Flatbush Flyer

In my experience, few ships (cruise or otherwise) do not use anything other than local time. Local time is the easiest for all concerned to understand and follow. As a passenger, if you’ve got an iPhone or something else with a World Clock and a true GPS receiver, know that the GPS functions even with no cellular or wifi. However, on its own, the GPS may take a bit longer to get a “fix” (particularly at sea). Might I suggest that, if your ship uses local time and you don’t want to make manual adjustments for each time zone encountered during the cruise, make sure your phone is set to do automatic time zone adjustments. While home, double check that your date and time align with the reality at home. Once that’s verified, add your home city to your World Clock app. Then add each port you’ll encounter as well as exemplar cities on your known or guesstimated midnight longitude for each sea day (e.g., Alaska time for one of your sea days enroute to Hawaii from San Francisco). In that way, even without cellular and wifi service, your phone’s World Clock will always show the correct time in each port and each sea day’s estimated longitudinal land location. The attached pic shows the beginning of a World Clock setup for a transPacific cruise (just needs a place listing for each missing hour.

Just the opposite. OS tours are more than the simple panoramic and walking ones. And the OS prices have historically been over the old $199 O Life limit. OE tours are the same as many of the basic <$200 ones but with group limits <16 (and often around 10-12 people).

Anything before noon is a “craps shoot.” What most folks seem to forget is that the scheduled arrival time for your disembarkation day is a target and not guaranteed. Weather, mechanical issues, customs clearance of the ship can (and occasionally do) delay disembarkation - sometimes for several hours (happened on one of our cruises earlier this year [mechanical issue] causing a 2 hour delay before disembark in SYD. Many folks who booked flights before noon found themselves SOL for their return flights.

Other than taking an unopened O wine bottle to dinner (which we often do w/no corkage charge), requiring glasses of that wine and O provided spirits to be kept in the cabin would certainly do away with any perceived gray area.

There is no “gray area” regarding O’s personal wine policy. From the O ZenDesk FAQs: ”Guests are welcome to enjoy their wine in the comfort and privacy of their stateroom or suite, or, if they prefer, may enjoy their wine in one of the ship’s dining rooms. Any wine consumed in the dining room or a public area will be subject to a corkage fee of $25.00 per bottle.” The keg words in the O rule are “their” and “any.” O’s gifted wine is O’s wine and not subject to corkage fees. “Their” wine (and the word “any” refers to your personal wine. Not rocket science.

The best advice you could give them is to change their cruise specs and take the air credit and DIY the air. One only needs to search here on CC for the zillion horror stories about O air- particularly bizclass arrangements (and bottom line cost).

Easy enough to handle: give the O gift bottle to a wine steward (or a butler) who will mark the cabin number, serve it, store it (correctly) and retrieve it as needed (with no charge). Though things may have changed since Covid restrictions/policies/procedures, cabin glassware is/was different than what is found in public bar and dining venues.

It always amazes me to see someone who is clearly abusing the system by carrying around their glass of wine and not paying the corkage fee for the personal bottle from which it came. It’s dishonest, “low rent” and threatening O’s generosity (I.e., unlimited personal booze for in-cabin consumption). $25/bottle is “chump change” in the bigger O fare picture. Those folks should show a some class and pay what they owe.

Whether you cancel or “no show,” the Purser will know that one cabin is now single occupancy and the onboard account will be adjusted.

Speaking as an O regular (O Club Platinum): The wine-by-the-glass list is mostly mediocre items that retail at home for $10-15 USD. The six bottle limit on personal embark wine is a CYA statement that is NEVER enforced. (We regularly bring a case depending on embark port and replenish stock at appropriate ports along the way.) The only limit on Prestige Package spirits is topmost shelf booze (e.g., Single Malts and best Cognacs). Twice daily Happy Hour twofers are, at least, in Martini’s and Horizons bars. The $25 corkage is for ANY personal wine that leaves your cabin (even if you pour a glass for walking around, there is the $25 fee for the bottle from which it came). Please don’t join the handful of cheapskates who try to game the system. (There are occasional reminders about this in Currents - the fee is for ANY wine that leaves your cabin). Personal spirits remain in the cabin and O will supply mixers at no cost. FWIW: We stopped buying the booze packages many O cruises ago. No enforced limit on personal alcohol brought aboard coupled with Happy Hours, accommodating bartenders (we’ve known for years), multiple Captain and O Club events (on multi-segments), select large M&Gs (where the TA of a Group cruise or GM may pick up the tab), O Platinum SBC (and TA SBC/rebate, and invited officer dinners easily take care of our needs at far less cost than the packages.

O might “throw them a bone” but owes them nothing. Read the T&Cs and Ticket Contract. O assumes zero liability for performance issues concerning their contracted services.

Consider the Intercontinental Hotel on the Miami Downtown Harbor (within sight of the cruise piers). No shuttle. But, a taxi or Uber to your ship will cost less than $10. Wonderful restaurants and bars at the hotel. And walk right around the corner to the fabulous Il Gabbiano Italian Restaurant.

