By George Rees (Boeing, ret)

Seventy years ago, George Orwell published his dystopian novel 1984 about a society where ‘Big Brother is watching you,’ knows where you are and everything you do. Flash forward to the present day, replace ‘Big Brother’ with ‘Big Ship,’ and welcome aboard Princess Cruise Line’s Medallion Class cruise ship. While not the sinister system Orwell proposed, Princess has worked hard the past few years to create an entirely new cruise experience using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and related apps on several of its ships and I just got back from 10 days of trying it out.

For those of you who have never been on a cruise, typically each passenger is issued a plastic card at initial embarkation. This card is identical in size and shape to a credit card and usually has a bar code and/or a magnetic stripe on it. While on your cruise, this card is your stateroom key and since no cash is used onboard the ship, the card is used to charge purchases to your shipboard account.  When you report for lifeboat drill or in a real emergency, your card is scanned to make sure you are accounted for. The card is scanned when you leave the ship at a port and again when you return to verify your identity and confirm you are back aboard. Usually, this card is presented to you and your photo taken when you check in shore-side on embarkation day.

The Princess Medallion class experience has taken the plastic card based concept to a new level using RFID technology packaged in a small Medallion disc. I did an article in the SOLEtter  [Nov. 2014 V1N5] on Disney’s MAGICBAND experience where you wear a watch-like band on your wrist which functions as room key, park entrance ticket, charge card, etc. The developer of that system was hired by Princess to develop the Medallion system so there are a lot of similarities. The Princess Medallion disc has the size and thickness of 3-4 US quarters, roughly the same as Disney’s Magicband without the watch strap, and is color coded by your status as a frequent cruise customer.  You are provided a free lanyard and holder for the Medallion but since those look rather unstylish on formal nights, you can spend extra to get a watch strap, clip or stylish bracelet for it. Like the Magicband and plastic cruise cards, the Medallion is disposable after the cruise is over and is waterproof so you can wear it in the pool. Unlike Disney (at least back when we were there five years ago), the Princess experience uses large interactive screens located throughout the ship and includes apps to get the maximum utility. Some of the features of the Medallion and related apps:

  • You can use the OCEAN READY app to upload a photo of yourself and your passport along with other information before you leave home. If you are a US citizen and do this at least 6 weeks prior to departure, they will mail the Medallion to your house. This saved considerable time when we showed up for embarkation.
  • The Medallion app contained the daily schedule of onboard events. I suspected this would do away with the daily, printed schedule of events but was wrong – we still got that as well.  So much for saving paper.
  • It unlocks your stateroom door as you approach which is handy if you have your hands full coming back to the room.
  • You use it to charge drinks to your account.  You can flag down a server like before or you can order via an app. When using the app, the system knows where you are, figures out which is the closest bar and then provides the server with your location and photo so they can deliver your drink.
  • You use it to charge onboard store purchases to your account. My wife can vouch for the fact that it performed this function very well.
  • The Medallion is scanned when you leave the ship at ports and when you return. I was expecting this to be just a walk through scanner type of arrangement but it was the same process as with the old plastic cards where a crew person had to watch you scan and verify your identity. No real improvement there.
  • You can use it to navigate around the ship. Not sure where your line dancing class is located? Type in the venue in the search engine and the system will show you and give you a suggested route to it on the display.  I tried this a few times expecting that when I passed a display in route, it would pop up and say ‘This way!’ with an arrow but that didn’t happen.
  • The system will locate your fellow travelers on the ship. If they give you permission, you set them up as ‘Shipmates’ on the app. You can then call up the app or an interactive ship’s screen and ask where your shipmate is. The system will display the deck and the photo of your Shipmate at their current location. For families traveling with children, this feature alone has to be a wonderful addition.  This also helps the crew – room stewards can check to see if a room’s occupants are in the room without having to bother them. A related Shipmate feature is being able to text message back and forth to your shipmates via the Medallion system.
  • Most cruise ships have casinos. One of the apps actually lets you gamble with real money from your account from anywhere on the ship just as if you were at the physical casino!  Scary to think one could empty out one’s life savings from a deck chair quite easily if you weren’t careful. I did not try this but did walk through the actual casino one day and found it almost empty so this feature may see the end of physical casinos onboard.
  • Supposedly there was an ‘avatar’ which was supposed to appear on the ship’s big screens when you walked by. I thought I had this set up but never saw my turtle anywhere and didn’t bother to figure out why.

Implementing this system is a serious investment for a given ship. To retrofit our ship, there had to be at least 1500 passenger cabin door locks plus the large interactive screens, hand held scanners for all the crew, scanners all over to track people as they moved and the associated wiring and computing power to make it all work. Using the available apps requires accessing the ship’s internet which, on most ships, is notoriously a slow and very expensive optional service.

Medallion class ships require a much more capable wi-fi system to be installed on the ship to power the Medallion apps. While using the Medallion apps on board is a free service, the upgraded system also benefits those who chose to pay for optional internet service by providing a much faster, capable service. A special group of Medallion ‘Navigators’ was also available to help you figure out all this technology. These folks were quite busy at the beginning of the cruise.

So, how did all of this actually work over the course of our cruise?  Fairly well but with some issues. There are actually SIX Medallion related apps – very confusing at times to figure out which one I needed to use for a given purpose and some features were duplicated in various apps. If I wore the Medallion clip on my shirt, I could usually hear our stateroom door unlock on approaching while still 5-6 feet away. However, sometimes, it would not unlock until I had my hand on the handle or even then after a short delay. If I wore the clip on my belt, the door would not unlock at all and I had to physically hold the Medallion up to the door scanner.  I never tried ordering a drink via the app to see if they could track me down.

At first I was not able to locate my wife on the ship via the ‘Shipmate’ feature despite her being able to locate me. Finally determined this was caused by her not having given me permission to be her ‘Shipmate’. She claims this was an oversight on her part and not an intentional means of keeping me from being able to track her to the ship’s store. Once this was corrected, this feature was very handy.  It also became clear very quickly that there were two types of screens on the ship – one merely displayed the daily schedule of events which you could customize via the app but provided no other functions.

The other type would let you find shipmates, order drinks, etc. Using this system to its full potential means carrying your phone or tablet around on the ship – normally our phones went into the room’s safe the first day and were never seen again until end of cruise but now we carried them all day to use the system. Finally, the demographic of the passengers on board made me wonder just how well the customers are adapting to this system. Most of our fellow passengers were well into their 60s or older, a group that mostly doesn’t have the interest in this fancy technology.  I suspect a great many of them used the Medallion solely for purchases, scanning on and off the ship and for their stateroom access.

Overall, I was impressed with the Medallion system. Since Princess is breaking new ground, I am not surprised there were a few issues with it and I presume we will continue to see improvements as more ships are converted over and improvements are made. I look forward to seeing how it has improved on a future cruise. – George