osandomir

The itinerary changes became a major concern for Oceania customers lately. Switching to Regent is great for those who can afford Regent’s prices - not much for others. Maybe your informed TA has a solution for the customers who are loyal to Oceania.

I agree. Even if you have never been there it’s not much to miss. For me it would be the least interesting port on your itinerary.

I remember that on the brand new Marina as well. Oceania still offers a tiny amount of the black caviar in the GDR on every cruise we have been taking with them. But it definitely not the same as that brunch’s offering.

This makes sense and obviously works for you and some other people as well for one way premium air in particular. Especially nowadays when all travel plans can be wrecked in a second it worse to pay even some extra to book the air through a cruise line.

I think no port cut would be approved by the management on this cruise.

It’s been long time since I checked mainstream cruise lines. This one indeed looks attractive. To be fair Oceania sails to Japan northern ports that you mentioned on the different itinerary, but nothing close to be as inclusive as those of HAL cruise. We also did Oceania cruise from Tokyo in spring and I agree that this is a magic time to visit Japan. Now we’re booked on the Tokyo to Singapore that includes Philippines, Indonesia and more in February 25. We’ll spend some time in Japan pre- cruise, but definitely will miss the Cherry Blossom this time.

Would you please provide an example of what cruise line offers a better itinerary to Japan. It’s definitely possible. We mostly cruise with Oceania but I would really be interested to look it up.

Those penguins are awesome. How was the weather conditions when you were tendering to the Falklands?

I can’t stop wondering why Oceania made booking/canceling their excursions so complicated both online and over the phone as well. Just off the phone with Oceania today trying to make changes to the excursion that we booked before SM was implemented. We kept OLife with free tours. Out of five tours I had booked three were free with OLife, the other two were paid by SBC and credit card. I needed to buy one additional tour in the new port and change one tour to another one in the other port. Simple, right…obviously not really. All that could be done only by calling Oceania, not possible to do it online. The attempt by the representative to perform this simple task created a whole mess in the Oceania system. It’s not reasonable to provide all the details here, but I can tell that it took long time, involving the web support, to clear this mess and find the solution how to book the tours that I wanted, apply 25% discount, and keep the OLife three most expensive ones free. One would never guess it was almost impossible to complete. Yes…we have a TA, but I prefer to book excursions myself to control the process and avoid miscommunications. All that said, our cruise is in April and we are looking forward to it. Hopefully, the onboard experience will be as good as it used to be on the many cruises that we had with Oceania .

It’s stated under “manage your booking” on your online account when you get to the page “Book your shore excursions”.

Great. But it’s also a lot more to see sailing in the Antarctica.

It was mentioned multiple times that Oceania doesn’t do any landings or zodiacs in Antarctica - “sail by” only. But it’s still a great cruise with a beautiful scenery. You’re trying to repeatedly emphasise that your experience was superior to the others - it’s not necessary.

Yes, you can use any shipboard credit from Oceania that you have. But I think that the credit from your TA only can be used onboard. You will see a total credit amount available to you on your online account when you start booking your excursions online. I’d suggest that you better call Oceania to complete the booking and make a payment if needed to confirm that the applicable discounts are applied.

Yes, you just pay the difference. Also, don’t forget that you can get 25% discount on all tours that you booked if you choose certain amount of excursions specified for your cruise.

Thank you - my mistake. I said that I might not remembered the exact cruise, but that thing did happen.

Definitely, cancelling the revenue tickets is a much more complicated matter. The post I was replying to was about the air tickets booked with miles. I was just saying that Delta probably didn’t do much of a favour to the poster on the award tickets return compared to the other major airlines that I mentioned.

Congratulations, it’s a great cruise. May be because of the VIP person onboard you are following the great itinerary even with some extras as well. Definitely, you are enjoying this cruise. That said, if I remember correctly it was the earlier post on this board that stated that Antarctica part was eliminated completely from their itinerary on the similar cruise. It seems that you got very lucky. Hopefully, you’ll get a smooth sailing back to the South America. I’m enjoying your posts. It reminds me about our cruise to Antarctica some years ago.

When we book with miles and then cancel both United and American always return all taxes paid for reservation after airline miles are redeposited.

For our cruise on the Riviera 2/14/25 we have 7008. It’s still listed and showing on deck plan for this particular cruise as B3 same as all other extender balconies on the O website. They are already all available for booking as A2s for the summer 2025.

We also booked one of the category B3 extended balcony cabins on the Riviera in February 2025. It wasn’t a big surprise that on the next release of the summer 2025 cruises Oceania moved these cabins into the concierge category A2. I don’t know why they have been waiting so long. Enjoy your cruise in this cabin last time for the cheap price.

Can you please tell what website are you using to find the current location of your ship.

Exactly, that’s why the sale is now advertised as 40% off instead of 50%. One of our cruises in 2025 unexpectedly is the part of the current sale with 20% off. We’ve got the price adjusted and saved thousands of dollars. Also I have noticed that the bookings are going much better than they were before.

That’s probably because of the capacity control per the terms and conditions the few that were 50% off are no longer the part of the current sale.

When you book on board the booking will automatically be assigned to the TA on file for your current cruise unless you specify that you don’t want it. Then you will have 30 days to transfer the booking to any TA of your choice so they can get commissions for that booking.

When I call Oceania I usually choose the option for the customers booked through the TAs. Never had to wait too long for my call being answered. Also I’m trying not to call on Monday or right after the long weekend.