{"id":2543,"date":"2024-04-08T20:08:07","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T01:08:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2024-11-04T17:49:06","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T23:49:06","slug":"2543","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/?p=2543","title":{"rendered":"Floating away on tech"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I took a Celebrity cruise for the first time. Now, I\u2019ve sailed for over 40 years with many different cruise lines, on so many ships I\u2019ve lost count and have found the items that really differentiate those companies are the basics like food, drinks, service, cabins, cleanliness, etc. However, in today\u2019s marketplace there exists new priorities for cruisers that simply didn\u2019t exist a decade ago. The availability of the internet on ships is a double-edged \u201cmust\u201d for many now \u2026 yes, you get all the benefits of the internet, but wind up losing that sense of true vacation detachment that a cruise used to provide. As a result we have Elon to thank or curse depending on your perspective, but if there\u2019s a certainty, it\u2019s that there\u2019s no going back at this point. As technology finally creeps into the cruise market, there’s only a single company that truly understands tech \u2026 Princess.<\/p>\n

After recently sailing on Royal Caribbean and the new Celebrity Beyond, the Princess experience makes those ships seem like a ship from 1984, and not in a good way. ALL ships other than those under the Princess banner fail similarly. By now you\u2019ve got to wondering what the heck is different, if not the aforementioned basics.<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s this:<\/p>\n

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This little tag, called the “OceanMedallion<\/a>“, is about the size of an Apple Airtag, and has fundamentally changed how we experience cruising. No more of these cheap Motel 6 styled, easily lost plastic door cards:<\/p>\n

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You wouldn\u2019t think there\u2019s much of a difference, and you\u2019d be seriously wrong.<\/p>\n

Those quarter-size tags do far more than you\u2019d ever expect. Firstly, your cabin door unlocks as you approach it. If you\u2019ve ever sailed before, this one feature is incredibly welcome. No digging around in your pockets trying to find a thin card to insert into the door after having drinks. This tag uses UHF<\/a> RF<\/a> and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE)<\/a> tech to let anyone you want to, know EXACTLY where you are on board using the Princess app. Also, we use it extensively to have food or drinks brought to us ANYWHERE on the entire ship as the tag will send our location to the kitchen. When I go to the bar, my picture pops up on the bartender\u2019s screen so he already knows what drink package I have, and if I\u2019m of legal age. As I approach my cabin door, the LCD screen near the door pops up a touch-sensitive button that may win a free cruise or even cruise credits (while at sea only). Either my travelling companions or I almost always win something during the cruise. Also when we head to dinner, the tags quietly tell the ma\u00eetre d\u2019 our status levels for quicker seating \u2026 are we first-timers or high-level cruisers? Any on-board purchases are quickly handled by these tags in the ship’s stores (and it is just starting to be available on shore in protected cruise ship tourist areas). It turns the Motel 6 plastic room key experience into a more refined and relaxed atmosphere. There are other uses on board too \u2026<\/p>\n

When you add the liberal Princess internet packages and the \u201cOceanMedallions\u201d together, all other cruise lines pale in comparison. Additionally, on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity cruises (as well as all the others), a single week of internet connectivity for a single phone is actually more expensive than three months of fiber at my home! Yes, it\u2019s that expensive and slooooooow. Princess is using Starlink and with our package we get eight<\/em> full-speed devices and excellent audio\/video streaming that is almost as snappy as our home internet. I even bring an Amazon Firestick and Alexa for our room. The old Voom system used by almost everyone else can\u2019t reliably stream or even be depended on to be functioning. The Celebrity Voom connection, in all seriousness, was slower than a 1992 dial-up modem. But the pricing isn\u2019t just expensive \u2026 it\u2019s insanely expensive. I don\u2019t know why anyone would pay for such inferior service, with limited capabilities from any other cruise line.<\/p>\n

It’s not that I\u2019m picking on Royal Caribbean or Celebrity cruise lines, but I\u2019m sick of being \u201cnickeled and dimed\u201d for a subpar experience, on many levels on those lines. Princess (which is incredibly owned by the icky Carnival line) sets the standard for cruising tech.<\/p>\n

No longer will towels on your bed, folded to look like elephants, be an acceptable compromise to the Princess “OceanMedallion” experience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few weeks ago I took a Celebrity cruise for the first time. Now, I\u2019ve sailed for over 40 years with many different cruise lines, on so many ships I\u2019ve lost count and have found the items that really differentiate those companies are the basics like food, drinks, service, cabins, cleanliness, etc. However, in today\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2543"}],"version-history":[{"count":30,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2574,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2543\/revisions\/2574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecaffeinatedgeek.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}