OceanCompass™ Reviews

These are the worst apps I have downloaded to my iphone. Being an IT technology director with a software development background, I am embarrassed with the inconsistencies and quality issues. First I cannot figure out why Princess create 6 apps, when all these features could have been nicely consolidated into a single app. Even though the look and feel was attempted to be consistent, it is obvious that separate development teams and/or companies developed these apps. It is frustrating that something as simple a login screens were not unified. Why do I have to log in separately to each of the 6 apps. The appropriate way to design these is to persist the login credentials in the IOS database and share across the family of apps. It is further frustrating that the OceanReady app knows exactly which journey I am embarking on, yet after several attempts to enter my reservation # and date of birth on the this app app, it claims that the combination is invalid. This is very sloppy. Another area that was not done well was the OceanReady photos cropped and stored off-center.

This is sort of a tracking system for members of your party while on board, the only problem is that it hardly works. When you can log on it takes forever and 90% of the time when you get on it can’t find anyone and gives a retry message. When we brought it to the attention of the passenger services rep, they basically said that it’s a crapshoot. What’s the point of rolling out all of the apps (6) for the ultimate passenger experience when they don’t work. What passenger experience are they going for? Also, the idea of loading all of these apps onto my wireless doesn’t make sense. One master app with different sub categories was the way to go here, they didn’t even get that far. This and all of the other apps are a rudderless ship.

This is part of a bundle of half-baked terrible apps that are more gimmicky than useful or entertaining. While each app has its own issues, and the way that they’re all tied together (or not tied together) also has issues, this one has its own problems too. Most notably, it makes it impossible to track others in your group if they don’t have a smartphone to confirm that they’d like to be tracked. Also, the messaging feature is completely unreliable. However, OceanCompass works the best out of all of them in the bundle.

The purpose behind OceanCompass is noble, however, the product is at best a piece of garbage. If giving it a “zero” rating was possible, it would not have even received a “1”. Have tried multiple times on multiple days to create an account but get the same error message each time.....cannot create account at this time, try again later. What is up with that.....if there is a problem, either fix it promptly or pull OceanCompass until it works properly. Leaving a pure garbage app on line, to frustrate potential new travelers, should be a “real embarrassment to Princess. If Princess really cares about customer service, do it right or do not do it at all!

This whole mess of Princess apps is crazy. Why are there six apps, all with different UIs and registration/login flows? Why are there so many bugs? Also the design reminds me of iPhone apps from ten years ago. And why does it sometimes say that I’m on an entirely different ship? And why doesn’t the iOS password manager integration work, forcing me to type my complex password (which I have to do often because it randomly logs me out, despite having checked “Remember me”)? They’re legitimately terrible, and whomever’s in charge of digital experiences at Carnival needs to completely start from scratch.

Princess needs to reevaluate this and the other ocean apps. Ocean Ready was fine for the pre cruise prep but the on board apps like Compass and Now have been mostly useless to me. Continually having to login, the compass never finding my shipmates and so on.

Really it should all be on one app, not sure why they need 4-5 apps. The medallion replacing the cruise card is great and the kiosks on the ship work great but these apps, not so much.

OceanCompass functions well and accurately, but when I’m viewing the map, the icons are too large and cover up the names of the places I’m looking for! Maybe placing them to the side of giving the ability to toggle them on and off would improve the UI!

Also, the ships time is off by an hour. It is slow for some reason. We’ll see if it changes or stays when the clocks go back tonight.

Just returned from a seven day cruise on the Royal Princess. The Ocean Compass app is great when it doesn't kick you out and you have to log in again. I can’t believe Princess put out this whole suite of apps. Never mind having to log in for each one. And there’s a different feel to each one. I don’t think the programmers talked to each other on this. I hope princess hires new technical advisors and fixes this. I talked to multiple people on the ship and 90 percent felt the same as me. Redo these apps!!!!

Just returned from a week cruising aboard the Royal Princess to Alaska. Not sure if the problems stemmed from the medallions or OceanCompass itself but the entire digital system is a frustrating mess. Princess needs to go back to the drawing board and develop one app (not multiple ones like Ocean Ready, Ocean Now, Ocean Compass, etc.) that works along with the medallions and their shoddy onboard wi-fi. It’s too bad the execution doesn’t live up to the hype as it’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver than vice versa.

This suite of apps is very poorly done. I had over 40 years of experience in software development, design, and architecture before I retired, and I can tell you they are junk. From conception to design to implementation, they are terrible. Carnival should find the executive I charge of software development, fire him, and hire someone who knows what they are doing. It took me less than a half hour of attempting to use these apps to find more than a hundred issues. That’s pitiful.

The concept of OceanCompass is great, however it rarely works as intended and instead wastes a lot of time. The messaging/chat with shipmates does not allow you to turn on any type of notification on your phone, so to know if anyone has messaged you, you have to keep checking OceanCompass . What a huge waste of time while on such a wonderful vacation.
Also, the find shipmate has failed 9 out of 10 tries. I give up, very very frustrated.

This just doesn’t work. OceanCompass constantly loses connection to the Wi-Fi on the ship, then it wants you to log back in with your cabin number, birthdate, next of kin and a whole bunch other junk. This happens 6 or 8 times a day. I was hoping the chat feature would work, but no luck there either. If someone sends you a message there’s no alert system. The whole experience was very disappointing.

This is Day 3 of our cruise. OceanCompass has not worked the majority of our time on ship. Very poor performance.

It wouldn’t let me create an account “Not available at this time, try again later”
Gosh, how bad can it get!? I don’t know if it will ever work!
Additionally, when I get shipboard hell in the Internet Lounge, it finally logged on, but would disconnect after a few seconds with the message “sorry we couldn’t keep you connected”. OceanCompass and Princess need to vastly improve OceanCompass....as of September 2019, it’s pretty crappy!

Without paying for overpriced WiFi this is the only means of texting on board. It takes 20 minutes to load from the ridiculously slow onboard WiFi. It is not user-friendly. Features do not work consistently. Text messages do NOT send notifications to your phone. It’s your only choice and it’s free so don’t expect much.