Psoque

I wonder what Crystal means by the word “nearly.”. Is 1.49 “nearly one?”. How about 1.55? How about 1.6? I am always suspicious of words like “nearly” because the use of it could be intentionally misleading. Or just sloppy accounting? I guess we will find out sometime, when the ships actually start their cruises with passengers. Also, the actual passenger/crew ratio is, of course, dependent on % occupancy. Our first cruise on Crystal Symphony many years ago had a very favorable passenger/crew ratio because a the ship had a very low occupancy (maybe half full or something like that) secondary to cabin refurbishment delays. We remember our waiters so eager to help us that we barely stood in line at buffet. One of the waiters always told us to have them go through the line for us. We thought that was really hysterical.

Here’s my take on this. After experiencing what we all experienced in 2020 onwards, we should have learned something. I personally learned that any cruise ship company will promise you the moon and possibly not deliver, either intentionally or unintentionally. Even the old Crystal Cruises failed to deliver what it promised their loyal guests multiple times. We have not seen the actual pictures of the refurbished ships or even a preview of it. Many cruise lines show pictures/videos of the ongoing work to encourage booking. Even the old Crystal Cruises have done it a few times. I personally have not seen any of that. I find that extremely odd. I’m not saying that this is a big fraud, but seems really strange that everything sounds/looks so “preliminary.” My best guess is that renovations are, at best, “in progress,” if not even not started. I know some of us will want everything to be perfectly wonderful with the new Crystal and is willing to even try them out assuming that “there’s nothing to lose” by putting their faith in a partially (or mostly? you decide!) unknown cruise line. I personally have no problem with it. If one is in a position to be able to gamble with their money/time in this manner, that’s great! I am not in that position, unfortunately. I also understand those who might be “afraid of missing out” for various reasons who is willing to risk a little. That’s also understandable. I am looking forward to see and hear from those who will be trying out the new Crystal. Hopefully A&K will create something really good out of this. But remember, some of us will promote Crystal (new or old) regardless of what he/she is promoting. Is that irresponsible? I certainly think so. Remember when old Crystal tried desperately to sell a bunch of holiday Caribbean cruises in August 2020, when the infection numbers were still going up? At that time Iwarned people here (not that people really needed to be warned…those with a clue knew exactly what I was warning them about) that it is rather risky to commit your time and money for something like this, when we have no idea if some or all of the itineraries would even sail. It turned out that most of these itineraries were cancelled, leaving a bunch of people scrambling for alternative plans, which were not easy to find at the last minute in middle of a pandemic. I distinctly remember one of the cheerleaders saying that I was just being “negative,” and that we have to “help Crystal” by taking these cruises. LOL. Cruise lines, like any other for profit entities, make business decisions, and as long as the bottom like “makes sense” for the corporation AT THAT TIME, whatever decision will prevail. So, I applaud those who wants to and is willing to try the new Crystal for a spin this year. I wish you good luck and I am looking forward to hear your reports.

Nobu first became famous when he worked as a chef in Peru. And from what I read, he had to improvise a lot by incorporating Peruvian ingredients into his dishes, since some of the ingredients widely available in Japan, where he is from and where he started his training at a sushi restaurant there, were not available in Peru. Nobody wants to call their cuisine “fusion” these days because now it is considered a bad word. But Nobu’s style is not exactly traditional Japanese. In my opinion, his food can be described as Japanese-style food that is primarily catered toward Americans with some Peruvian influences. If you consider that to be fusion, I personally can’t argue with that.

In our particular case, as per our travel agent, adding the $600 on board credit from the 20th Anniversary Promotion will cost us just a bit more overall since -The cruise fare increased since we booked it last year (my travel agent says the entire reservation needs to be rebooked with the current price??). -We will lose the prepaid gratuity benefit we already have. So, that’s how the cookie crumbled for us. Boo.

I personally think the strength of the Japanese restaurant on Crystal Symphony and Serenity, at least until very recently, was because Crystal was able to have onboard a real fully-trained sushi chef from Japan who stayed onboard for literally decades. If I remember correctly, the first time we took a cruise on Crystal Symphony in 2006, the sushi chef there has been there since the ship was deployed in 1995. I am not sure how much longer this chef stayed on but that’s phenomenal for a cruise ship. I think it would be a tall order for the new owners to replicate the experience, and to meet the expectations of new and old Crystal guests going forward.

Another reason that Nobu never really needed Crystal other than for some licensing fee income. Regardless of the reason Umi Uma is stupid.

It's interesting to note that, over the years, even before the old Crystal Cruises went caput, Nobu, in terms of their corporate PR, was never all that enthusiastic about their relationship with the cruise line. Crystal kept mentioning Nobu, but Nobu rarely mentioned Crystal. I'm not sure what that was about. I also noticed that this radio silence on the part of Nobu happened soon after Genting was part of the picture. Also of note that that this completely unfortunate "Umi Uma" branding belonged to Genting and not Nobu. In my opinion, any Japanese speaking person would find "Umi Uma" to be rather odd. Very rarely, if ever, seahorses are called "umi uma" in Japanese. I certainly hope that they don't use this moniker anymore.

