ShopperfiendTO

Shopperfiend,how does one get $1400 SBC? :eek:

She was basing it on a 28 day cruise :)

Sorry, I got this figure by going to the O webpage for the cruise that OP indicated they were on and seeing what the OLife options were for it. Perhaps the options are different for different markets and the amount for the SBC option is actually different for OP.

So with the photo posted by travelberlin you are realistically looking at a minimum of $12 per glass of wine if you pay a la carte (since there is the 18% mandatory gratuity added to the per glass price on the wine menu). For bottles from the wine list, I think the realistic starting point is $40 + 18% mandatory gratuity = $40 + $7.20 = $48, although you can save any unfinished bottle for another time.

I think your question is which O-Life option is best for you, and if you go with the current SBC of $1400 for the cabin, assuming $13 a glass average, that would cover about 107 glasses of wine, or almost but under 4 glasses a day (for the cabin) for the 28 days.

If you and your cabin-mate drink wine at lunch and dinner, it looks like the drink package is a better value than the SBC

The other option is for 14 shore excursions, but if you prefer private excursions then you probably don't see the paper value of the excursion (up to $200 per excursion, so paper value is $2800) as the actual value.

Is the check-in completed inside the terminal or on board of the ship? If check-in is done inside the terminal, can you check in but not physically board the ship and be OK to wander?

As for back-to-back cruisers, is this one of the ports where all passengers have to leave the ship, to "reset" the passengers to zero, i.e., they are in fact being forced to disembark and when they come back, are embarking just like you (but without the full check-in song and dance) and subject to the same "once on board you're stuck" rule?

I recall that on these nights the GDR menu is slightly more special as well, such as caviar/foie gras appetizer and maybe lobster main. That may be what OP is asking about?

However, there seems to be a lot of complaints about the GDR experience lately so who knows how special the special menu items would be...

Don't really understand why it's so much work to keep the GDR open for lunch, whether port day or not. They fill the tables by section, so during port days there would be people in the front section near the entrance only. This was our experience on an R ship last summer on a 12-day cruise with 10 port days, and we hope that this isn't going to be an adopted measure.

Thinking about the cruise more, I think there might have been a couple of days that the Currents advised that the GDR would be closed for lunch the next port day, but fortunately they were for ports that we were not going to return to the ship before 4 p.m. anyway.

So I went to this page https://www.oceaniacruises.com/experience/dining/grand-dining-room/ and looked at this sample menu: https://www.oceaniacruises.com/Documents/Menus/81604382386/Grand-Dining-Lunch-Menu.pdf/ and it looks like the choices are:

1. The Bistro menu
   
2. The Taste of the World selection of the day (the CC article suggests that diners have a choice of one of the 14 cuisines when in fact, as per usual (and reasonable), only one cuisine is showcased and available that day).
   

Not sure where the "regular lunch menu" fits in?

I'm confused by the part of the article below that I bolded:

"Offered every day in the Grand Dining Room, The Bistro evokes a French-style bistro with a lunch menu designed by Pepin, the line's culinary director. The menu is broken up into five appetizers, four soups and salads, and eleven entrees -- with options that include salade Nicoise and croque monsieur. French wine and desserts will also be available -- as will the dining room's regular lunch menu."

Is The Bistro in addition to the regular lunch menu, so that at every lunch at the GDR one can now choose the following food:

1. The Bistro menu
   
2. Regular lunch menu
   
3. 14 Taste of the World selections
   

It is weird that talk of the regular lunch menu comes as the final part of a sentence that talks about French wines and desserts, which could be interpreted as it's a bistro and taste of the world menu with wines and desserts from the regular menu.

I hope I did not miss this information in the discussion. If you book O air with deviation, when do you pay the amounts? When is the air portion forfeited if you have to cancel the cruise?

 

Torn between booking early and possible cancellation due to work requirements. This is for the Nov 13, 2018 Transatlantic on Riviera. Air credit plus deviation fee is $625 pp and our home port is DFW. Any advice welcome.

You pay the deviation fee at the time you accept the deviation. This fee non-refundable even if you cancel (and if you make further changes to your air arrangement, you have to pay the deviation fee again).

The air portion itself is separate from the deviation. It is part of your cruise fare so the cancellation fees for that would follow the payment of the cruise fare.

I think you can choose O air for outbound only, inbound only or both. For transoceanic open-jaws such as your cruise, I think it is usually a better deal to take O`s air for the over-ocean portion, and perhaps for both unless one-way airfare from Miami (I'm guessing this is the arrival port) to DFW is very inexpensive.

You really have to do the math to figure out what works, but keep in mind that if you take O's air that you don't have to pay for the airfare (and risk forfeiture of the payment assuming you normally book discounted non-refundable tickets) until final cruise payment.

