the mice

My TA is a member of Oceania's Connoisseur Club. Is their TA? Just wondering if maybe their TA doesn't do a lot of Oceania bookings and doesn't have a good O contact. Not saying that's the case. And agree, the "marketing" games can drive you nuts - the exact sentiments I said to my TA when I inquired about all this.

No - Bangkok to Seoul in February

There was a lot of availability and I got to keep the same stateroom.

Re: my post #55. First, a big Thank You to all the posters who said the Summer Sale pricing online was not the REAL price. I called my TA and the prices were great. Got our cruise split into the 2 segments. And my Shore Excursions were moved over by my TA and Oceania. The SM 25% discount is the same as the old YWC discount. And I got the Loyalty credit applied for both segments, instead of just the one cruise. A huge savings and a total win!

We also made the switch from Olife to the Summer Sale with SM and saved thousands - amazing. As noted on various posts on this board, to get the correct pricing you need to call your TA. When I looked online at the Summer Sale and SM pricing, it did not look like any savings but thanks to those other posters, I made that call and was pleasantly shocked at the savings. So much for simplyMORE being "simple" 🤣

I made the post about 7008. This verandah is open on 2 sides so you can look down the side of the ship. You get a little bit of a windbreak here as you are sheltered by the divider on the forward facing side, but open on the port and aft facing sides. But you still feel the breeze/wind when underway. Never heard any noise while in that cabin. Don't know if you can request chairs as I didn't bother to ask. One of the loungers had a bit of a scratched up arm. I'm sure if you were not happy with it, you could ask for another. One other thing to note. One of the outlets on the desk was not useable because it looks like something jammed in it so a plug could not be inserted. Some of the outlets are for European plugs - we had the European 2 prong plug adapters with us so it was not an issue. I hope this helps.

Our booking was a Grand Voyage (I think that's the correct term for what O calls a B2B) booked with Olife and the 2 segments were on the Summer Sale, while the GV was not. We had already booked the required number of shore excursions for the 25% discount (some ports are challenging for private tours). So we got the booking split into the 2 segments with SimplyMORE, getting the same shore ex discount as we met the required number for each segment, and we saved thousands, too, plus got our Loyalty bonus for both segments instead of just once. And we get a 2nd internet login and house beverage package (but we don't drink so this was not a factor for us). As noted in other posts on this board, the Summer Sale pricing online is NOT what my TA quoted me, so you need to call. I had looked online and it didn't look like anything better than what we had. Once I got the quote from my TA, I ran the numbers and it was amazing. A no-brainer for us to switch. The only caveats that I can see are that I would have double the $250 cancellation penalty since it's now 2 cruises instead of 1, and I won't be able to book specialties for the 2nd segment at the same time as the 1st. BUT, my final payment deadlines are much later. For the significant $$ savings, I'm good.

I am so very sorry this happened to you, especially since it was such an extended trip. We were on an Azamara cruise last Oct-Nov out of Rome, cruising islands in the Med. There was another airline fiasco in Rome that closed the airport around 10 am that morning. The Captain's family was flying in from the UK and they were among the many who missed the ship. A lot of passengers took 2 days to connect up but I imagine flights were not as packed as they are right now at the height of the summer travel season.

We were on Marina in June in 7008. 2nd time in this stateroom (previously Nov. 2018). This time we only had loungers and small table.. Previously also had 2 chairs. While it was sunny and warm in Scandinavia, it was often shady and breezy while cruising.

But be aware that hotel options are limited around JFK. TWA Hotel is only one on airport but recent reports have been very mixed as to price, quality of stay and service. We stayed when it opened so I don't have personal experience of the current situation there.

Betsey, glad you are OK and spared the flooding where you are. Sorry to hear about your son-in-law's farm. Are you going to get more rain this weekend? That's what's forecasted here in NY. We are fortunate that we are on high ground above the Hudson River and other than some plantings, mostly ferns, battered by the torrential rains, we didn't have any issues. However, north of us, lots of areas were not so fortunate. West Point is across the river and about 20 miles north. Cars were up to the roofs in water, and some roads totally washed away, caved in, etc. A real mess for sure. The county north of us had major flooding, too.

I think O is working on shore excursions for some ports. Is you cruise a segment that is offered as part of a longer Grand Voyage or Extended Journey (or whatever the O lingo is these days)? Reason I ask is that for our Asia cruise in February there are no excursions listed for a couple of ports, BUT if I look at the 2 individual segments that make up our cruise, there ARE excursions for those same ports. And for one of those, there are no prices listed yet.

