It doesn’t look like much, does it? A little coin-sized gadget on a lanyard hardly screams “this will run half your holiday”.
But once you’re on a Princess cruise, the Medallion quickly turns into the thing you use for almost everything.
It’s your cabin key, your onboard spending tool, your way back onto the ship and, in some cases, your shortcut to finding the people you’ve somehow lost between the buffet and the pool deck. Handy is putting it mildly.
Some cruise gadgets feel like they’re there mostly to sound clever. The Princess Medallion is one of the few that genuinely makes life easier onboard. And once you’ve used it for a few days, going back to a standard cruise card can feel a bit old school…
1. Unlock Your Cabin Door Like Magic
This is the feature that usually wins people over within about five minutes.
Instead of fumbling around for a cruise card, your cabin door can unlock as you approach with your Medallion.
Honestly, this is so much better than it might sound. The amount of times I’ve been carrying drinks back to the cabins for the kids, then tried to do that awkward shuffle to get my cruise card out while balancing them…
It’s not quite a sci-fi moment – you still have to open the door yourself, which you can manage with your elbow – but it does feel impressively smooth when it works. After a few days, you stop thinking about it. Then the minute you sail on a ship without it, you suddenly miss it.
2. Board And Reboard Without the Usual Faff
Getting on and off the ship is one of those cruise routines you do over and over again, so anything that makes it quicker is a win.
Your Princess Medallion is part of the boarding and reboarding process, which means you’re not constantly digging around for a separate key card every time you head ashore or come back from port. It becomes second nature pretty quickly – grab your essentials, grab your Medallion, and off you go.
That might not sound thrilling, but on a busy port day when everyone’s queuing to get back onboard, anything that makes the process feel less clunky is worth having.
3. Pay For Drinks, Coffee and Shopping Onboard
Think of the Medallion as your onboard wallet.
Want a cocktail by the pool? Fancy a speciality coffee? Seen a souvenir in one of the shops that you know you’ll regret not buying? Your Medallion links to your onboard account, so purchases can be charged straight there instead of you carrying cash or reaching for a bank card every five minutes.
Again, yes, it’s a cruise card but in small, metal, round form. But it is so much easier than constantly digging it out of a bag or wallet.
It’s one of those features that quietly makes your cruise feel easier. You can travel lighter, keep your essentials to a minimum and stop worrying about where you last shoved your card. Dangerous for the holiday budget, maybe. Convenient, absolutely.
4. Order Food and Drinks to Wherever You’re Sitting
This is where the Princess Medallion starts to feel genuinely clever.
Using the Princess app, you can order food, drinks and other items and have them delivered to your location around the ship. So if you’ve claimed a sun lounger and have no intention of giving it up for the next two hours, you don’t necessarily have to.
It’s especially handy on sea days, when nobody wants to lose a good spot by the pool just because they fancy another drink or a snack. You order, and wait for it to come to you.
And you don’t even need to stay where you are. I’ve moved to the other end of the ship after ordering, and my food still found me!
Just don’t expect instant service during the busiest times. If half the ship has the exact same idea at sailaway, things can slow down a bit. Still, the fact that it works at all is really impressive.
Suggested read: Princess Premier Review: Is the All-Inclusive Package Worth It?
5. Find Your Travel Companions Without Sending Back-and-Forth Messages
Every cruise group has one person who vanishes.
Sometimes it’s the partner who “just popped to get a drink” and somehow ended up in another bar on another deck. Sometimes it’s a teenager who said they’d be back in ten minutes and has not been seen since mini golf. Either way, the Medallion can help.
Princess lets guests in the same travel party locate each other through the app, which is genuinely useful on a big ship. It saves you from the usual stream of messages asking “Where are you?”, “Which pool?”, “What deck?”, and “No, the other side”.
For families and groups especially, this can be one of the best features of the whole system.
Bear in mind though, it’s not always 100% accurate. I once looked up my child’s location on the app, and the map showed his Medallion as being in the sea. Gladly, it wasn’t, and neither was he!
6. Get Directions Around the Ship
Cruise ships are brilliant. They’re also surprisingly good at making you feel like you’ve taken one wrong turn and accidentally entered another postcode.
If you’ve ever spent ten minutes trying to find the right dining room, theatre, lounge or spa entrance, you’ll appreciate this bit. The Princess system can help with wayfinding, showing you how to get from where you are to where you actually meant to be.
It’s particularly useful on the first day or two, when you’re still pretending you totally know the difference between forward, midship and aft. It also comes in handy when you’re racing to trivia, dinner or a show and do not have the patience for a scenic route through three wrong decks.
Now if only it worked like a sat nav and could give you directions that avoid the crowds… One day, maybe!
