BJS

All of this opens up another question.

If you can not get the seats you want on a flight what is the advantage of using O air?:confused:

Is the only real advantage, except for a lower price, that you do not have to pay for the flights until final payment?

This would be to ones advantage if there was a possibility that with flights 10 months away you or O might decide to cancel the cruise. The $175 pp deviation fee you paid to choose flights then is all that you would loose instead of the entire flight charges if you booked on your own.

1. Absolutely nothing has changed in O’s policies on this issue in the last 6, 12, 24 , or 48 months .

 

2. The closer to the 270 day time line your TA starts the discussion with O Air the more options and better for you.

 

3. When taking O Air, I always do a deviation. With all the expenses involved with a cruise, for use taking the risks of flying in the day of embarking is not rational.

We also have all the same questions and will take the advice here about doing a deviation at 270 days.

Even if it might not make financial sense to book an O pre-hotel stay where you would not be flying in on embarkation day will paying a deviation give you control of connection times and seat assignments?

Am I correct that you pay $175 per person non-refundable for the deviation, it covers all flights, and is paid when you accept the flights?

Do you get your seat assignments at that time?

How are the seats assigned? Since you have to go through the TA do they do this? O air? the airlines? and do you get a record locator number so you can change the seats?

Do you have to pay for the flight part of your final payment when this is done or is it paid later by the final payment date?

With deviation can you choose any airline or do you have to fly with those that O is contracted with?

One final question: If O should cancel the cruise do they refund the deviation fee?

Thank you all for the help!

We went on a b2b cruise around Cuba on the Sirena in May and went on a total of 10 Oceania excursions and enjoyed all of them. Our 2 favorite places were excursions to Trinidad (out of Cienfuegos) and El Cobre (out of Santiago de Cuba).

Great news! We have both of these booked! Thank you for the post.

It wasn't cancelled until we were on the ship. It was kind of a fluke...a water pipe broke at the farm and they were trying to get it fixed so no tour. Only a few other tours were available but we didn't like them, so got $100 obc each in return.

 

It was actually a blessing in disguise because we just walked all over Old Havana by ourselves and had a blast!! After stopping in churches, small local shops, paladars, small museums, talking to people on the street, sitting in a park and "people watching", we ended up in the square where they have all the classic cars and we got a great one hour tour of Havana in a gorgeous pink and white convertible! He even took us back to the ship.

Thank you for the response and the additional information about what you did.

Glad you had a great day!

We are looking forward to our trip to Cuba.:)

We had a great tour to see the Buena Vista Social Club at the Melia Cohiba hotel in the evening. Very fun! We had also booked a farm-to-table tour and lunch, but it was cancelled.

When the tour was cancelled did they offer other tours? If they did not what did you do instead during the day?

We are going in December and would like to know if there were other tours that were canceled?

OK I see that I am beating a dead horse here. So not going to go back and forth with you. Yes things happen to people of all ages but a teenager's chance of having an ailment such as a broken leg is almost null as compared to an 80 plus person who never gets out of the house except to go on cruises and yes I know there are people in their 80;s who are in pretty good shape. My parents and In laws are but when you know that there is a chance of you getting sick while on a cruise. STAY HOME!!

Sounds like cruising is not for you.

:rolleyes:Maybe you will find the perfect cruise line for you where they only allow the young! Of course they will have to sign a guarantee that they will not have a medical emergency that would cause you to miss a port.

I wish you the best on your land travels.

6 of the 7 I missed were on Princess; 1 on Celebrity! :'):')

 

But, seriously, the captain has the expertise and wisdom to make the best decision for passenger and crew safety! I'm glad they care about us. Better to miss a port than have a disaster.

 

Why do passengers think they know more than the captain???

Just goes to show that things happen and one cruise may not make a port but many, many other cruises do make the port. I really doubt that one cruise line misses ports any more than another. Medical emergencies and weather are both not predictable.

We have always felt very confident that the captain will keep us safe and it is only he who should decide if a port should be missed or not.

How many ports have you missed out of the cruises that you have taken either on OC or some other CL?

We must have been very lucky.

400 days cruising- most on Princess- none with Oceania

Missed 2 ports on Princess- weather Newport, ship sailed a day late because of delayed dry-dock so canceled Aruba.

1/2 day Boston because Princess failed to notify the harbor.

River cruise- Amsterdam to Budapest- low river but just changed boats 1/2 way with no missed ports

Land tours can also have problems- snow in the Alps caused us to miss 1 of 2 days in Zermatt.

Advice I am reading is not to take a cruise because of the ports. If this is true my question is-should you just keep taking the least expensive cruise over and over again and just stay on the ship rather than take a cruise with ports you would like to see ?

I am assuming it was meant to mean if you are going to be more than disappointed that you didn't get to a port than going directly by other means will probably assure you will get there?

Does anyone know the reason why there are so many missed ports on O?

