some of the things you probably could use
with other apps on other cruise lines,
but the fact that the Medallion and the location base,
I think is a thing that really
makes the whole process different.
Under pinning that with phenomenal Wi-Fi at sea.
If you've had the Ocean Medallion,
love to hear what you think of it
but bear in mind, I have loads of other videos
with tips and advice, and thoughts about cruising,
so why don't you find something else about cruising
by watching another video right now.