Alcohol Policy

[snowdy]

My wife and I are booked on Nautica Nov 28. Reading the terms and conditions of coontract section fifteen reads " all liquor purchase ashore must remain in bond until disembarkation". Does anyone know if this is a new policy of Oceania and/or if it is enforced?

 

Snowdy

[Bruin Steve]

I don't know the answer, Snowdy,...

 

But, at the risk of riling a few feathers here...as I seem to have done on some other boards in the past...I'll bring up the issue here...

 

Here's my rant:

 

Why do so many people find it so important to bring their own drinks onboard?

 

Now, I can see if you're bringing on a "special" bottle of wine and paying a corkage fee to drink it at dinner (as most cruise lines seem to allow), so, I'm not talking about that...

 

I'm talking about those folks who seem to show some resentment toward paying $4.50-$9 for an alcoholic beverage and want to carry their own "stash" on board...

 

Personally, I figure my cruise (when I add in air, pre- and post-cruise, tips, excursions, etc.) will run me somewhere in the $12,000 to $15,000 range...Why would I be so concerned about saving a few bucks on drinks?

 

I mean, one of the reasons I cruise is to be treated like royalty...I PAY to have somebody else do EVERYTHING for me: Cook and serve my meals, straighten out my room, entertain me...and BRING ME DRINKS--well-poured, on ice, blended if so be my wish...wherever and whenever I want...From my experience on various cruise ships, you can get someone to bring you a drink virtually anywhere on the ship (at a restaurant, in a bar, at the show, in the casino, by the pool and, yes, even to your cabin) at virtually any time you want...I've even had Champagne delivered to my cabin and put on ice by my butler or cabin steward...Getting a drink has never been a problem...

 

And every ship I've been on has had a much, much larger choice of liquors and liqueurs that I could possibly have in my home...

 

Now, I DO buy bottles when I'm in port...For example, while in San Gimignano, I bought a bottle of local Grappa from the winery where I ate lunch...But, I don't buy it to consume on the ship--I buy it to bring home...as a souvenir or as a gift...SO, it doesn't really phase me if the ship wants to store it for me until the end of the cruise...

 

But, what usually gets me are the folks who stock up on run-of-the-mill rum and vodka while in port, bring it back to their cabin, ask their cabin steward for a bucket of ice and sit in their cabin and drink by themselves...Or, better, the ones that pack bottles in their suitcases from home...Yeah, I've heard stories of people who've had such bottles break in transit--How'd you like to cruise with all of your clothes reeking of Jose Cuervo? And, gee, how much does that stuff weigh? I like to pack light...

 

Maybe some of these people drink SO much that they think this is worth it...

But, here's my figuring: I NEVER bring my own on board...I just buy from the bars on board...Between my wife and I, we typically only spend about $20-30 per day (That's usually about 2-3 drinks each per night on the average)...On a 14 night cruise, that's $280-420 in bar bill--(maybe we're "lightweights"??)...If we brought our own booze, 56-84 drinks would still require that we bring about, what, four liter bottles of various spirits? Figure that's going to cost me $40-80, depending on brand and where I shop?

 

So, I'd be looking to save about $240-340 on a cruise that's costing me $12-15,000? And, for what? To drink on the sly? I go on a cruise to drink like a "mensch"...I'll walk up to a bar or call over a bar waiter and I'll sit back and enjoy...

 

But, of course, that's just my opinion...

[Andee]

I don't pack liquor in my suitcase, and we do have an occasional drink at one of the ship's bars on a sea day or in the evening.

 

We enjoy shopping for local wines and make a game of finding something inexpensive that's still good--that's fun for us.

 

After a long day sightseeing, I'm tired--and I just want to put my feet up and have a drink in the peace, quiet and privacy of my own cabin. I don't want to go to a ship's bar and I don't want to wait for room service to deliver a drink.

[boom_boom]

I resent the 15-18% surcharge on bar drinks, in addition to "required" tips. I usually bring a couple of bottles onboard to have in my cabin and I usually buy an overpriced bottle from the ship a dinner. If I have a special bottle I don't object to a corkage fee so I can have it at dinner, but I don't want to have to hunt down a bar or wait for room service. I have never, in 9 past cruises been told I could not bring a few bottles on board at embarkation time. I also brought wine back to the ship, and was allowed to keep it, on Princess and HAL, in such places as New Zealand, Bordeaux and Lisbon.