Is it because the smaller ships do not handle as well?

or because of the smaller ports O tends to visit

or is it because the Captains they hire do not have the experience to deal with all the weather issues they encounter.?

We have booked our first 3 Oceania cruises and will hope luck stays with us.:)

Just got off the ship.

 

Would not recommend the ship or the senior officers to anyone, except the Cruise Director. He was fine. All else gets an F

Why would that be???

We just booked our first Oceania cruise, for August of this year.

 

I am surprised that the CC roll call is so quiet -- it looks like only 9 people are signed up, compared to 37 for another similar sized ship at the same time which we had considered (with Azamara).

 

And the roll call dialog was just 2 pages compared to 17 when I first checked it.

 

What's up with this?

 

I realize Oceania doesn't officially do the Meet & Mingle, which is disappointing, but of course we can organize that for ourselves, ideally on the second day which is the only day at sea, but not if we don't have a way to communicate up front with others on the sailing.

We have just booked our first cruises with Oceania for 2019 and have also found either no roll calls or just one or two that have made a post. It seems from the posts I read that many O cruisers who post on CC take very long cruises or our first time cruisers. With a total capacity being much, much lower than the "mass market" cruises lines like Princess, Celebrity, etc.it is understandable that there will be many less cruisers posting on roll calls.

I also am not finding any post about doing " Meet & Mingle". There are posts about happy to be seeing someone again.

Possibly the demographics of the typical Oceania cruiser is much different.

Other experienced O cruisers will probably give you a much better idea of why.

April 18th for Elites, 19th for others.

Just received this email

"Dear Elite member,

In appreciation of your loyalty, we’ve opened up an exclusive booking window just for you. Access our 2019-2020 Australia, New Zealand and South Pacific itineraries, as well as our 2020 World Cruise, ahead of the crowd to select your perfect stateroom.

Mark your calendar for this incredible opportunity:

• Australia, New Zealand & South Pacific 2019-2020 – 4/17, 4 p.m. PDT
  
• World Cruise 2020 – 4/24, 9 a.m. PDT "
  

No May 2020 - last one April 2020

Hello,

 

I am wondering if this is the norm for Oceania? I emailed several queries to them a few days ago specifying an email response - but get called during a meeting today from a travel adviser who later emails but has no response to my queries.

 

So they passed on my details but not my queries to him - and when i replied by email that i had sent a few queries and wanted them replied by email - nothing back.

 

Is this the norm for oceania- just incompetence and bad service? Have to say as someone looking at them for the first time- not getting a warm feeling.

 

thanks

We had a similar experience. I wanted to see what was offered on Oceania so had to put down my phone number to accomplish this....I knew it would be most likely that I would receive a "marketing" phone call.

When the agent from Oceania called I told her that I had a TA and she was very nice about it and said she would note that on my file so that I would not receive any more phone calls. She did answer the questions I had, told me to contact her anytime and also suggested I first make a booking via her that could then be turned over to my TA.

Several days later I sent her an email with several questions and never did get any response.

From this experience I am assuming that Ocenaia's agents are just booking agents and not customer service agents. It appears that if you want answers to questions you must go through your TA or I have found CC gets you the fastest and most accurate answers.:D

I do not attribute this to incompetence and bad service from Oceania. I have not contacted all the cruise lines but I found that the ones I did contact all worked in a similar manner- agents rather than customer service available to answer questions.

Having contacted "customer service" agents at other cruise lines I find that "customer service" agents do not always give you accurate information and if you hang up and call back speaking with several agents you will possibly receive a different answer from each one. Sending emails to cruise lines has never resulted in responses...possibly as you have said because they do have many customers and do not feel the need to provide this service to attract more.

There are many cruise lines out there and many ways to book cruises online but from the reviews getting answers via email results in many negative comments. I hear what you are saying about TAs not being part of your generation's culture. I doubt I am of your generation but find doing my own research, comparing cruises and options available then contacting my TA has resulted in a very positive outcome: everything from quick email responses to my questions to price reductions via her efforts with a cruise line to solving any problems that arise. I continue to monitor my cruises and feel I still have control.

I hope you find the cruise line that works best for you as cruising is a wonderful way to travel.:)

Any guesses as to when Princess will be releasing their 2020 cruise schedule?

 

thank you

We were on this cruise also. We had heard there were 200 of that obnoxious group on board. Not only were they drunk and loud to include blasting their own music at the pool area but they were cursing all over the ship and a couple of days belly flopping into the pool and jumping in, splashing folks who were relaxing in the first row of chairs.

 

Pool rules specify no jumping or diving but no one was enforcing this when this group was jumping in.

 

Also I don't believe cursing like they were is considered proper behavior on the ship.

 

Several days they had private parties set up for them late in the day (so they could drink some more) and kicked people out of the area where they were relaxing in lounge chairs so they could set up for these inconsiderate people.

 

Other than that we had a great cruise and I agree with the comments about the GDR (the inconsistency reminded me of HAL) and the suites (great rooms and closets).