Our piano players is alive.

If what you mean is that there is a real person that plays the piano, then O has that as well.

Re your Q#1: Country club casual is the standard but in practice you can be a wee bit more casual than that and still be fine for seated service (i.e., the Grand (main) Dining Room). People tend to dress up a bit more for the specialty restaurants but it's just an observation.

Re your Q#2: With included air, you will land the day of embarking the cruise and fly out the day of disembarking the cruise. The OLife offer is currently internet access for one device (at any given time) for the length of cruise plus one of three choices: 1) beer/wine with meals, 2) excursions or 3) OBC. The number of excursions and amount of OBC is is fixed per cruise and not dependent on cabin category (but these numbers could change for future promotions).

Re your Q#4: Marina and Riviera are basically the same ship (often referred to as "O class" as they were built by Oceania) with a passenger capacity of about 1250 and has four no-fee specialty restaurants on board (Polo steak house, Toscana Italian cuisine, Red Ginger pan-Asian cuisine, and Jacques classic French cuisine). Nautica is a smaller ship (often referred to as "R-Class" as it was one of 8 ships in the Renaissance fleet) with a passenger capacity of about 690 and has two no-fee specialty restaurants on board (Polo steak house and Toscana Italian cuisine).

Which ship is better depends on your priorities; we like smaller ships but acknowledge that the O ships have a much more diverse dining experience and feel newer even though the R ships might have been more recently in dry dock or refurbished.

When I read the negative reviews about O I sometimes wonder if there are two lines named Oceania and I 'm lucky for having cruised on the well run one.

 

I've also had no difficulty with chatting with officers at all levels and departments. While on board I see them out and about the ship frequently and they have always been willing to chat.

We like Oceania a lot but do feel that low interaction with passengers by officers around the ship is a valid observation. This is not important to us though, so it does not impact our enjoyment of the cruise.

Thanks for the review! One question about the California menu: all the menus are 5 courses with a choice on the 4th, so when Calif says #3 is "surf and turf" and #4 is choice of NY Strip or Sea Bass -- what exactly do you get?

Have you had this question answered?

It seems to me that #3 is surf and turf (without NY strip or sea bass, e.g., maybe filet and lobster?) and #4 is surf (the sea bass) or turf (the NY strip)

On our previous Chefs Tables, the choice has always been on the main, being the meat choice or the fish (usually the sea bass).

We've had port stops at both Taormina and Catania. Catania is a nice and interesting city to visit on its own! Yes, Taormina is very picturesque and Catania could use a good power wash in some parts (lots?) of the city, but Catania has its own lovely parts to visit that can occupy most of your port day there, including a very nice park.

Assuming you do dock in the general dock for R ship sized vessels, you should be able to walk to the main square in 15-20 minutes. We had fantastic cannoli and latte there!

There is a couple of HoHo bus operators in Catania that have a stop near the port entrance. We took one and liked it except that we had to wait a bit for the bus to fill up a bit before it left.

We have been on this cruise, it was great with a mix of beach, nature, village and city culture. The least developed port was Rio Grande but it was interesting enough.

I do not recall any incidents of people getting sick, and definitely no Code Red alerts issued.

There were no inoculations (e.g., yellow fever) required, at least when we were there. Recommended if venturing inland but did not need it to enter the country or board the ship. Not sure if zika is still an issue though.

Although you have overnights at both ends, if you can afford the time, expense and planning, I would recommend that you still add extra days on both ends to immerse yourself in the two cities; they are worth at least three days each (but exercise caution as appropriate). Also, even though there isn't too much of a time zone change, it is a long flight from North America and you will probably still feel the effects of jet lag (although perhaps a little bit muted), so it will allow you some time to recover from that as well.

the confusing part is that the itinerary might say the tour starts at 8am and the ship arrival is 8am. the ship departure says 6pm and the tour end is 5:45pm. so i guess the tour times are approximated.

 

we will probably book some non-oceania tours because we can find the same tour for about half the price.

As others have mentioned, the private excursion operators generally (at least the organized, professional outfits) know when the ship will dock and will wait for you. Instead of booking a specific time, perhaps you could see if you can book a "X time after ship docks". This was how it was done on a Mexico excursion, where the you had to make your way to the tour operator's office by X a.m. (e.g., 9:00 a.m.), unless it docked later than X-1 a.m. (e.g., 8:30 a.m.), in which case you had an hour of the ship docking (e.g., 9:30 a.m.) to get there.

It is also likely that you have opted for O-Life which comes with unlimited internet. This will be very helpful for you to keep in touch by e-mail with the operator as the day approaches to confirm, and if itinerary for the port changes, to adjust the times as needed. In our experience, it is not that uncommon for O's final itinerary to be different than on the brochure/website.