We were on Marina June 2-12 with 2 days pre-cruise in Amsterdam and 3 post-cruise in Hamburg. Never had Covid. 2 vaccines and 4 boosters, last 3 weeks before cruise. We were among the very, very few wearing masks onboard, which we did in the elevators and on buses. We did not share tables in the specialty restaurants and ate breakfast in the MDR which was quite empty, although they seated the few guests all in the same general area, but still with some spacing. We only ate 1 dinner in the MDR, and aside from the specialties, we dined outside in Terrace in the evenings. I did not mask up a couple of times in the laundry room only because I forget my mask. Onshore we ate outside and masked up inside if around others. We did all our touring DIY (lots of walking) but did ride in a few shuttle buses, and used public transportation, where we masked up. Wore masks on the plane (business going, economy with connection returning home). Thankfully, we observed almost no one coughing and came home symptom free. We still mask up inside when we are around groups of people. And we'll doing the same on our upcoming cruises. (Pre-Covid, on our Australia/NZ cruise on Celebrity, I think the entire ship - passengers and crew - had respiratory issues - everyone was coughing or worse. It was miserable, and it took me 6 weeks to stop coughing after I got home, and it wasn't even Covid). Hope you recover quickly!

We were recently on Marina on a Scandinavian cruise. There were both American and European outlets which I had not remembered from the last time we were in the same stateroom back in 2018. Since we were in Amsterdam pre-cruise I had some European 2 prong plug adapters so was able to charge things in different outlets. But one of the outlets at the desk was "jammed" with something and wasn't usable.

Need some help/advice here. I've read through so many posts on SM and repricing, but not sure exactly where I'm at and what I need to do if I switch us to SM. We are booked on a GV February 12 - March 9, Bangkok to Seoul. It's composed of 2 segments - Feb 12-26 Bangkok-Hong Kong and Feb 26-Mar 9 Hong Kong - Seoul. (2 parts of a long 82 GV). Now the 2 segments are part of the Summer Sale. The price of the 2 segments is $1251 pp less than our current booking under O Life. So far, so good. My confusion is in regards to the SM Shore Excursion credit vs. our O Life benefit. Since we will be doing our excursions together, I am breaking this down as per person, instead of per stateroom. With our OLife booking, we get 7 included shore excursions per person spread over the entire GV. With SM, Cruise 1 gets $500 pp credit and cruise 2 gets $400 pp. So less $ value under SM but more flexibility. We booked 7 O Life excursions (pricing out at $1073 pp) plus 3 more (one an OS) getting a 25% discount. if I break these down by segment, on cruise 1 our 5 O Life excursions before discount are $745, and 1 OS is $279. On cruise 2 our 4 O Life excursions before discount are $626. Several points of confusion.: My TA said the excursions could not be transferred over if we changed to SM. Is it because the cruise would have to be booked as 2 separate cruises? Or is there a way around this? Assuming prices are the same, if we decided to “rebook” the same excursions, by my calculation, we would pay $245 pp more for our O life excursions on cruise 1 and $226 pp more on cruise 2. Total $471 pp more. That would still be a savings of $780 pp over our current booking. And it would include a 2nd internet (useful) and beverage package (not useful to us since we don’t drink alcohol, although I can but DH cannot so I maybe have a glass of champagne at one of the O events.) Does anyone have any idea how the discount for added shore excursions would work if the booking is split into 2 separate ones? I have booked a couple of private excursions for cruise 1, but the providers in Vietnam want to be paid in USD cash so I’m limiting those. Roll call for our segments is very inactive. Have contacted several vendors in ports for cruise 2 but only 1 responded so far. But I think I will be able to arrange some private excursions on cruise 2 to keep the shore excursions close to the SM $400 pp. Also, our 5th O cruise is in November on Vista. So we will be bronze on our Feb. cruise. Our current GV invoice is showing the $50 pp shipboard credit. If the booking is split, will we get that credit for both cruises? Hoping that some more experienced O cruisers can provide some guidance here. Thanks in advance. Marilyn

Was in the Polaris lounge on Tuesday after Memorial Day weekend and it was a total zoo, absolutely jam-packed. Surprised as only business class passengers can access it. Heard from some people that they actually had to wait on a line for 20 or so minutes to get in during late afternoon. So good that you are arriving early so pick out a good place to park yourself. There is a sit down section with table service for ordering from a menu, but we gave up our slot so as not to lose the seating we finally managed to secure after walking through the entire lounge twice. So pick a spot you will want to be in if you decide to stay all day in case it gets crowded in the afternoon.

Over the years, we have traveled a number of times in the Mediterranean area (land and cruise) in late October-November (even up to the beginning of December) and have enjoyed mostly great weather on these trips. Not shorts or swimming weather in general, but often wearing tee shirts. Weather is always a concern, but we have rarely experienced rain for more than a day on any trip. Lack of crowds more than makes up for that. The biggest difference between spring and fall is the hours of daylight.

