I Put The Cruise Industry's Best Tech to The Test 

** A little explainer about the 'paid promotion' popup box - RU-vid defines paid promotion as 'accepting anything of value from a third party to make your video'. I was invited on board by Princess to join them on a press trip with journalists and other people. I'm never paid beyond this but the gifted cruise fare means I need to tick this box. All opinions are my own and no cruise line has control over my content. ** 🎉🎉 If you are curious about how I make money (working with a travel agent, sales of my course etc, check out this video >> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-clpjeAMjS0c.html

Emma, I have no problems with you being sponsored by the cruise lines. In fact, I welcome it especially as they do not control your comments. This way, the general public gets a good overview of your cruise and you get to cruise more. You mentioned the good and not so good things so that's great. My wife and I love cruising and being in Australia, our international borders have been shut for almost 2 years now. Keep up the great and informative vlogs.

It’s “flashlight” in Canada as well as the US. (To be a torch, it has to be on fire!)

Oh my goodness, I loved seeing the option to 'order' a sharps bin! As a diabetic, it's always tricky figuring how to dispose of my sharps while travelling. I usually just 'pack them out', and dispose of them at home. Having a sharps bin in my room would be fantastic!

Great presentation of the tech! I really like the medallion on my Majestic Princess cruise. Wrist band definitely the way to go. It does freak me out that the door unlocked before you get there. I was always still a couple doors away when I would hear it click.

It's called a flashlight in the US and Canada because the first ones on the market used to flash on and off to save the batteries. The name stuck even after that feature was no longer needed. Kind of like how a movie is sometimes called a "flick" because on early projectors the film used to move around while showing each frame making the picture flick up and down.

I actually think these would be a major security risk - the medallion has your name engraved, and the cabins display your name on the screen and open up when you just get close to the door. If you ever lost your medallion it would be incredibly easy for someone else to pick it up and wander the ship until a door opened or they saw your name on the screen.

Wow, Princess should have this as their how to use explanation. It is really well done. I learned a lot of nice know information that only experience can teach someone. So, I know I'm always saying I really enjoy your content but damn it, I do. You may not have been a natural at this but it sure seems that you are.

I'm going to weigh in on the app side of things, because I work in the field of building these kinds of apps...you can generally measure the quality of an app by how helpful the error messages are in my opinion. Lazy, generic error messages that don't make it clear what has gone wrong are a good indicator of lazy planning and execution of creating the app. That knocks on to your photo looking wonky. They have done a very basic resize. It's not that hard to do a crop, resize and retain aspect ratio in one. Of course, this could all be planned in - they needed to get certain functionality to market by a certain time and will enhance it over time. For this reason products are always released as Minimum Viable Products that get built on. On top of that every software product carries what is known as technical debt - this is the amount of work that is needed to do things properly after releasing the easy option to release the app with the features needed in the timeline required. But generally you want your error messages to be one of the things you get right from the start if you're planning properly and diligently. The hard work is setting up the system to report errors and that has been done. The lazy bit is not having relevant error messages to the fault that has happened. These are easy to customise and help customers, cruise line staff and the people who created the app.

I took my first Princess cruise this month! I didn’t love the cruise line (too traditional for me) but I LOVED the Ocean Medallion tech. Tap a few buttons and someone brings me a cocktail no matter where I am? Brilliant! Team Diet Coke here but I really appreciated being able to order mocktails on the app. So now I’m team Key West Cooler.

We were on Sky Princess (pre-Pandemic) and I’m a huge fan of the medallion. Full disclosure, we have only cruised on Princess but they are an amazing (Americanism) brilliant (Britishism) cruise line. The medallion worked flawlessly and performed as advertised. We got the clip-on medallion holders which I liked because I could clip it inside my pocket. I don’t like advertising that I’m on a cruise when we are in port and with the medallion in my pocket, we never had to worry about that. Emma…it‘ s a flashlight…even Apple says so on the phone. Next you’ll be telling me Z is pronounced Zed. Really? And I’m team Coke. So I guess we have irreconcilable differences.

