HiFi43

GC…the sea bass in pastry for two in Jacques is special, so hopefully you will order it on your next visit…

Roll Calls plus Meet & Greets. Maybe there are fewer regulars on your cruise. I do M&G often on Oceania and it is unusual to have such a low number on your Roll Call. I am doing the Meet and Greet for a January Marina cruise from Buenois Aires and we have almost 120 pre-registered. I’m doing one for a Vista September cruise and we have well over 100 already registered.

Frankly, we have done this many times. Both staying overnight in a port hotel when the ship is in port for extra days or leaving for a multi day tour on our own. We have done over the years a number of multi day side trips where we’d left the ship in one port and joined it days later in another. For example,, we left the ship in Dubai flew to Delhi, took a tour to Taj Mahal, went back to Delhi and then flew done to Mumbai to rejoin the ship. The trip with guides, flights and hotels cost us less than $1,000 each. We did the same thing on the same cruise in South Africa leaving the ship in one city, staying in a Safari park, and and then rejoining the ship in another nearby port. As Jan Cruz suggested above, we informed Oceania before the cruise and all as gone well every time we’ve done this. .

John, if you are going to be on Marina in January on the Buenois Aires to Santiago portion of the cruise we are having the Meet & Greet that Mauibabes mentioned at 4:30pm on January 18th in Horizons. If you was to come send an email with your names, home town and Cabin number to bbwex at verizon dot net (obviously the "at" is and @ and the "dot" is a period) I am also asking for the first name of your significant other, if one is not already on my list. I’ll be managing it and Mauibabes will be helping me. An invitation will be in your cabin the morning of January 18 in BA. Registration opens at a little after 4 and the program, senior staff greetings and introductions start at 4:30pm. As he says, between 80 and 100 will be attending.

As a note, we have even booked future cruises before getting on board an upcoming cruise and have gone to the ambassadors and they have worked with us to get many of the perks we would have gotten if we had booked on board. We have done this to make sure we got space on cruises where space might be limited if we waited to lock it done until we got on board.

We did this a couple of years ago and did fine with Cutters bug spray. Saw many other folks using other bug spays and lotions and doing well.

We just got off the Marina and both lounges were available with you key card almost all the time (I never tried them in the middle of the night but certainly during early morning to later evening).

They are doing a Riviera upgrade right before your cruise and hopefully the internet will e further upgraded as well. We have been on a few cruises on Riviera and Marina since the restart and we’re able to use the internet successfully for calls if we timed our calls outside the heavy. use hours. Laptop also worked.

Mrs F…call Oceania and ask to be transferred to the group department and asked them to connect you to the group person who handles Regatta ( I think it is Yoselin Yepez). This person will work with you to logistically set up your M&G and let you know what you have to provide to them before the cruise. It will be easy and if you need more advise send me an email with your phone number and I’ll call you to chat.

As Mauibabes and Alcpa1 said I have done many Cruise Critic Meet and Greets over the past 18 years. And I have one set up for the January 18 Marina Buenois Aires to Santiago cruise and also the Vista Montreal to Miami September cruise. We already have very large numbers for the January cruise and Mauibabes is helping out while Ben is collecting the names and cabin numbers. I personally prefer now that the pandemic has changed the way boarding is done and has eliminated the need to physically meet as a large group for the boat drill, to meet in Horizon’s for the M&G about 4:30pm Embarkation day. I work with the group department at Oceania on the logistics and in making sure invitations to a pre-registrants are in their cabins when they board. In the earlier days M&G’s tended to be somewhat focused around logistically managing people connecting who are doing private tours and that is still part. But for the last few years the M&G’s have been much more than private tour gatherings and even more focused on getting to know the experienced Cruise Critic communicators by everyone introducing themselves (I have Oceania provide hand microphones so everyone can here) and for the Oceania senior staff on board to be introduced and greet us. I open name tag check in at 4:15, start the introductions at 4:30 followed by people circulating around to get to know each other.. Because the PA announcements about how to do boat drills come on at 5:30pm and then the band status playing in Horizon immediately after, I try to wrap up the M&G before these interruptions start. During the M&G chips and nuts are on the tables and drinks are available (cash bar except for free non alcoholic drinks). If someone needs advice and the contacts at Oceania to organize a M&G contact me at bfredrickson at gmail dot com and I’ll help you.

We are also on the Marina and when the cruise started staff were not masked. They are now masked because Oceania has set a threshold for requiring staff to wear masks when the percentage of passengers testing positive for Covid reaches a small but specific percentage. That is to make sure the staff is protected from catching Covid from passengers with it. The cruise ends tomorrow and new passengers come on board with only a smaller number staying on for the next cruise. The hope is for those of us staying on that masking for staff may be eased when the diagnosed passenger percentage goes down.