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7. Check Plans Without Being Glued to Your Phone
Not everyone wants to spend their cruise staring at an app, and fair enough.
One of the better things about the Medallion setup is that you can use screens around the ship to pull up useful information without needing to do everything on your phone. Depending on where you are, that can include your plans, bookings, activities and other personalised details.
That makes it easier for people who aren’t especially techy, and it’s also just a nice break from (small) screen overload. You can stay organised without feeling like you’re spending the whole holiday tapping through menus.
The big screens have games you can play on them using the Medallion, too.
Sometimes cruise tech works best when it gets out of the way a bit, and this is one of those times.
8. Make The Whole Cruise Feel More Personal
This is one of the more subtle perks, but it can make a difference.
Because the Medallion links to your profile, it helps create a more personalised experience onboard. That might mean staff can identify you more quickly, certain preferences are easier to see, or little touches feel more tailored to you rather than totally generic.
Walking past a digital screen on your birthday? A little celebratory message might pop up…
No, it doesn’t mean every crew member suddenly knows your life story. But it can make interactions feel smoother, especially when it comes to things like onboard purchases, bookings and service.
It’s the kind of feature that you don’t always notice until you sail without it and realise how many little moments it had quietly simplified.
9. Use It in Some Ports Too!
The Medallion isn’t always just for onboard use.
In some destinations and participating shops, Princess guests can use MedallionPay ashore as well. That means you may be able to make purchases in selected ports without switching back into full wallet-and-bank-card mode the second you step off the ship.
That convenience will appeal to some cruisers more than others. If you like keeping things simple, it’s a nice option. If you’re the kind of traveller who prefers paying in local currency and hunting down the best deal, you might be less fussed.
Also it’s important to know that it doesn’t charge purchases to your account, but instead uses the card you’ve registered to your account to pay immediately. Don’t assume you can use onboard credit to pay for things ashore. There’s a reason it’s called “Onboard Credit”.
Either way, it’s a useful extra to know about – especially if you like the idea of keeping your day ashore as low-hassle as possible.
10. Wear It at the Pool, On the Beach or In the Rain
A lot of cruise essentials are annoying the minute water gets involved. The Princess Medallion isn’t really one of them.
Because it’s designed to be worn throughout the cruise, you don’t need to panic if you’re heading to the pool, relaxing on the beach or get caught in a sudden downpour. That all-day convenience is part of the appeal. You’re not constantly taking it on and off or wondering where to stash it.
That’s especially useful on sea days, when you might bounce between breakfast, the pool, lunch, a hot tub, another drink and then back to the cabin without ever wanting to think too hard about what’s in your pockets.
11. Turn It into Something a Bit More You
The standard lanyard does the job, but it’s not exactly glamorous.
Princess also offers different accessories for the Medallion, so you can wear it in a way that suits you a bit better – whether that’s clipped to clothing, worn on a wristband or turned into more of a necklace-style accessory. If you hate having things around your neck all day, that flexibility helps.
The wristbands are especially useful for a lot of the things on this list.
It’s not the most important feature, obviously, but it does make the Medallion easier to live with. And on a cruise, the best gadgets are the ones you forget you’re even wearing.
Read more: 10 Best Princess Medallion Accessories
What Can You Do with Your Princess Medallion after The Cruise?
This is where things get a little less exciting, but it’s still worth knowing because loads of people ask.
Once your cruise is over, your Princess Medallion isn’t really something you keep using for future sailings in the way some people hope. It’s not a permanent cruise pass you keep reactivating again and again. For most people, its useful life ends with that sailing.
The good news is that Princess says the Medallion itself doesn’t store your personal information, so you don’t need to treat it like a mini hard drive full of your card details. That’s a relief if you’ve ever looked at it after the cruise and thought, “Right, what exactly am I meant to do with this now?”
In reality, most passengers do one of three things.
They keep it as a souvenir, especially since it’s quite a fun little memento from the trip.
They turn it into a magnet or keepsake, which honestly suits it quite well.
Or they recycle it responsibly rather than throwing it in general rubbish, since it’s still a small electronic item.
So no, it’s not going to unlock your front door, buy you a coffee on land or magically shave money off your next Princess cruise. But it can still make a decent little reminder of a holiday you loved.
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Final Thoughts
For something so small, the Princess Medallion does quite a lot of heavy lifting.
Some of its features are practical – unlocking your cabin, paying for drinks, getting back on the ship. Others are more about making the whole cruise feel smoother, easier and a bit more modern. And that’s really where it works best. It takes everyday cruise admin and makes it less noticeable.
You probably won’t step onboard thinking the Medallion will be the highlight of your holiday. But by the end of the cruise, there’s a good chance it’ll be one of those little things you realise you’d hate to do without.