In general, O will assist with arranging a reserved space (no cost) for CC M&Gs and will arrange “no host” bar service with advance notice. Supply O with attendees names and cabins before the cruise and the onboard concierge will have invites waiting in the included cabins at embarkation. To start the ball rolling, use your Cruise Critic Roll Call for your itinerary to query others and establish tentative Plan A and/or B specifics. Then, at least a month precruise, contact O’s Group Department (call O for contact info on who handles your ship) and share the Plan and guest list (always request the presence of some officer(s) - usually hotel folks. That Miami Office person will interact with the ship’s exec concierge on your behalf. If you’ve got a sizable group (50+), you may find yourself with more officers and some comped hors d’oeuvres. Of course, this is all made much easier if you personally know your cruise’s GM. Then just send him/her a note (beyond your initial Miami Group contact) and she/he will “grease the onboard wheels” so that staff can work with you. Alternatively, particularly with a smaller group, you can just have you Roll Call folks pick a tentative spot onboard for the M&G (The long-standing default M&G time/place is embark day happy hour in the Starboard forward side of Horizons Bar. The only downside to this is if someone else has reserved the space (in which case, you make a handwritten sign that points folks to the port side instead. Finally, it helps of the volunteer organizer brings name tags and borrows a few pens from Guest Services. If you get that done,

FWIW: way too much luggage! We regularly do 6 week +\- O cruises. And whether the next one is longer or shorter than 6 weeks, we always pack for a 10 day rotation. Using two medium (26”) Briggs & Riley compressible checked bags and two small B&R underseat rollaboards (for meds/valuables) that stack on the 26” ones, (most foreign sedans like an MB E Class can handle this), we can also fit foldable duffles (one each) in the B&Rs should we need to make a side trip (e.g., Safari) pre/post cruise. This strategy includes flying to the embark city and arranging with the precruise hotel to store the B&G checked bags while we use the packed duffels for the precruise side trip. And, even though some of our complex air arrangements require multiple connections for the B&Rs, we strive to use United and it’s Star Alliance partner airlines to allow “checked through to destination” (and luggage tracking) status. We’ve even done this with cruises that require warm and cold weather dress and even snorkel gear (minus flippers). Finally, the O combo of self serve laundry and occasionally included laundry makes our ten day rotation scheme very efficacious.

This is why it is so important pre-cruise to get a copy of the “prepurchased shore excursions …. PDF. It has all the math of all optional purchases as it is supposed to be. Checking that before one leaves is paramount and bringing it on the ship settles any disagreements quickly.

Did you read your O ticket contract and T&Cs. As do most (if not all) cruise lines, O assumes zero liability for the performance of its contracted services which include things like air arrangements, port services, spas, ship’s excursions, luggage forward….)

Web maintenance is done on Saturdays Eastern time - usually in the afternoons/evenings but it could be earlier if needed. During that time, passenger accounts are locked for security.

If industry leading Luggage Forward says it can’t deliver to Mumbai, I wouldn’t trust others to do it. FWIW: when we do certain pre-cruise land stays (e.g., Safari), we’ll fly to the embark port (e.g., CPT) and leave our main luggage at the hotel we’ll use for two nights pre-cruise. We pack duffels in our checked bags and use them for the initial land trek and any local domestic flights (e.g., Safari). Works great!

It only takes watching some one guy not wash his hands after using the head and then immediately enter the Terrace and touch serving utensils or the food itself to change many folks’ minds about their being okay with self-served food.

Shorts are shorts. And jeans, by definition, are casual. Neither is appropriate at dinner in the GDR and Specialty restaurants.

Please- no jeans, shorts, tee shirts in GDR and specialty restaurants for dinner. No bathing suits only in any dining venue at anytime. O truly is “country club casual.” No need for suits, gowns, etc.

The San Francisco Dept. of Public Health - Travel Clinic recommends Malarone for Malaria Prophylaxis.

When you’ve got legitimate complaints about the CD, provide complete details (including their names) in the mid-cruise and end-cruise surveys. Also helpful to identify them here.

What a lot of folks don’t understand is that WiFi calling still may require involvement of multiple cellular providers along the transmission. And you may see a charge from one of them on your future bill from your provider. And some providers (e.g., AT&T on iPhones) allow wifi calling primarily as a hand-off when cellular service is weak to non-existent (you can’t choose their wifi calling in place of cellular - perhaps that is what you’re hearing now from Verizon).

Really depends - not only on the port but also on who’s supposed to be checking. On one mid-Covid era cruise from Sydney, lot’s of surprised folks when they found out they had to have negative Covid tests (required by the Port Authority) though Australia and NSW didn’t require it. Terminal checkin staff checked everyone. BTW, Vietnam ETA visa is easily done online with the government site (and less expensive than if O does it for you).