I'm an American and I like to use the word "torch" just to see the confused faces! 🤣🤣🤣

The "Ocean Medallion" reminds me of the Walt Disney World "Magic Band." If you are staying on Disney property the Magic Band opens your hotel room, it is your admittance into the theme parks, you can also charge items to your credit card via the Magic Band. If Princess is using the Ocean Medallion, I would think Disney would implement their Magic Band technology to their cruise ships. ✨👍✨

I’m not too happy about needing to use an app. The first thing I do when I get to my cabin is put my phone in the safe and there it stays until I disembark. I’m a slave to my phone when not on vacation and I really want nothing more than to disconnect on a cruise.

Great video showcasing the tech. LOL yes that was a bit of a shock with the £2000 bill, glad it was sorted very promptly! Our Paul and Carole Meets.....Emma Cruises will be live soon!

I am a very loyal Princess cruiser. I’ve used the Ocean Medallion and the cruise card and honestly each have their pros and cons. I really don’t mind either way; I’m just happy to be on a Princess ship.

Cherry Pepsi all day every day! 😁 I went on my first Princess cruise in Sept 2019 with the medallion technology. Loved that I did not need to carry anything to order drinks and made it so much easier to access our room.

hopefully if someone is concerned about privacy (especially if there is a stalker risk or children in the cabin) they can make the medallion and door without names on them. you really don't want it to be easy for malicious strangers to know children's names and where they are sleeping.

Toilets are important, I'm with you Emma, I find all of the toilets everytime I am on a ship because I know I'll be running there regularly :)

Knowing where a handicap toilet is very important for mobility hindered.

Something they should add to the cruise bracelet would be a 130Db alarm that goes off when a passenger is not within 100 meters of the ship at reboarding time.

We've just been on the same cruise! The technology was honestly amazing. The medalion was brilliant, and we also purchased the wristband. I loved running upto the room and the door automatically opening. We had a few issues with the app, but hopefully these will be ironed out. Mainly that it kept crashing on my partner's phone and I had to complete everything on mine. I wonder how far they will take this technology. We were looking at the onboard photos they take of you and all they did was take a photo of your face and all your photos popped up. I noticed the outside room screens have what looked to be cameras in (I could be wrong), so I wonder if they will look to do facial recognition in the future.

I started work in the IT industry in 1978 and retired in 2016. I go on cruises to get away from all that techy stuff :-)

Hi Emma! I love this video as I'm app developer... this is just gold for me thank you very much for your detatailed experience, and all your advices. Love ALL your videos, cheers from Méxicoooo! (i have never been on a cruise and when that happens I'll follow your advices XD )

Thank you, Emma!!! This is by far one of the best explanations of the technology on a cruise ship I have seen in a while. Thank you for all you do!!!

This is cool, I might have to try Princess just for this 😀. Disney has MagicBands for the resorts and Disney World so I think they should extend the use of that to their ships and have it do everything the medallion does.

The reason Americans call it a flashlight has to do with when they were first developed. In the early days, the batteries had a very short life and to conserve their energy the light would be turn on very briefly and immediately turned off(flashing the light). A person would, then, move a short distance and then flash it on and off again, repeating this action until they finished whatever they were doing.

Pepsi 👍. We have used the medallion on a few cruises but it did not have all of those bells and whistles yet. Great description of the updated medallion. Plus we only use a torch during a “zombie “ outbreak in the states because sometimes they are hard to light.

Pepsi for drinking straight. Coke if used as a mixer. That was one of the issues that Coke had when it came out with 'new Coke'. It had a sharper taste than the original and didn't taste as good in a rum and Coke. I used to go to basketball games at my college and the kid who sold the most cola to the fans would yell 'mixer! mixer!' instead of 'soda' when in the student section since he knew a lot of alcohol was smuggled into the arena by the college kids. Bota bags for the win!

I was on Sky Princess in February 2020 when they first introduced the medallion. It’s interesting to see how it’s expanded with many more features than it had at that time.

It was crazy to just order stuff on the phone, no matter where on the ship we were, and the crew was able to track us down.

Emma, I appreciate your straightforward and practical reviews. I also love, love that you keep your videos free of obnoxious music intros and outros.

Emma, I really like your video presentations. You are always clear, you speak well and I love your 'British-isms.' 54 years ago I left England and came to Canada (great decision I must say) but having been here for so long, I forget the occasional word or phrase. So it's nice you remind me! Keep up the great work, Emma and thank you for doing such an excellent job. I'll be on two Princess ships this year (hopefully) and I have been stressing a bit about the medallion system. So your comments are very much appreciated. Cheers! Michael.