Very, very disappointing to hear that this is allowed on Oceania cruises...:mad:.now wondering if we have made a mistake booking several cruises with them and considering switching to this line as our "go to" cruise line.

Did any of you talk to someone in charge or is there anyone who could prevent this from happening?

As just a guess and no factual info:

 

 

OS = Oceania Select or Special

OE = Oceania Exclusive or maybe Extra Special

 

Just trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat on this one and I'm sure someone will post the actual official names

Per information regarding Oceania's excursion this is what they say

Oceania Select and Oceania Exclusive Excursions -

I want to use my obc to pay for excursions for my daughter & me. When booking our excursions online how do I make sure my daughter's obc is not also used? Thanks.

When I booked for myself and DH there was no way to select whose OBC to use. He had more and they charged me the amount I was short.

No attack here...just a big thank you for a wonderful review. We are in the process of switching our cruses to O and a review like this helps a great deal.

Just found this thread and love all that we are hearing about O.:)

34 cruises - 400 days on Princess and after the next 2 booked Princess cruises it is off to O and I doubt we'll ever return to Princess for all of the reasons stated.

I don't know, but I doubt it since this was a disembarkation/embarkation port.

No Oceania does not tell you, but most of the time you don't have to guess as the port usually has a vessel schedule which will tell you where they berth. Here's the one for Copenhagen: http://www.cmport.com/ships-in-port/calls It really didn't matter which port it was in my case as my flight to ARN wasn 't until noon. FWIW, June-Sep of this year, 4 times at Langeliniekaj, 3 times at Oceankaj, and 3 times at berth V14 (Visby).

Thank you for the link- interesting.

My cruise on Marina last spring ended in Copenhagen and I was expecting that we would dock at Oceankaj but was pleasantly surprised when we docked at Langelinie pier instead. Taxis were extremely slow to appear, so with 20+ people in line and a estimated 1-2 hour wait I ended up walking to the train station and taking the train to the airport instead.

Was this a last minute docking change?

Does O tell you what port you will be docking at before you are sailing or is it left up to the passenger to guess?

We had booked an O transfer at Bangkok to the airport. I noted there was 9 hours before our flight. I asked which hotel we would be taken to. I was told there had been that option (which no one told us about) but the day rooms were fully booked. I contacted the airport hotel and booked a day room at half the price O would have charged. We went to the airport as per transfer and then got the free hotel shuttle. We got the hotel shuttle back and just had an hour to wait for our flight.

Thank you for that information. We will look carefully at flight times vs transfer/airport arrival times.

We are taking the O transfer from the Nice Airport to Monte Carlo. It is pricey--but the last time we were in Nice there was a one day public transportation strike and getting a cab or Uber was very difficult and the train or bus was not an option.

 

After flying for many hours from California to Paris to Nice, I want to see that nice person at the airport holding the Oceania sign.

 

The cruise ends in Barcelona and we are spending 4 additional nights on our own. I asked the cost of the transfer and it was something crazy like $79 per person!!!!

Thank you for sharing your experiences - it helps.

It could be 'important', in some cases...it would give you a head start to book certain things that have limited capacity, or first crack at rearranging dining room reservations, etc.

I doubt that they will have "first crack" at many of the things.

We are usually in the first 20 on board and on the cruises we have been on it has been hours before the dining room reservation line even answers, there is no one in the specialty dining rooms to take reservations and discussing your assigned dining room is usually only available later in the afternoon. It might be to your advantage for "Chef's Table" but that reservation line rarely answers that early. Maybe others have been able to get things done sooner and it might vary, as other things do, from ship to ship.

The only advantage we have found is being able to get to our cabin, wash up, and go to the MDR for a leisurely lunch.

We have done it several times and it has worked. We have stayed on the ship and not gone ashore.

If you can get a rolling rack it really helps. If you can not get a rolling rack do not let the steward carry your hanging clothes- we made that mistake once and he ended up dropping some of the clothes and walking on them- carry them yourselves.

We have found it almost impossible to get the steward to help when we were ready to move and have done the move ourselves.

The only "hassle" we have found is getting the steward in the new cabin to make cleaning the room a priority. We go to the new room and tell them we are moving and request they make cleaning the room a priority....they always agree...they rarely do. The steward in the room we are leaving always says he will help in the process of getting the new room cleaned ASAP but never does.

If you are not anxious to have the move completed and to be settled in your new cabin until close to the time when others start boarding I imagine the process of leaving everything to the stewards might work.

Having said all of that....none of it would stop us from doing a b2b if those were the cruises we wanted.:D

If you look at what "O" charges for a transfer you can get a car service, and always a taxi which let's you go on your time........why get in a bus with 35+ people.

I was shocked at the cost of the O transfers compared to other cruise lines and could not believe how much it was compared to taxi service.

The number of people on the bus if it is a better price doesn't bother us but the $$$$ sure does!