DCGuy64

Well, that assumes you believe they're lying. I don't.

Perhaps the OP is travelling with someone who *does* drink and was hoping to snag that deal not for himself, but for his companion. But it still seemed odd to me.

Why did you want to bag the $300 bonus bar tab if you don't drink?

Our cruise just went up by about $400, so I'm glad we booked when we did.

Hi, and thanks so much for your reply. Your answer is very reassuring. I took the earlier post to mean that beds in the XL cabins couldn't be converted at all. Now it seems it's only if there's a 3rd person in the cabin. It should just be the two of us, although I am trying to convince my sister and BIL to join us on the cruise, they will have their own cabin. I hope you can see that my confusion was due to an honest misunderstanding about that, I wasn't trying to be argumentative or challenge your view. Thanks again.

What would you have had them say instead? "We lost money on the Aussie market, so we're out of here?" I can't remember the last time a corporation said something like that.

It was from a thread on here, posted February 2 by another CC poster. In the first paragraph, @WatermelonSugarHigh writes "The suitcases fit under the bed nicely, and there is a large storage drawer under the small sofa that converts to a single bed. Our cabin steward informed us that this configuration for three pax can not be converted back to sofa seating during the day." That's what led me to believe that the beds in the XL Sea Terraces can't be converted to/from a sofa.

Thanks, I'm glad to know that. I appreciate your response.

And so are the prices, LOL. (I looked at booking an XL but the extra cost didn't seem justified to me. I'm also interested in having the bed made as a sofa during the day, and it appears that can't be done in the XL cabins, from what I've read on here.)

Yeah, sounds annoying, for sure. It just wasn't obvious from the first post. People often book cruises years in advance, so I didn't know. (Ours isn't until January 2025, so I'm not going to stress about it)

Can you define "very small"? I've watched 5-6 videos on YouTube of the ship we're booked on (Resilient Lady) and the bathrooms look fine to me. For context's sake, I'm 5'4" and my wife is just a bit shorter than I. Thanks in advance!

Notwithstanding what @WatermelonSugarHigh said (sounds like it's a case of a bad cabin steward), are they *supposed* to do that for you, upon request? Or has VV discontinued this service altogether? We would like to have the sofa bed to use during the daytime, if possible. Thanks.

How soon is your sister and BIL's sailing? Much of the stuff on the app can't be reserved until a couple of months before the cruise.

The post I referred to said Bar Tab was going away, which implied that they're doing away with it entirely. That's different from a promo, hence my confusion. Thanks!

We booked a Sea Terrace that came with a $200 bar tab, and then, thanks to the Delta Skymiles offer, that was doubled to $400. That should plenty for us!

Can you elaborate on this?

We love our TA, he does all our cruise bookings for us. Thanks for the tip on having the TA book dinner reservations. We'll definitely be doing that.

Thanks for this helpful thread. I was particularly surprised (and happy!) to see that onboard prices are inclusive of gratuity. I like how Virgin does its bar tab concept, especially because they don't mind if you buy drinks for others (even crew members, apparently). 😊

Sad indeed! I'm headed to Baltimore tonight for a singing engagement (though, thankfully, to a different part of town). I'm sure the traffic is going to be quite a challenge. Prayers also for those affected by this tragic accident.

I was referring to Oceania, not NCL. It took a long time for our orders to get taken, and then an even longer time for the food to arrive. Mind you, some people enjoy leisurely dinners. And I'm not looking for a short order cook type situation, but 3 hours is excessive. On NCL, I'd say we're usually done in about an hour. Even at Cagney's, Moderno, Le Bistro or La Cucina, it has NEVER approached even 2 hours, let alone 3. Maybe 1-1:30 hours, tops. And I am a slow eater, too.

We have one NCL cruise booked for next year and our first on Virgin Voyages, also next year. We aren't totally loyal or beholden to any one cruise line (which I guess might make it harder for us to rise in terms of status levels, but that's OK). The private yacht charter idea sounds fantastic. I hope you do that! 😃

The drinks package on Oceania was one of just a few issues with had with them. Most everything else was wonderful. It was our first outing with Oceania, and we learned a lot. It was a pretty expensive cruise for us, and the fact that we didn't have truly all-inclusive beverages was, to be candid, kind of a letdown. It bills itself as a premium-ish line, and that seemed a bit stingy to us. Being restricted to just wine (including sparkling wine) and beer during mealtimes, and in the restaurants only, felt cheap. They *do* have a BOGO deal in the lounge, but only from 5-6 pm and, I believe, 10-11 pm, but you MUST buy the same drink, no mix-and-match allowed. That was also stingy, in my view. We were also letdown by the extremely slow food service, especially at dinner. Since you haven't sailed with them yet, just be prepared. Dinner often took 2-3 hours. And the sommelier who would come around for drink orders refused to get anything else. If you wanted soft drinks or tea, etc., you had to flag down your own server. 😏

This is a really handy spreadsheet, thank you for providing it. I have to agree that when you factor everything in, Oceania offers quite a competitive product vs NCL (although it's kinda funny since both lines are owned by NCLH, same parent company). One thing I was curious about: your spreadsheet says drinks are free on Oceania. Is that right? And it's all day, anywhere, any drink, just like NCL? When we did our wonderful Oceania Japan cruise last year, we only got beer and wine, and only in the restaurants during lunch and dinner. So any cocktail cost extra, as did wine and beer outside of the restaurants. Maybe that's changed since last April.

Not me. I've never seen the value in it for me and my wife. But we aren't loyal to any particular brand of liquor, and we don't use the WiFi much. I've just never been able to justify the extra cost. But I see lots of others on Cruise Critic who say it's worth it for them.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned here is that NCL often has specialty dining discounts available. So if the included meals from FAS aren't enough, you may want to consider purchasing additional packages, which can be 20-30% off. That is what we did twice in the past. To me, that's even more of a reason not to opt for FAS+.