They should have it where you could add other people to the same medallion when it came to payment and profiles for family cases. You could set up all that stuff on your phone and then you could order for your parents or adult kids and etc if they left their phone and you guys have the same packages

My QM2 TA for this December was cancelled and I’m booked on Sky Princess for a Caribbean cruise this November. I’m very excited now.

Way to go finding the retreat pool lol, I'm sure the software will get better as time goes by. Would love to experiment with aspect ratios to get rid of Potato Head pics, I'm betting they add a cropper tool to allow you to change it later on. Wonder if the cost is too high for the other lines to adopt something like this? That "order cookies to me" button is dangerous lol

Thanks, Emma for the very thorough explanation of the cruise ship tech. I am the tech queen in my family and it sounds right up my alley. My sister came along and watch a little with me. She is completely creeped out by it. I suppose it's not all that bad if they are only tracking you while you're on board ship. It's not like Princess is tracking you once you are home. We have Google for that. I also love the British-isms.

Thanks Emma. That medallion is a great idea. When we cruised princess a few years ago. They didn't have that.

Thanks for sharing your experiences using the Medallion. I’ve heard many stories about the Medallion & cruised with Princess a lot & my first Medallion cruise will be on the Ruby Princess for a Halloween. Hearing your stories I’ll be curious if I have the positive experiences that you had. Yes we do call it a flashlight 🔦 in the US. The term torch reminds me of movies with people going around with these flaming torches. As usual a great video. Nice to see your father traveling with you. I going to wear my Medallion on a holder that will clip on my belt that I got from Amazon.

We in Canada call them flashlights too. A torch is fire

Another brilliant video, Emma! I really enjoy your presentation. You do a wonderful job.

LOVE Princess room service. Fries and cookies any time!

I love cruising vicariously through you and your videos and learning the British-isms. Even though I’m from the US, I might have to start saying torch instead of flashlight 🤣

Canada has a flashlight… BtW, good show. Great reminder about checking your bill on a regular basis. One last thing: I would suggest slowing down your pace of talking… I know that you are trying to cram in as much information as possible, but it just got a tad in the way of what you were trying to convey.

I've never cruised. Never knew what I wanted. Now I do! I'll start looking to book ASAP.

Thx , gr8 video. It is FLASHLIGHT in Canada. Have a good day.

Great info as usual Cookie Monster! Luv that technology, apart from the drinks ordering 1 at a time 🤔. Sky princess is on our short list for May next year. She looks fab! Loving the room service. We only returned from our last cruise 5 weeks ago, but can’t wait for the next one! Euro millions tomorrow night! 🤞 🍪🍪🍪

I'm really surprised that they put full names on the screens. Does anyone know if they still do that?

When you said you and your dad has no sense of direction you reminded me so much of my brother and sister. They went to reserve a table at a restaurant for us 30 minutes early and I beat them there...they went an hour down the highway outside of our city before they realized they had messed up.

Thanks Emma, loads of great information as normal. Now I will know to scan the QR code in places to get the bonus drinks. I agree with you that hopefully Princess will alter things so you can link the drinks packages to allow you to order multiple drinks, seems daft that if I am sitting by the pool with my wife that we each have to order a drink and then probably have 2 people deliver them. Will drink Pepsi Or Coca-cola but given the choice would always go Team Pepsi (diet of course).

Super impressed with your video. This is amazing I can see why it took so much work to make. I am team coffee just saying. :) Enjoy Disney- also beer and Pie I like your Dad's style

The medallion is a good thing for safety or if someone falls in the water they can find them or if someone is missing good idea

Awesome! Love the idea of the wristband and the info you can access

Seeing a blue medallion takes me back 😄 we'll be ruby next cruise, aiming for platinum by end of the year

Can’t wait till my cruise in December! So excited to go on this ship 🛳 Love 💗 Princess, the CREW is always amazing. Thanks for the good info.

Omg..I loved everything about this video! I've only cruised Princess once and thought it was okay, but the food wasn't as good as Carnival, which I expected the same quality since they're owned by the same company! Anyway, with this awesome tech, I definitely want to go back now..lol! Oh..BTW I'm Team Diet Pepsi..lol, and I keel a "flashlight" with me almost always..lol! Thank for this video, I really enjoy your channel!