What do you mean when you say "on your own"? Do you mean just wander by yourself or do you mean to arrange a private excursion (e.g., through the roll call for your cruise)?

If you mean just wander, you could do that and have a nice/great day for Marseille (but need to get to the city centre as Riviera usually docks in the industrial area), Monte Carlo, Kotor (although this town is small - maybe a half-day excursion to the outskirts), Dubrovnik and Venice. You can also do that for Livorno, but most cruisers take an excursion/train to Florence, Pisa, Lucca, etc. Have not been to Palamos or Palermo so cannot comment on that.

While you can wander in the towns I mentioned that you can wander in and have a good day exploring, some cruisers prefer to take an excursion in Marseille (e.g., to Avignon) and Monte Carlo (e.g., to Nice, Eze village).

I believe that you'll have to pay a $10 corkage fee if you drink your own wine in any of the ship's restaurants. However, with the high price of ice wine that doesn't represent that much of a proportional increase. You can drink it in your cabin at no extra cost. I wouldn't think that there would be a problem for the restaurant to store it for you. However, that presupposes that you'll eat in the same place all the time. I would think that it would be easier to keep it in the refrigerator in your cabin and take it with you.

Unless things have changed, I recall that once you pay corkage, the bottle is stored in a centralized location and can be retrieved from any dining venue on the ship. Mind you, it can get lost along the way (i.e., take some time to retrieve) or mis-stored (white wine not chilled, red wine super-chilled). On our last Az cruise, we had red wine that was stored to freezing and could not be drunk the next evening and had to buy replacement glasses that was at an acceptable temperature range.

I don't think there are many, if any, Ontario/Canada wines on the wine list. Even if there were, I agree that you are almost certainly going to be better off bringing ice wine with you and paying the corkage fee, which is actually pretty reasonable.

This is not exactly an answer to what you asked--But, we purchased National Express coach tickets online to London a couple of months before arrival in Southampton in April. The coach station is very close to the dock--we could have walked. But we taxied to the coach station--arriving very early. I had booked tickets for 8:45 a.m. and we waited at least an hour. We only paid about 25 pounds for both of us. The coach was very comfortable. You can choose different destinations.

It is worth mentioning that nearness to the coach station and efficiency of walking there depends on where the ship is docked. Although we were on an R ship and there was only one other ship docked, we were assigned the Cunard terminal (38/39) which is the furthest away cruise ship terminal and it would not have been practical to walk to the coach station from there.

We took a taxi from the taxi stand (not pre-arranged) and the ride to the station was about ten pounds. It was an unpleasant way to end the cruise for us because during the whole ride the driver was complaining about how he may have just missed a fare to Heathrow, like it was somehow our fault that we were going to "just" the station. :(

Updated Shuttles list - with thanks to ANZA (Post 292) and to everyone else.

Added information on the following ports:

• Edinburgh
  
• Greenock
  
• Holyhead
  
• Liverpool
  
• Newcastle
  

Please everyone - feel free to quote and add to / or amend the list as things change. (And no guarantees that the info is accurate)

(to keep the formatting - 'quote' this to reply, then delete the bracketted words including "

" at each end of the post)

 

Airlie Beach (Aust.) ...........Tender, then $5AUD pp each way shuttle

Akaroa NZ ......................... Tender

Alesund .......................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Amalfi ............................ No need for shutle

Antofagasta .................... Free shuttle to town

Bangkok ........................... Free shuttle to town

Bar Harbour ..................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Barcelona ......................... Free shuttle to town (worldTrade Centre)

Belfast ............................ Free shuttle to town (near City Hall)

Bilbao ..............................Free shuttle to town

Bordeaux (city) ................. Dock at town so no shuttle

Bordeaux (Le Verdon) ........... shore excursion required

Brisbane (Aus) ........................Free shuttle to town

Broome (Australia).........................Free shuttle to town

Buenes Aires .......................... Free shuttle to town

Cadiz ..................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Cairns Aus .............................Dock at town so no shuttle

Callao (Lima) .......................... Free shuttle to town

Casablanca ............................ Free shuttle to town

Civitavecchio (Port /Rome) ........ Free shuttle to Civitavecchio

Cobh..................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Concarneau .......................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Copenhagen .......................... Free shuttle to town – however reports of it being difficult see post 301

Coquimbo .............................. Free shuttle to town

Corfu ..................................... Free shuttle to town

Corner Brook ........................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Darwin Aus ............................. Free shuttle to town

Dublin ....................................Free shuttle to town (kildare St/Merrion Square)

Dubrovnick ............................... Free shuttle to town

Dunedin NZ .................................. Free shuttle to town

Edinburgh (Leith) ....................... Closest port to town but still a distance to city centre (no shuttle)