[Jane110]

Steve,

 

I hear where you're coming from and agree with many of your thoughts. I've seen people pour a glass of wine in their room and then walk into the dining room with it. That's tacky in my opinion.

 

We buy our fair share at the bars but also like to keep a bottle of vodka in our cabin. We enjoy having friends come over for drinks in our cabin and don't need to spend $10. pp to do this. For Oceania cruises we buy it in duty free en route, but Princess is smartest about it. We pre-order a bottle of it from them weeks before the cruise. Their price is inline with the duty free prices and it's waiting in our cabin when we arrive. We do bring along the sugarfree cranberry juice to cut back on some calories. The ships never stock that item.

 

We enjoy buying wine on our excursions and often bring some to the dining room for dinnerl

[ClaudiaF]

Steve,

We love to bring our own since we like to party with our buddies and when we cruise we always have our buddies, whom we have mostly met right here.. or other cruise boards..

it is not being cheap and I don't quite understand what you are thinking when you assume that everyone who "lugs" booze on board

is .......

but ofcourse we do not pack it in our clothes ( gross)

we do sometimes bring on champagne and wine to entertain in our cabin .. even in OS it's still better on the pocketbook.. ;-)

yes we love being catered too.. and we understand.. all you said but we have and always will, I suppose, bring some special wines and bubblies to enjoy with our friends..

We do not feel bad having anything we bring with us served at dinner esp., since now we have to pay $20 + bucks for the priviledge..

and yes we do buy wines all over the world at ports.. and we do buy wines from the ship ( sometimes the prices do kill us..most of the time) .. when you have a cellar and you do know wines, it does blow your mind to pay 3 times or more for something you left at home .

do what you like..

some of us like too bring it and you don't have too..

That is what is one more great thing about Oceania..when the q was asked about what folks liked and some of us said, to be able to continue to bring our own booze on board ( when the ship was just in the works.. that is how long ago some of us have been in love with this ship :D )

 

the idea was not to wander around halls like a Carnival ship with bottles.. it was to bring what you like to consume in your own cabin or enjoy in their restaurants w/ corkage.. the fact that corkage is now $20 ? or more doesn't thrill us.. but hey ......:rolleyes:

[Portolan]

WRT alcohol (yes, I know it floats/moves, etc.). In a hotel, you can bring in alcohol that you purchased outside the hotel, consume it in the room if you wish, and leave with it without violating a policy or feeling like a sneak thief. You CAN'T bring it into the dining room or bar, or, at least would reasonably expect a corkage fee for the dining room. Yet bars survive in hotels (and you can actually walk outside and down the street to another bar!). So why can't/shouldn't this be the model for a cruise ship? Simple, IMHO, because the higher than typical bar costs (remember the extra leverage from pocketing the tax savings too) subsidize the ship (including the non-drinkers. The answer is to 1) adopt a hotel-like policy, 2) charge reasonable prices (we like variety and I'm not going to lug a complete bar along for the one-off drinks), 3) set the cruise fares so that the cruise line doesn't have to make a large chunk of their profit on all the add-ons. This, unfortunately, is not the way most marketing is done which doesn't say much for either the respect for or the reality of the consumer's intelligence since you end up paying a lot more than the "gee, we booked a cruise for $xxxx!".

The (apparent) step back from what we understood the enlightened Oceania policy to be is unfortunate as we are looking forward to our first trip on Oceania next May and are already struggling with the ramifications of the Libya fiasco (the main reason we booked the cruise).

Last comment to put my remarks in perspective: as you can see, we've mostly cruised Radisson where they provide a bar setup (1-2 bottles of your choice of liquor). We usually bring most of it home, opting to buy drinks in the bar (where, I might add, the costs are lower than those quoted for Oceania and other lines...more what I'd expect to pay in a restaurant). It is almost more the idea of being told you can't that bothers me in all of this.

[PurpleCow]

I'd like to go back to the original question, is this a new policy or is it not enforced, because this definitely wasn't the policy when we last sailed with Oceania. I'm not a big drinker myself and DH doesn't drink at all. The largest part of my bar tab on my last cruise was the Diet Cokes. I'm just curious to know if this is a change in policy.

[LHT28]

I notice in the 2006 brochure that the wording has changed regarding bringing alcohol onboard.

When there is a change in policy it usually means that people have taken advantage of the previous rules so new strict changes are made.