You Gotta Love Their Technology! Love Your Choice On The Medallion Wrist Band! I Hope NCL Implements This Tech On My Cruise By May Of 2023! Thanks Emma For All The Info! And For My Cola Choice....Dr. Pepper!!!! Stay Safe My Dear Friend!💖😉🥂

Awesome and very informative video as always :) I don't mind the technology I use my phone to take pictures the whole time i was on a cruise. So why not use it for more. The medallion is also just an added bonus. I dont think I would want my name or my family members name on the door monitors thou. My arch nemisis may be on the same ship. Oh and team Ginger Ale or Alcohol. ;)

Your dad has very good taste in beer. Love Sam Adams and Goose Island. Hope they have this on Regal next week 🍻

Thank you for this information. it will be helpful on my next Princess cruise. We call it a flashlight in Canada.

Thank you for this, I was to go on my first cruise in December this year but it’s been postponed to December 2022. It is on a Princess Cruise so it will be interesting to see how the tech changes between now and then.

Hi Emma. We love your videos. Thanks for your efforts mate. My wife and I are big cruisers and are both Elite level on Princess. Just about to set sail from Brisbane for a 12 night Oz East Coast cruise. We can't wait to try the medallions. Thanks again for the overview of them. Best regards Mark and Kris.

The only cruises have ever been on were in the US Navy. Your s look like a lot more fun and the food is amazing. Good luck With all your endeavors

I would love it if Apple would change the name of the flashlight on my phone to TORCH! It just sounds so much more theatrical :)

Love your videos! I used to be a Diet Coke guy, but my Mother in Law developed dementia and the physician said there is some research that links aspertame which is the sweetener in many colas to neuron damage and cell death. Now, you'd probably have to drink copious amounts of cola before having any issues, but I decided not to chance it. Love my unsweet tea now! Hope you enjoy your Disney cruise!

Always wondered what my home town looks like from one of the cruise ships. Sorry bout the rain.

This is a wonderful and informative video. I am in team Coke and team flashlight. This technology is making me head back to Princess for my cruise in 2023. 2022 is already booked for NCL. Have fun on your Disney cruise

You can expand the group of passenger you wish to be able to locate by mutual consent. Therefore you can find your cabin mates and also people in a wider friendship group wherever they are on the ship in real time. .

its a "flash light"🔦. A Torch is something flaming 🔥 you chase Frankenstein🧟‍♂ with...

You use the Get Me There option on your piece of tech and it teleports you there! Take me to the bar from my cabin! Press the button and you teleport there! Doesn’t matter how far apart they are from each other - two seconds later, you’re there! Had too many port & lemons in the bar? Press the button again and teleport back into your cabin! It knows where your cabin is, even if you don’t know and teleports you there! Coke vs Pepsi - I think Pepsi is probably the better one of the two - but I don’t often drink fizzy drinks - my eldest sister, on the other hand, ruins her alcohol by putting fizzy drinks in it - port & lemon (lemonade), Bacardi & coke, whisky, lime & lemon and desecrates most types of wine with lemonade - can’t give her a glass of wine without having her reach for a bottle of lemonade! You don’t put fizzy drinks in alcohol!

We call them linterna (eléctrica) meaning (electrical) lantern in Mexico, and we don't say electrical anymore as usually not even ghosts carry lanterns nowadays.

Flashlight for the win. awesome presentation as always

Princess Cruises are the finest cruise company around I have the pleasure of sailing on they have the some of best ships next to Royal Caribbean the Majestic Princess and most recently the brand new Sun Princess I have the honor of sailing on, their staff are some of the most friendliest people ever met and their food is pretty good most of the time.

Used medallion on Regal in October 2019. Brilliant. Had cruise card on Sapphire in June 2019, first princess cruise, thought it was good at the time but was really impressed with medallion when we boarded in New York in 10 minutes flat. The app before was a bit hit and miss and took a couple of calls to Princess to sort but I think this was its earliest conception. Definitely the way forward. Looking forward to Sky in September 22

We ended up testing the drink following you thing by accident on Regal back in July. We placed an order and when it hadn't arrived after 30 minutes decided to go to a bar elsewhere and our order turned up about 15 minutes later at the bar. There are paper drinks menus if you ask, we saw some folk getting given them in Bellinis. There are also a lot of drinks available that don't appear on any of the venue menus. One of my faves from Regal was a Milky way martini, and I was always able to order them via staff on Sky Princess

Thank you so much for the video.