Eden Aus .................................. Tender then shuttle but only short walk

Exmouth (Aus) ..............................Free shuttle to town

Geiranger ................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Gisbourne NZ ........................... Free shuttle to town but short walk

Gothenburg .............................. Shuttle to City Hall

Greenock ................................. Dock at town so no shuttle (15-20 minute walk to train station to Glasgow)

Halifax .....................................Dock at town so no shuttle

Hamburg ................................... Shuttle provided by Port to City Hall

Helsinki ...................................... Free shuttle to town/ Shuttle provided by port from Westport to the cruise terminal closer to Market Square

Hobart (aus) .............................. Dock at town so no shuttle

Holyhead ................................... Free shuttle to town (really to end of dock)

Invergordon ................................ Dock at town so no shuttle

Koper ............................................Dock at town so no shuttle

Kotor ............................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

La Coruna ...................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

La Rochelle .................................... Free shuttle to town

Le Havre .......................................... Free shuttle to town

Le Verdon ......................................... Free shuttle to town (Soulacsur Mer)

Lerwick ............................................. Dock at town so no shuttle

Lisbon .............................................. Free shuttle to town (or dock in town)

Liverpool .......................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Livorno ............................................. Free shuttle to town

Marseille ......................................... Free shuttle to town (fort Saint John)

Monte Carlo ................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Murmansk ....................................... Need to book a tour either O or private for visa

Newcastle ....................................... Free shuttle to nearest metro station (limited timing)

Oporto ............................................Free shuttle to town

Palma de Mallorca ........................... Free shuttle to town (cathedral)

Picton NZ ........................................ Dock at town so no shuttle

Pisco ................................................ Free shuttle to town

Portofini ............................................ No need for shuttle

Portland ........................................... Free shuttle to town

Rio ................................................... Free shuttle to town

Rome (Port of Civitavecchio) ........... Free shuttle to Civitavechio

Saint John NB ........................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Santos .......................................Free shuttle to town

Sorrento ................................. Free shuttle to town

Split ........................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

St Malo ...................................... Dock at town so no shuttle

St Jean De Luz ............................ Dock at town so no shuttle

St Petersburg ............................. Need to book a tour either O or private for visa

Sydney N.S. ............................... Dock at town so no shuttle

Sydney Aus ................................ Free shuttle to Darling Harbour centre

Tallinn ....................................... Free shuttle to gates of old lower town (main road outside city wall)

Valencia ..................................... Free shuttle to town

Venice ......................................... Free shuttle to town

Back from a cruise in early June.

We missed Waterford/East Dunmore, sailing from Holyhead (yes, we made it to that port!).

We had trouble leaving Liverpool (of all places lol!) due to high winds, but did eventually make it out a couple of hours later without affecting the timing for our next port.

There were moments of waves while sailing around the Isles, but they weren't that bad.

it should not be a problem for the others as long as their names are on the booking

You should talk with your TA or Oceania to see if any change in the fare though

Could you please elaborate on the part of your post I bolded?

As OP noted, the cruise line will not be losing any money at this point, so why could the fare be changed?

There is a closer terminal that is in the docks area that has an express that goes to St Marks area. I believe it is called Terminal S Basilio It looks like this--

 

The ship OP will be on is Riviera, so it is highly doubtful that they will be docking at San Basilio.

Unfortunate because when we were there several years back now, it was San Basilio (on an R ship) and also no shuttle, but it was a really pleasant 20-30 minute walk along the pier to St. Mark's square/Rialto bridge.

We've cruised 8 times on "O" ships and never had a problem getting a 2 top in any place on the ship.

Lucky you! We have not been so lucky ourselves.

The lines I have cruised simply do not charge the excursion until the day it happens. Takes the OBC then charges whatever is still due to my onboard account. Seems to be the easiest way of doing it- does Azamara actually prepay companies? Few of the excursions that I book on my own require prepayment- although some do in fact require a deposit. But a cruise line should be able to negotiate a deal where they don't pay until the excursion is happening with whatever number of travelers actually go on the tour.

Pre-payment depends on the area.

Pay at the conclusion of tour was generally the case for our independently-booked excursions in the Mediterranean, but for the British Isles, our independently-booked tours have been pre-payment of the whole tour price.

Are you referring to the main dining room, terrace/waves or the specialties?

For specialties, it could be difficult to find a two-top.

For terrace/waves, it depends on which tables are open as it's buffet-style seating.

For the main dining room, it is not difficult, but you have to expect a wait which may be over 15 minutes if it's during a particularly busy time. However, you can enjoy a pre-dinner drink at the Baristas bar just outside the dining room while you wait.