 

Some people no matter where they are will always push the limits of policies!

 

Most cruiselines do not allow alcohol to be brought on board and so people resort to all kinds of trick to do so. There is a thread in CC on people trying to find ways to sneak it aboard.;)

[Bruin Steve]

Claudia,

I never said I assumed EVERYONE who brings their own bottle on board is "cheap"...I even said I understood those who bring along their own wine and pay a corkage fee...I hope you realize that, by extension, I can except most reasoning that doesn't include an avoidance of paying "cruise line prices"...

 

I said that what I don't get is those who DO bring their own because they ARE being cheap...

 

The "savings" just aren't worth it...at least not to me...

 

LHT,

I don't think it necessarily has to stem from a reaction to "abuse"...Oceania simply may have looked around and seen what their competitors were doing...Most cruise lines look at alcohol sales as a major profit center...and they're just protecting their economic interests...

 

Somewhere in the cruise line offices, there's a guy who figures out what a typical cruise should net them on the average...They just don't go about guessing at their price structure or setting prices arbitrarily...They know, by the laws of averages, taking into consideration all of the past history, exactly how much money they need to spend per passenger for food per day, their overhead, payroll, fuel consumption, insurance, depreciation on their vessels, repair and maintenance, fuel costs...Then, they know what they need to take in...Fares need to be competitive...So, they look at other areas to make up those costs: Premiums on shore excursions and pre- and post-cruise hotel packages, gift shop sales, gambling, and, yes, BAR sales...And they know exactly what they should be doing in each category, what they have done in the past and what their competitors are doing...

 

And, if their bar sales are off target and they think it may be because their policies are different, they will change those policies...They really don't set policies to be nice...They set them for marketing and budgetary reasons...If everyone else has a similar policy, they don't lose much in marketing by conforming...but, if they set a policy that hurts in the sales area, they have to make it up somewhere else: Higher prices for those that do use the bar services...or higher cruise fares...or something...The bottom line is they are in business to make a profit...and bar sales are a high profit margin item, like it or not...It is for hotels, restaurants and other establishments on land as well.

 

Yes, you can bring your own bottle to a hotel room--it's impractical for them to try and restrict that... but, if hotels were as much a closed system as cruise ships...if you had to pass through security to go in and out and you were limited in your staying in the hotel or leaving , don't you think they might try the same?

[Mahogany]

Gee, Steve, I guess your budget is less than ours for liquor. We usually have a martini ($9.00 in the Martini Bar) and a bottle of wine for $40 (if we're lucky!).

That is $58 plus 18% a day for 24 days or $1,642. And on evenings when we've been shore -excursioning all day and may prefer making our own cocktail in the stateroom while dressing for dinner, it's convenient (and yeah, cheaper) to have our preferred brand with us.

But that's only my opinion...

[Jancruz]

In my opinion..if there wasnt so much discussion on the boards about bringing liquor..Oceania would not have cared..why make such a a big deal about it..take it, enjoy it and leave it at that..

Jan

*****

[TipToe]

In my opinion..if there wasnt so much discussion on the boards about bringing liquor..Oceania would not have cared..why make such a a big deal about it..take it, enjoy it and leave it at that..

Jan

*****

You are right, next you will want formal and imformal nights.

[mike35]

Is an "imformal night" similar to an "informal night"?? Geez - I couldn't agree more with Jan - those who want to carry in their own libations, by all means do so, but please heed the advice that discretion is the better part of valor!

 

Mike

[nearly there]

If this is the new Oceania policy on alcohol, it seems to me it is yet another sign of Oceania's uncertainty about who its target group is and where it wants to position itself ...with the luxury lines or the mass market lines. On the one hand, it has the feel of Silversea/Radisson with smallish ships, 1 seating dinner, specialty restaurants with no extra charge, etc. On the other hand, there are things like nickle and dimeing with high drink prices, charging for shuttle transport (when it is even available) and the general tackiness of the "gold by the inch" sales out in the main public area. I felt they were sort of evenly balanced between the two, but prohibiting guests from bringing alcohol on board (can we look forward to Carnival style searches and seizures..and Carnival type discussions on the best way to smuggle your booze) definitely tips the balance in the wrong direction.