Been on that roll call - agree, very inactive, but find that's been true of many RCs lately.

@TFree @Benita We are also on this Nov. 3 Vista cruise. We booked on opening day and took Olife, no air, with the 4 free shore excursions. The price for our B4 is now $400 pp more for SM w/o air. Our 4 booked shore excursions are $596 each or $1192 per stateroom, so better than the $1000 per stateroom with SM. We don't drink alcohol either. Using some "orphaned" miles to fly to LA and will probably pay for an economy flight home (watching prices). While the 2nd Wifi would be nice on the sea days, we can share and we'll be fine. We have T-Mobile, so should be able to connect while in ports which is good enough for me to clear out my email.

We have taken 4 O cruises. On our first, on Marina, we did 3 Olife excursions. 2 were very good, with one being something very unusual that could not have been arranged privately to the best of my knowledge (it was from Bilboa to an estate up in the hills way away from Bilboa with an incredible car collection, including a Rolls Royce from every model year). The 3rd one booked was cancelled since we could not tender into St. Jean de Luz due to weather. We only had one day left to fit in a tour - they subbed a trip to San Sebastian which was a bit of a haul. But the guide made the best of it for us, despite poor weather. Not the best, not the worst. We did cruise only for our next 3 cruises, a mix of DIY and private group tours. Of those private tours, some were good, and some were mediocre. Small groups of strangers are not always compatible just because they are small groups. We found that out as well on our Australia/NZ cruise on Celebrity. Recently we cruised a B2B on Azamara where they handed out so much OBC that we had to use a lot of it for ship excursions - again, mostly good, but some average. Our roll call there was inactive so we sucked it up and paid a lot for some private tours in ports where we wanted to go farther afield. Now we are booked for a 26 day Asia cruise on O. It's part of a long extended journey. Our segment has had minimal roll call activity. We have booked excursions with Olife and added a few more to get the 25% discount due to logistics in some of the ports. I have booked some private excursions. I have also followed the roll call for the full extended journey. What I have noticed in the posts for private tours in the other cruise segments, is that the guides want to be paid in USD cash. This has also been the request from the private tours I've booked. So if you are doing a bunch of private tours for two people, you would need to be carrying around a lot of cash. That also figured into my choice of booking ship tours. Would I prefer a cruise only choice in most cases? Probably yes because we don't drink and I like to do my own planning and touring when possible. Will we continue to cruise with O? Undetermined after our currently booked cruises. Going forward, itinerary will matter most, whether it is a cruise, a land tour, or independent travel. There are lots of things that go into the decision process, such as what I described above about shore excursions on Oceania. .

We are flying into Bangkok about a week before our cruise. We will be picked up on Sun morning and taken to Siam Reap by afternoon, do brief touring, stay overnight Sun, Monday tour Angkor Wat starting with sunrise, late afternoon taken from Siam Reap to the port where ship is overnighting. IIRC (a bit fuzzy so might not be exact) the difference from O tour is O picks up passengers from the airport on Friday and brings them to Bangkok hotel (no transfer if you arrive earlier), leave on Saturday early to fly to Siam Reap, arrive in afternoon, do brief touring, stay overnight Sat, tour Angkor Wat Sunday (also with sunrise?), folklore show on Sunday, stay overnight, fly back Monday and get taken to the port. Meal exclusions are about the same as for the private tour. I am sure the private tour could be customized for added days. Highly rated on TripAdvisor, very responsive in all correspondence.

We are on the Feb 12 cruise, booked under O Life. At the time the free land tour was a tour of Bangkok. IIRC, the tour to Angkor Wat was $1999 pp. I have booked a private tour (driving in a/c vehicle so we can nap on the way w/o the schlepping through airports) for much, much less. And we will be taken to the port instead of returning to our Bangkok hotel. So there are other options.

How does each handle flight delays/cancellations (I assume you have seen what has been happening this week)?

Just back from cruise on Marina that ended about 10 days ago, Roll call wasn’t very active despite large number of repeat cruisers. But also a large number of 1st timers. Of the few posters, most were asking to hear if anyone had planned private excursions and were looking for others to join, but no one seemed to want to plan any themselves, It can be a lot of work and/or responsibility for the planner, so personally, having done it on more active roll calls, I am disinclined to do it again unless it is a very active roll call with engaged participants. For this particular itinerary, it was easy to DIY. And while we didn't do it on this cruise, we are also willing to pay for private tours for just the 2 of us ŵhen there is something we want to do on on our own timetable. I should add that low participation was also evident on our Azamara B2B in October, Usually AZ cruisers are active on roll calls, but this may have been a factor of AZ having promos with lots of OBC. The Simply More changes kick in on July 1. Perhaps people have booked O excursions and may drop them once the new program details are out.

Did it on Onward in November by having the concierge book it.