I have been following this discussion with interest. We have cruised many cruise lines and have settled on Oceania as our favorite. There is no question that over the last few years the accepted definition of country club casual has fallen considerably on Oceania. I’m personally sorry that neither I nor any Oceania staff member have been willing to be the appropriate police what is country club casual because the definition is not clear and confrontation is not worth the backlash. And it shows. Last night in Jacques the man at the table next to us was wearing beat up jeans, a hooded sweatshirt with printed somewhat offensive drawings and verbiage on it and sandles with dirty socks and pontificating loudly about the American political groups he disapproved of. He and his wife were paired at their table with a nicely dressed European couple who were obviously by their expressions a bit taken aback by this pairing. My wife and I observed others in Jacques. We saw a number of men and women in blue jeans who accompanied them with what I would call more upscale shirts and tops. We also did see another man and another woman in jeans wearing printed sweatshirts with colorful sweat shirts. The vast majority of the guests at dinner were in what we would classify as country club casual or even more dressy outfits. When we first started extensive cruising I remember packing a tux and my wife packing evening gowns. I’m glad those days are past but I’m sorry that going out to a specialty restaurant on Oceania is no different for some than going to Waves.

I noted someone claiming that T-Mobile lowers your speed to 2G. That used to occur but I’ve not seen it for a while. We are now at 5G almost everywhere and I’m on the senior plan. I’m on Marina now and here is what the T-Mobile text messages that are automatically sent to you as you enter a new country look like; T-Mobile: Welcome to Estonia! Your plan includes coverage that gives you 5GB/mo. of high-speed data On Us, plus unlimited texts at no extra cost. Calls are at $0.25/min. Enjoy your stay!

Currently on the Marina, over the years we have sailed on every Oceania ship as well as a number of other upscale lines. We have been on 4 times since Oceania started up again after Covid. There were some training issues and some food quality issues during the early restart phase, nothing major, with so many new staff after Covid. On Marina today the staff has shown all the retraining has really upped the service level. And my wife and I have found the food quality level to be actually a step up from what we have learned to expect from Oceania over the years. I realize many passengers have different tastes and, also at times, chef’s make mistakes but in my experience no other cruise line we have been on has come even close to the quality consistency of Oceania.

I am currently on Marina in the Baltic and have had the very inexpensive senior plan from T-Mobile for years. With separate business phones i have had Verizon and ATT in the past and found both services far more expensive and far more complicated internationally than our person T-Mobile service. Never tried Googlefi. As I write this we have just left Oslo where T-Moble provide 5GB on our iPhone and are now passing by Copenhagen. Every place we go we get a free automatic text message from T-Mobile telling us where we are, confirming 5GB speed and confirming .25 cents per minute long distance. We also have automatic Wi-Fi calling while on our ship for free on Oceania’s free internet that in almost every case works very well. We are still sold on T-Mobile and like Mauibabes just ordered the new IPhone 14 with T-Mobile.

Dominic will be on Marina until he gets off in Amsterdam September 27th. Then Marc Warmenhoven will come on as GM through the Fall season.

On the last couple of cruises we took after Covid we did not get our Blue Book before we sailed. Our next cruise is on September 13th and we have not gotten one for that yet either. It really does not matter because you are already fully registered if you did the on-line requirements. Plus, Oceania will issue you luggage tags at the embarkation port when you arrive to board.

We have taken the Marina cruises around the tip of South America few times…would would not have repeated them if we did not think they were special. In fact, in January we are taking the BA to Santiago cruise on Marina that includes an Antartica pass by. The last time we did the cruise segments you will be on was in early 2000 when we boarded Marina for a cruise from Miami to Lima including the Amazon. That cruise ended up being a full circumnavigation of South America when Covid hit and Lima closed down to all ships. We passed Lima, went through the Panama Canal and returned to Miami adding 10 extra days at sea to our cruise. Frankly, we felt safer on our completely healthy and fully stocked ship than we did when we had to fly back home from Miami through almost completely empty airports. Lima as a starting port is interesting but is actually best for the offered Oceania pre-trip to Manchu Picchu. As you cruise south to Chile you’ll be visiting one of the most interesting and beautiful countries in the world. It is worth taking many of the offered tours and the Chilean Fjords are wonderful. While the weather in general has been great on our trips you’ll likely need sweaters and a warm jacket as you head south (probably not a parka since it will be summer during your trip). If you go through the Straights of Magellan natural channel and the the Beagle Chanel it will be very peaceful water. It you go out into the Pacific at the tip it could get a bit rough. Punta Arenas, Chile and Ushuaia, Argentina are usually your stops at the tip of South America and are both beautiful and interesting, especially if the weather is clear. Ushuaia is the South American jumping off port for ships going to Antartica and you’ll see a number of them. if you are going to port Stanley in the Falkland’s, the crossing is likely where you’ll experience your heaviest seas. We been to The Falklands three times and tendering into Port Stanley is totally dependent on the seas being calm enough to be able to tender. We have only missed once so far but we’ll see what happens on our January trip. Make sure to book a tour. Heading north you’ll likely port of on Punta Del Estes, Uruguay (a beautiful stop), Montevideo, Uruguay (an interesting city with wonderful leather goods) and you’ll conclude you’re cruise at Buenois Aires. Please take a couple of extra days in BA because it will absolutely be worth it. it is likely Oceania will offer a post-cruise trip to Iguazu Falls on the border of Argentina and Brazil.This trip or a private hosted trip to Falls would be a pity to skip. It makes Niagara Falls look some what like a piker in comparison. Have a great trip… Bruce