[Molliem]

We have been on Oceania and have taken aboard liquor which was a gift from on shore. We know others have purchased and taken items on board. There has not been any policing to date and we intend to take our favorite with us on this Sunday. Just do not abuse this privilige. This is for your suite and not in public areas. If you wish to sit at the bar then you pay just like any other line. And of course some of us do exercise caution in expenses on board while others may not. It is an individual choice and hopefully Oceania will continue their 'blind" eye as in the past.:)

[drwong]

We just disembarked from the Insignia on Sunday - we brought various bottles back onboard with us from different ports. Although our bags had to go through a perfunctory x-ray screening by the ship's security personnel and the bottles were there in plain view for everyone to see, nary a word was said about placing the bottles "in bond." We simply carried the bottles to our staterooms, acted like responsible adults, and Oceania treated us like responsible adults.

[schooltchr]

I recommend that this subject be dropped..........the more you talk about it the more attention it will draw, thus any privileges that had been graciously extended by the cruise line will probably be revoked. Let the sleeping dogs lie (lay?) and don't ruin a good thing.

[digby]

"the fact that corkage is now $20 ? or more doesn't thrill us"

 

 

I was recently in a restaurant in San Francisco whose corkage fee is $45.00.

[freddie]

We've been watching this thread with great interest, since a couple of our friends are trying to convince us to move from RSSC to Oceania. We do indeed like the interesting (and longer) itineraries on O and will definitely consider the O cruises after our current commitments (a couple of RSSC cruises and the Hanseatic to Antarctica) are completed. However, this alcohol in the cabin subject is a bit worrisome. With all due respect, Molliem and Schooltchr, we are not interested in a cruiseline turning a "blind eye" to some purported transgression we have committed by bringing our own booze on board. The issue is not whether the line gives us a "pass" on our breaking its rules but rather whether there are such restrictive rules in the first place. This is the sort of thing one imagines on Carnivore and HAL. The notion of having to "sneak" booze on board and hope that the security people let it pass is simply repellent to the notion of cruising in general, and even moreso with respect to luxury cruising. I think that the question the first poster on this thread raised has not been clearly answered - that is, does Oceania prohibit its passengers from bringing on board their own alcohol for use in their cabins?

 

A second question is whether Oceania sells bottles of liquor to its passengers for use in their cabins. We have found that on most lines the price of such bottles is quite reasonable and certainly not significantly more expensive than buying liquor in an expensive state like ours (Washington), thereby making it both practical and economical to simply buy the bottles from room service. Can any of the veteran Oceania sailors give us an idea whether Oceania sells bottled liquor and if so, at reasonable prices? If so, that would quite simply make most of this discussion moot. If, on the other hand, Oceania insists that people who want a cocktail in their cabin order (and wait) for individual (and expensive) drinks to be delivered to their cabins, that is a far less attractive scenario.

 

This board has so many experienced R and O cruisers that I am certain we will get some genuine G2 from them. Claudia, where are you when we need you?

 

Cheers, Fred

[ClaudiaF]

:) Fred,

You can bring whatever you want on board the ship to make drinks in your cabin. They do not sell bottles of liquor on the ship in their store.

You can bring any wine you want to dinner ( or lunch) for them to open.. but they do charge a $20.00 corkage fee .

You do not have to sneak anything on.

There has been rewording in one of their latest 2006 cruises brochures that says they reserve the right to not allow pax to bring onboard liquor purchased ashore, but in the other one I recieved from them also for 2006 other itineraries it says nothing about that.. only that they will not serve to pax under 18. This is why there has been so much confusion regarding this issue.

[ClaudiaF]

"the fact that corkage is now $20 ? or more doesn't thrill us"

 

 

I was recently in a restaurant in San Francisco whose corkage fee is $45.00.

 

Geesh... should've just driven down the road apiece into Napa.. and bought it ;-)

[cruiseyguy]

I suspect Oceania's new wording is simply a statement to the effect that they have the right to forbid alcohol being brought onboard in a clearly abusive or unlawful situation (e.g., large quantities of liquor to be sold to other passengers, liquor being bought for minors, etc.).

[digby]

Geesh... should've just driven down the road apiece into Napa.. and bought it ;-)

 

 

 

It still would have cost an extra $45. to use it at that particular restaurant (Michael Minna at the St. Francis Hotel.)

[Bruin Steve]

Geesh... should've just driven down the road apiece into Napa.. and bought it ;-)

Bought what? The wine? The restaurant? Napa? :)