WOW that is a WHOLE lot of stuff in this video!!! Great job explaining everything Emma!! Definitely nice to be able to find the nearest bathroom or find other friends/people in your party. I agree with not displaying the name stuff. On the fence with the photo stuff, especially on the room. Maybe there is a better way to handle that? Codenames, etc? Like Julia Roberts in Notting Hill...."Miss Pocahontas" Haha. As for using the app/phone on the cruise....maybe this is where an extra "older" phone could be used? I say this because phones are VERY expensive, but if I had a $50 iPhone 5 or 6 and it dropped or got lost or was otherwise broken...it's only $50, instead of the $1600 for an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Course the older phones may not be able to handle the bandwidth or app itself. I do like the medallion idea, but again, not with your name on it. No doubt Princess allows these to be re-used on future cruises too? Look forward to your next video!! Enjoy the Disney cruise!!

As a Canadian I know the British say torch but we always say flashlight.

We recently went on a transatlantic cruise on the Regal. The first stop was in Cherbourg (highly recommend the Titanic museum and submarine tour BTW). The French being French had to be different. The had imposed additional Covid-19 requirements for people leaving the ship. Of course the did this at the last minute. Princess negotiated a compromise with them. To get past their Covid police you had to show the usual ID plus your Medallion. That satisfied them.

Very good information. You have really gotten good at these videos

This is an excellent tool. My problem was with the initial setup of the app. Couldn’t get my travel partner’s picture to populate. My picture would show for him in some parts of the app. Medallion customer service was horrible and after months went by it was still not fixed. Princess canceled both cruises - problem solved. Thanks for the update.😎

Thanks for the tech talk on Princess. We're booked on Grand Princess for Sept 2022! Also, it's not only in the US that it's called a flashlight, but here in Canada as well! :- )

It's a torch in Australia. Medallion tracking is brilliant to help find your partner or friend.

anytime i hear of Princess Cruises, i now always think of the "Diamond Princess" because of Covid

Omg. I didn’t expect that squashed potato comment. I let out a laughter. 😂

I’m team Coca-Cola. Years ago, maybe early 1980’s, we participated in a Pepsi Challenge at a street festival, where were sipped two samples. The one we preferred was significantly colder. Pepsi of course.

Two questions about the medallions. 1. They look like there is one design, so how do you tell which one is yours? I can imagine putting several down on the desk and them getting mixed up. 2. How do you prevent the doors from being unlocked while you are in the cabin?

I’ve noticed they still use that function in hotel rooms throughout Europe, using room key to activate lights.

As an American, a "torch" is a stick with fire at the end of it. Usually employed by many angry people. 😂

Flashlight... A Torch usually has actual Fire. Great Video! You're Really Cool.

Last couple of cruises I took, the drinks packages were priced such that they did not make sense to buy, unless you drink like a fish. Especially considering the exclusions they had. Ideally I would buy a drinks package, prepay gratuities, buy a shore excursion for every port, and buy a speciality dining room voucher for maybe 3 nights, all on or before departure. But the cruise lines are masters of selling you something then setting limits on it so that you can never truly make it all-inclusive.

I haven't been on a Princess cruise yet (thanks 2020... we were supposed to go), but our friends really enjoyed the Medallion class ship they were on in 2019. Our Disney cruise was in 2016. It was my first cruise and I was actually pretty impressed with the tech it had at that time, even though I had nothing to compare it with.

Canada calls them flashlights as well.

I LOVE all of the new technology! First cruise I ran into the wristband was on Quantum of the Seas. I loved that I could leave my card in the light switch and always have the band with me. Not so thrilled the name and picture on the door though. This could be a big issue for solo female cruisers.

its a flashlight in canada too

Usually flashlight Emma, it’s a bit old fashioned nowadays though. I’m in Shetland 😊

Another informative video. Well explained. We were on the regal in 2019 and had the medallion. It was good but they have obviously improved it since. The picture was and appears to still be an issue. Hopefully you pointed out the improvements necessary to princess. I did at the time. So looking forward to my next cruise to iceland in July.

Us Aussies call it a torch as well.

Videos like this are so helpful to me I am helping my family plan our first cruise in 13 years and my mom does not and will not ever own a cell phone because she doesn’t want to be tracked…I imagine getting on Princess and her losing it over the wristband.

Flashlight for me thanks for the information about the new updates it has been since 2017 that I have been on a princess to alaska