Zalusky…my brother-in-law died and his wife died suddenly a few years ago without leaving a note anywhere with his computer or phone passwords. He was a techie and was security head of a major tach company. My wife was the executor of the estate and even bringing in the best tech experts we could hire could not crack his security. It took almost two years to find everything because there were no paper backups…everything was scanned. Sometimes the “unintended consequences” of managing everything on an iPhone and a computer can be devastating. All my passcodes and access directions are on paper stored in a safe deposit box that both my wife and my legal firm have access to. We learned our lesson. For those of us who were techies in the old days it only took having a hard drive failure to teach us the lesson to back up immediately everything from then on.

The Vista cancellation was our second cancelation on Oceania for us in the last month (we were on the September LA to Tokyo cruise which was cancelled for the 3rd year in a row because of Japan’s Covid fears). The day it cancelled we jumped on another September cruise on Marina. We book our own air but just had United move the money to our replacement cruise air to Europe. When the Vista Inaugural canceled we were lucky enough to jump on a September Vista cruise. Luckily, we had not booked our air for the canceled cruise yet. We just try to “roll with the punches”

My pleasure…good luck

Just a note RE T-Mobile. If you are not traveling in the next month and prefer I-Phones, Apple will be releasing their I-Phone 14’s by mid September and at T-Mobile they told me today, when I visited them, that they would have offers on the new phones with the next two weeks. So it might pay to wait to get the newest model (although the 13 is more than adequate) If you are a senior, their senior plan monthly pricing is great.

I’ll add to the T-Mobile fans for international travel. We’ve used them with their very inexpensive senior plan for many, many years. Because we have also had a Verizon and an ATT phone issued by our businesses during the same period we can easily compare them all for cost and ease of us. T-Mobile is the hands down winner. It is warns us by a free text when we enter any country that we are there and confirms the 25 cents per minute falls and free data (low speed data has been more than fast enough). Plus the calls are free whenever we happen to find Wi-Fi available anywhere. We have used it throughout the world on every continent except Antarctica.

Chris, as avid cruiser’s who have sailed many of the top cruise lines, including some who have since disappeared, we thought your postings from this Oceania cruise were both helpful and insightful. I suspect most avid cruisers eventually settle on what cruise line they prefer and tend to become somewhat loyal because it fits their personalities and their personal travel goals…not to mention, their personal budget. We have settled on Oceania and will complete our 40th with them on the new Vista inaugural cruise next Spring. In cruising, plus some non cruise travel, we’ve visited 152 countries in the last 25 years. Oceania’s focus on traveling virtually the whole world accessible by sea just works for us. Second, Oceania tends to attract experienced travelers who are also interesting people and that appeals. Of course the excellent service, smaller comfortable ships and focus on food excellence also appeals. We live in the far north of NW Montana and many of our friends have second homes in warmer climates. Our second home is jumping an Oceania cruise where we explore the would and are pampered. We have discover in talking to our friends with second homes that our costs and theirs tend to balance out. Most importantly, we have made friends with people we have sailed with from all over the world. So in the summers when we are not sailing we love to have many of them visit as we take them to Glacier National Park near us and out on Flathead Lake, the largest Lake west of the Mississippi where we live. Thankfully we started cruising while we were both still working and are healthy enough that we still love the active exploring that s essential to really appreciate port intensive cruising. We look forward to your promised future postings… Bruce

We have stayed in the 12th level Oceania suites and have have never had any issues with noise from above. Nor have we heard anyone else complain about noise. We have stayed in every type of Suite on Marina and Riviera and our favorites remain the 12th level Oceania suites. Their location is very convenient. Their layout works for us and we love is having two bathrooms, the media room and the generous verandas. On itinerary stop heavy cruises we don’t always move up to them but on sea day heavy itineraries they are perfect for us.