osandomir

We’re keeping our OLife booking for our April 2024 cruise. We’ve never bought any of drink packages, but had some wine bottles from the menu. Guess, we’ll find out on board. Hopefully, you and your TA are right and we’ll be pleasantly surprised 😊.

With SM you can get the amenities without the air but you can’t get cruise only without any amenities.

I agree with you, but we’ve met people cruising for many various reasons. Though, it was the first time I saw on this board that one person cruised for shoestring fries constantly asking if he can find them on board. Guess, everyone is different.

I really like your attitude. We’ve been sailing with Oceania since 2012, so obviously we like what they were offering. In the beginning we booked a lot of private tours or just explored independently. Lately we started to book more ship tours because on every cruise we normally have a significant amount of OBC from different sources. We use it mostly on the ship tours as we’re not interested in spending on the overpriced spa treatments or shopping in the boutiques. I think we’ll keep our current bookings with the OLife, but the new model will probably work for us in the future. Yes, Oceania wants all of us to book their tours to bring more revenue and don’t want to sell a la carte cruises anymore. I’d like to have more options, but from the business point of view I can understand that, and I definitely don’t want them to go bankrupt like Vantage just did. Overall, the prices will go up anyway, but look around - almost everything is more expensive now. So why would one expect the cruises to be different. At least we all have a choice to book with any of the cruise lines or not book at all.

That was correct with the OLife if you were able to find tours which you liked priced close to $199 that wasn’t always possible. With the new program it’ll work better if you choose more or significantly less expensive tours. I’ve already said before that new Simply More will work better for some people than others and will have no benefits for those who don’t want to book ship tours at all.

I hope that’s the way how it will work. Simple or not simple - it makes a lot of sense for those who utilize ship tours. It’ll allow to book some of your excursions for the discount price that’s cheaper than the regular tour price. I realize that we’re paying for the part of the discount (excursion credit) upfront with Simply More, but there’s an additional discount when you’re booking a certain amount of tours.

Well, I believe that I just found an answer to my question - post #375. On the O website under port excursions for some cruisers later this year I was able to see three different price options: Tour price Simply more excursions package price (approximately 25% less than Tour price). Unlimited tours price The prices are available for a limited selection of cruises right now. I understand that the website is still under development at this point but hopefully this part will stay when it all finalized. It’ll be a big advantage for those utilizing ship tours being able to combine Excursion credit with other OBC through different sources.

How did you know that 25% discount Excursion package is gone? Anyone else can confirm that or otherwise. I’d suspect that it’s too early now to know, but it would make a difference for the future bookings under Simply more using the Excursion credits.

As I was briefly able to check last night our booked cruises didn’t go up a lot when I compared new prices to MOST RECENT OLife prices. So it shouldn’t be too much difference for those who booked with OLife Beverage Package recently, as the current price which is comparable to the previous OLife price will include both Beverages and Excursion credit. Though, it’s different for those who don’t need either of these and booked Cruise only. In our case, given we booked a while ago before the price increased couple of times and we chose OLife Excursions (potentially double the value) it wouldn’t make sense for us to switch for Simply more at a current price to receive “Free drinks” and additional WiFi login. Again, my observation is related just to those particular cruises that we have booked on the previous terms.

I believe “supplemental” fee is for Unlimited Excursions Package.

For me moving from inside to balcony on the 18 days cruise for $2500 total sounds like a very good deal. One would pay a lot more booking it at the first place and other people on your cruise did. But I understand that you were happy with what you originally booked, so you felt there was no need to pay more. Most importantly you enjoyed your cruise.

We mostly fly business class overseas. It used to be very nice experience in the past. Not so anymore. Almost every flight over the recent years had some problems. The service and food offerings went downhill. Missconnections resulted in the delays and even downgrading. That being said, we’re still looking forward to our future travels and hoping for the things getting better.

I didn’t say any of PH are “bad”. Unless you asked about a specific cabin, it’s impossible to tell about all PHs on all ships. The locations are different depending on the R- or O class of the Oceania ships. Most of the suits are located under the public areas, some cabins also in the very front or the back of the ship. You’d need to look at the deck plans to find out if it’s important to you not to be under the gym, restaurants etc.

Despite you’re new to Oceania you probably noticed that some PH locations are less desirable than others. Unless no specific cabins are available, staying in the same priced (unlike the other lines) PH Guarantee don’t always work to your advantage. Full suite upgrades are very rare if ever. More likely Oceania will find the way to accommodate you in your quarantine category and the location may not be what you’d like. All cruises are different and hopefully at the end you’ll be satisfied with your assessment.

While this statement is correct, the financial benefits of booking through the cruise line vary greatly depending on the routing, departure and arrival airports, flights availability, fare class etc. One thing is flying from East coast to Europe and another from Midwest to Asia or Far East. Always a good idea to compare prices of DIY versus the cruise line offerings.

No, I didn’t say that interpretation was wrong or right. I actually appreciate the information that was provided. All I mentioned that I’ll still be interested to learn from the source - official Oceania website. BTW, it wasn’t possible for me to figure out that some comments were from the TAs themselves. I’m sorry if my post offended anyone personally. Personally, I’m not hoping that something will be critically different about Simply More. From my posts you can see that I never complained about any aspects of the posted information . The “cruise only fare” isn’t that important to us as we started to book more ship tours from the time when OLife was introduced. So, generally we don’t mind the excursion credit. We also will gladly pay more for the drinks if it is more choices and we can find something to our taste. It wasn’t my intention to argue with anybody. You are correct - all will depend on the total price for that inclusions. Let’s leave it there and wait until this information is available.

Actually, that’s exactly how I understood your post. It’s great you were able to get your information from 3 different TA. I just mentioned it wasn’t from Oceania that you also confirmed in your other post. But it’s really not that critical right now as we’ll learn from the source (Oceania) soon.

Thanks Jancruz, most definitely you are right. While you’re much better informed I responded to the the post of the person who provided their TA’s interpretation of the information collected during the webinar with Oceania. Hopefully, we all will find the details directly on the Oceania website soon.

Yes, everybody has different tastes and priorities. I’d think that Carnival as well sales not just all junk on their ships. We don’t sail on Carnival, but I’ll be gladly paying more for the wine if it’s a decent (for us) selection. And we won’t have to bother with bringing wine onboard like we did on most of our cruises because of the limited selection of good affordable Oceania wines to our taste. It’ll be good to have more choices. The main question for us is how much “more”. Guess we’ll find out soon.

As an example, on our last cruise in April Wente Cabernet Sauvignon from California was offered. It’s not an expensive wine from the grapes similar to some regions of Bordeaux. I think it was a good choice and it was well received by many.

I always felt that 6 figure income is a bare minimum for those who would like to cruise with Oceania or many other cruise lines if that matters. Now it’s even more important to find what fits in one’s budget.

This doesn’t sound bad at all to me. Hopefully, we’ll be able to find something that we like with those choices. We can cover the rest with our OBC if we want it. Still need to see the prices for these cruisers with all that included.

Thanks! That exactly what I said in my previous post.

I didn’t have a chance to ask 3 different TA, so it’s unclear to me what “over 30 alcoholic and non-alcoholic choices for lunch and dinner” is all about.

Actually, this didn’t come from Oceania. Nothing is clear now - only someone’s TA interpretation of the new offer. We’ll have to wait until all the details of simplyMORE appear on the Oceania website after July 1st.