pinotlover

Walk in closet. In the FP, or elsewhere, a wonderful place to store snorkeling or dive gear. Those fins take up space. When stashing several cases of wine, a convenient place to store until needed. Disappointed on this change.

Pictures of the outside portion of the Terrace Cafe. Is it really completely covered? What does it look like?

Perhaps we’re talking past each other. When Oceania cancelled our multiple cruises, we never took a “ credit “, always cash back. What we buy aboard are certificates that give a year booking window and a two year cruising window for use. Since we weren’t aboard during the pandemic, a certificate couldn’t be purchased. Though not assured, hopefully the circumstances that led to all those credits are past use. Since I believe accepting them, in lieu of cash back, in the first place was a poor decision, hopefully many learned not to do so in the future given the options.

Let me attempt to explain the advantages for us concerning the purchase of a future cruise certificate. We typically identify the cruises we want to do, from our bucket list, and book them upon release. This gets us the cruises and cabins we want, typically at a good price. Therefore, if there were any cruises currently available for booking that we wanted, they would already be booked. We still do an assortment of other activities besides just ocean cruises, so pre/early planning is important for us. We will be on Vista next month. Oceania is having a major new cruise release in August and September. We can’t book any of those now, but fairly sure we’ll find at least one we want to go on. Therefore, we’ll buy a FCC while aboard. This: 1. Give us a significantly reduced deposit for the cruise we do chose in the future; 2. Gives us more OBC for the current or future cruise; 3. Gives us the lowest price guarantee on that applicable cruise. Number 3 seems to be the issue here. I have a highly trained professional Travel Agent and know how to use her. When O has come out with subsequent sales that offers lower over costs for me, she has always been able to quickly get them booked for me. She has also on occasion explained why the new deal isn’t a better deal. Something I may not have caught. The last thing I want to do is a “ placeholder “ booking, potentially tying up a cabin someone else wants or needs. ( Read the thread of woe and despair on HC cabins). A future cruise certificate has always worked well for us. That June purchase , with its one year booking window, will get us through two cruise release seasons. Plenty enough time and opportunities to make a booking. I don’t understand why people advocate phony placeholder bookings.

Next time use a Travel Agent to book your cruise, and never have to speak with an O phone clerk again. A strategy many of us her use. DIY is a choice.

What we found was, the private operators already knew about the cancellations and port changes before Oceania informed us. In a couple instances, our tour guides were the ones to inform us of port cancellations. As a businessman I have to be flexible and DO business to survive. We always found the our chosen tour operators to be flexible and accommodating. They do so to eat and support their families. Cancelling them and signing up with Oceania only rewards their arrogance.

We boarded Marina on February 27th and were likewise given a packet of newly canceled ports and adjusted port times. We found it interesting that Oceania took 2 hours off one of our ports, and subsequent tour, but didn’t believe that necessitated a shorex price reduction. We signed up for ZERO Oceania shorex on our upcoming Vista cruise. Thank You for posting this. Many of the Oblivious will never read those until the day of the tour.

I agree with the theme of this posting, however you missed some facts. Most importantly Embers is a Specialty restaurant with reservations required. There is no “ I’m tired tonight, let’s walk up at Embers. We reserved a night and time at Embers on our upcoming cruise , exactly like I did for RG, PG, or Toscana. I have no expectations either way for this venue, only a 7:30 reservation for dinner. I plan on being seated and then evaluating the food and service . We’ll see how it goes next month.

Thank You, my point exactly! If you to sail cruises, if have to sell it for when people want to be there.🥂

😂😂 I plainly printed Merican not Mexican!🍷

I put together one on the Marina in March, and one on the Sirena last Oct. On the Marina, it must be done through the Concierge in the Concierge Lounge, Deck 9. Good Luck with that! Oceania is now hosting New Cruisers M&G in Horizons. No other sponsored event can conflict with the (multiple) New Cruisers, Captain’s Reception, or Repeater Parties. If you’re on a cruise with a Next ( Alumni) , Wine, or other Group , things are even more complicated. In short, for both events, I found having everyone assemble in the Main Bar area to work best. Try to stay as far from the String Quartet as possible to not ruffle feathers. Twenty, or so, was about the size of our Groups. Things have changed!!

