Regal Princess: Embarkation Day

Good evening from onboard the beautiful Regal Princess. We set sail from Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale earlier this afternoon and are headed to Princess Cays, the private island for Princess Cruises. Throughout our voyage, I’ll be sharing details about Medallion Class and how it functions during a Princess cruise. This post will focus on embarkation.

As I mentioned in my first Medallion Class post, you receive your medallions in the mail a couple of weeks prior to the cruise. So today, with our medallions attached to the provided lanyard, we arrived at Terminal Two. They are still using the old school system for luggage, so we printed our tags before leaving Texas and handed our bags off to the porters outside the terminal. From that point, it took less than twenty minutes to get onboard. We arrived at the terminal around 11am and were onboard by 11:30am.

First, we went through security. This involved a quick check of our passports and having our medallions scanned at the checkpoint. Once the scanner turned from blue to green, we went through the standard security metal detectors and our hand luggage was scanned. This process was very efficient with little to no wait. I did see them re-taking a couple of security photos (you upload those when doing your online check-in) but even for those that they needed to re-take it was a small delay.

Once through security, we proceeded to the check-in area. This process involved our passports being checked again and our medallions being scanned a second time. It did seem a bit redundant but it was so quick and there were no lines, so hard to complain. If you did not receive your medallions (or you forgot to bring them — it happens believe it or not) there was a place where you could get replacements. Since the medallion acts as your room key, there is no wait for them to find or print your room keys/ID cards. We were given a card with our room number on it and sent to the boarding area.

I should mention that the terminal is gorgeous and would be a lovely place to wait, but today we barely saw it. After leaving the check-in area, we headed to the cool LED tunnel and digital under-the-sea fish tank that leads to the ship. This was the first place we could take a photo with the ship’s photographers — a different, cool twist on the “Welcome aboard” photo.

Just after passing through the tunnel above, we were headed down the gangplank and onto the ship. You enter into the gorgeous atrium, a multi-deck venue that features entertainment, shops, restaurants, and bars. We entered to a string quartet but it wasn’t long until the carolers were singing Christmas songs.

One of the many cool things I noticed right away was the display saluting the crew of THE LOVE BOAT. As a group they dedicated this ship and for those who didn’t know, Princess was the line that was featured on the TV show. In fact, berthed next to us today was the Pacific Princess, which was the ship featured in many episodes of the show. This is a new version of the ship but the name should be familiar to fans of the show.

Another impressive part of our embarkation was the fact that our stateroom was ready the moment we stepped onboard (about 11:30am). With most cruise lines, it’s at least 1:30pm. We had been told in a pre-cruise email to expect 12:30pm, but they were ready an hour prior to that. When you arrive at your stateroom, the system detects your medallion and unlocks your door as you approach.

We had a nice lunch in one of the main dining rooms, although we also visited the buffet and it had a very nice selection of choices. What was surprising was the lack of crowds. I’ve never seen a buffet that wasn’t packed on embarkation day, yet it was fairly easy to navigate around both the buffet and the ship in general. The only time it got crowded was during the muster drill, which makes perfect sense.

I will post menus and other photos from day one later, but I did want to share one other cool feature of Medallion Class that I tried out today. The app allows you to order food or drinks to almost anywhere on the ship. There are a few places where it doesn’t work, but most of those locations have alternate options. For example, it may not work in the dining rooms but there are waiters there to bring you drinks (and obviously food). But if you’re sitting by the pool or in a lounge, you just open the app and order whatever you like. From the example above, you can see I ordered a simple diet coke. I have the beverage package so my drink was complimentary, but they are currently featuring a “first drink free” promo when you use the ordering feature. From order to arrival, the elapsed time was approximately three minutes. I did see one of the flaws in the system here, as the waitress did not close out my tab properly and the system wouldn’t let me order another. Clearly this was an oversight, but a bit frustrating.

Once of the nice things about the Ocean Medallions is they have a dedicated area of the ship where there are folks available to help you solve any issues you might encounter. I visited them to get this little glitch fixed and they were nice enough to offer me another free drink as an apology. On top of that, I got to find out that they have a “wish list” of things that they hope will be added to the app in the future. Both are things that are missing now and I would like to see as well – the ability to see the dining room menus ahead of time (as you can on other lines) and the ability to make dining reservations on the app. I was told both of these are coming and they would be a welcome improvement.

The medallions are also great for accessing your casino bank, which gets much bigger when you hit a four-of-a-kind on the first night.

With our first day almost complete, I’d give Ocean Medallion a solid 8 out of 10. It would be higher if the menus were available and the dining reservations but it’s a solid app in its current state. I haven’t had any major glitches, the system makes it easy to purchase food and beverages. For example, we had gelato this evening and they just served us while the medallions told them who to charge. No waiting for a check or having to sign anything. Super easy.

Tomorrow we will be at Princess Cays. I’ll be sure to get lots of photos of their private island and its offerings. My next blog will have some really cool Princess statistics for this past year. Stay tuned. Goodnight from somewhere near the Bahamas.