I agree wholeheartedly. However, I truly believe Embers will be a hit. A restaurant serving Merican food with a fairly quick turnover will appeal to many. I organize shore excursions on many of my cruises going to exotic foreign ports. You’d be surprised at the number of people that ask if we’ll be back by 2:00 so to eat in the Terrace. They don’t want any of that furin Etalian or Vietnamese stuff, just Merican. Embers will be a huge hit with them. Embers is currently reservations only at dinner, merely replacing Jacques. I see it as having very little impact on the other venues.

You didn’t indicate the number of days of the cruise. You will only be allowed to add her for the number of reservations for which her cabin is allowed, which may be less than yours. Those reservations will count as her allowance, meaning she cannot pre book other nights on her own.

Didn’t see any of the emojis put on the artwork. Totally unacceptable. fwiw, on our two recent O cruises we found almost all of the expensive oil paintings gone. It has been mostly replaced with art palette color prints mostly behind glass. Still a few of the old remains, but not many. People were questioning whether it had to be sold, to raise cash, during the shutdown. As has been posted many times, when you decide to return to cruising Oceania after these multiple years away, you’ll find many subtle changes.

Did you make the Orient during your military stint way back when? There are a couple of things called Typhoon Season and Monsoon Season which make certain areas, during certain periods, as unattractive to cruise as the Baltic in December. China, meanwhile, will remain a huge question mark for any activities. Oceania stopped sending Marina to the FP for the sole reason they were consistently running at 70 or so percent capacity. I would love for the OZ circumnavigation to be on an O or R ship. It’s all those in between segments O suffers with.

I surely hope they don’t start playing that evil loud Rock and Roll music aboard ship. Can’t they just play Glen Miller and let us listen in peace to the string quartet? Why CCR and The Rolling Stones are just pornography to my delicate ears. Let those dastardly main line cruise ships play that junk!! 🙄 We had the rubber duckies appear on our recent Marina cruise, fwiw. 😂

Oceania’s biggest challenge is going to be transitioning from the antiquated R ships to a new model. O has a gradually decreasing number of patrons that enjoy listening to all Perry Como and 1950 music, the same as they have R ship fans. Still there, but disappearing. Even among Oceania cheerleaders aboard ship, I’m hearing “ we’ll no longer sail R ships!” You can’t build new 700 passenger ships and charge Premium Line prices. You have to go luxury, which Oceania isn’t. The two new 1200 passenger A ships are a nod in that direction. I believe, in one of the releases, FDR hinted at a near future ATW on an A ship. A search for those potential ATWers, having no interest in doing one on 25+ year old ship. As the new ships come online, it will be interesting to see how they transition the old ones out. It’s something the old line companies have been doing for decades and something the now 20 year old will have to learn.

Flatbush; They have already moved the Riviera to the Pacific Rim. I’m sailing her there April 2024.

I hate losing sitting under the stars in the evening. Of course, when the ship is in port, we’re not there for lunch, so not an issue. At sea, the nice sea breeze mostly negates the sun. The ships all seem to have umbrellas on the Terrace to block the sun.

Actually, Obviously we haven’t a clue. Oceania could increase the commissionable categories while meanwhile reducing the overall commissionable rate/percentage . Some Agents win, some lose. Far too early to make any predictions.

I’ll bypass the term “ bait and switch “, but I clearly see the potential of what we experience on the newly introduced Vista, for some period, being different from what happens fleet wide over a longer period in this regard.

The only thing I remember is when some of the R ships went under the Next upgrade. Depending upon ship capacity a lot of the work started early. Carpets being torn out and stacked in hallways and other early demolition. I remember some weren’t happy about it all. It’s a consideration.

This entire release is bizarre. To start, FDR is leaving the end of June. Why another poorly descriptive release from him now concerning what will happen after he leaves? Second, we have been told that the new cruise releases would happen in August, for Allure, and September for the rest of the fleet. Therefore, while Oceania is currently conducting an ESS sale, did FDR just announce they’ll be a completely new sale in remaking cabins in mid July? Why would anyone do that?? 🙄 Bizarre! I do hope the new guy’s written communication skills far exceed FDR’s!

The amount of bandwidth available is different than the amount any cruise line chooses to pay for and offer to guests. The “offer to guests “ part is the part I’m waiting to experience. The other doesn’t matter.

Except when no other options exist, we avoid O shorex. When we take them, they rarely are included in the OLife package. One of the things we disliked about Viking was the ship included shorex which we had “ paid for”, but skipped for a better private tour.