Do we even know if the renovations to the two ships are completed, or for that matter, started? I think it is extremely premature to judge this new cruise line until someone can verify what is described in the website has occurred to the ships.

I have been a loyal Crystal Cruises customer for a while…However… I think it is entirely premature to know exactly what the new Crystal will deliver at this point. Obviously, some of us are hoping that the experience would be as good or better than how it was, but that is at best wishful thinking and speculation. It is somewhat meaningless to evaluate this new cruise line (and yes, this is really a new cruise line…it just happens to use two of the ships and some of the branding concepts from the old company) until we see them actually do a few cruises. Obviously, itinerary is an important element of any cruise, or at least that’s what we think. My preliminary quick look of the proposed itinerary appears to be something ships like Crystal Symphony and Serenity would do. There’s nothing all that unusual, but that has always been the case with the bigger ships on the old Crystal Cruises. My sincere hope that the new Crystal will over-perform the lofty expectations set by their loyal customers and the company itself. But I am personally waiting until next year at the earliest to really think about cruising with the new Crystal.

You, too, should read my earlier posts before posting this. These well-qualified analysts would probably like to know how many of us have figured out the lies behind the port time reduction e-mail. If we don’t call out the lies, Oceania will continue to assume we are too stupid to know the difference. That’s the only point I’m making. I’m not encouraging anyone to cancel/not book a cruise on Oceania. That’s none of my business. I’m not even saying that we should organize some sort of a protest or a letter-writing campaign. We just need to let the businesses we patronize know that we (or at least some of us) are well-informed consumers who prefer honest and straight-forward transactions. That’s all.

You also did not read my original post well enough. Sigh.

The reduction of time in port has nothing to do with the politics or passenger safety. And there are other (more effective) ways to reduce the environmental impact of cruising than just cutting an hour of port stays per day. However, we all know that reduction in port stays results in monetary savings for Oceania. The whole “explanation” Oceania gave us about the reason for shortened port stays are inaccurate, disingenuous, and deceptive. And the whole ranting about the environment in the e-mail actually backfired on Oceania. Now we are convinced that Oceania is not really serious about the environment. It just uses that to (poorly) justify cuts in favor of the bottom line. It would have been much better for Oceania to say that they are reducing port times as a cost-saving measure, and follow that with a sincere apology to those affected by these changes.

I agree that Oceania will only respond to booking or lack there of. However, if none of us complain about it, Oceania will have no idea why the booking was affected. If you read my post again you might understand exactly what I meant.

There's also no guarantee that Oceania will reduce the time in port even more on the same itineraries after the final payment. Also I'm assuming that Oceania is watching how their customers will react to this "strategy." If we don't complain enough, I would assuming that Oceania will do more of this to their itineraries.

Your explanation is valid, only if the ship is moving most of the time when it is not in port. In my experience, most overnight travel between ports includes extended periods of the ship sitting on water, not moving. I knew that the speed of the ship affects fuel consumption in an exponential manner, and if that’s really the case, the ship should be moving at a reasonably slow pace ALL OF THE TIME. Also, my argument was about their claims about carboon (emission) neutrality.

What was this “grounding incident?” When did this happen??

I’m not sure the reduction in port stays has anything to do with the environment. Actually, unless I’m mistaken, it is probably better for the environment for the ship to be not moving much. I’m really miffed that Oceania thinks we are stupid enough to believe their “good for the environment” lies. I understand that Oceania wants to make more money. However, for a product like a cruise, where we entrust the company to deliver a product long time after we commit a payment to them, this kind of behavior clearly crosses an ethical boundary.

Yes, I’ve had this TA for many years, but I believe he is approaching his actual retirement.

Thanks for this info. My TA did not know how to/could not produce the PDF, so I called Oceania Cruises and had someone there e-mail it to me. I have it now. I’m puzzled why the Oceania website does not have this available when I pull up my booking. That would be been so much easier for most of us. Perhaps this PDF file is downloadable from the website. I haven’t figured out how to get to it though. Naoyuki

Hopefully, this is a “new” question: I see that, like many other cruise lines, Oceania has been showing the list of available shore excursions with prices online. The complete information is only available by logging into my account. This is fine, but I am trying to see what is the best/easiest way to pass this information to my husband so that we can discuss what we want to book. Many years ago, most cruise lines sent us a booklet of available excursions for your particular itinerary with price information. Obviously, this format is no longer used by most cruise lines, but it was a great way to help us research the individual tour option and make notes on it to help us decide. Is there a way to print out all of our excursion options with pricing information? Does Oceania provide something, perhaps in PDF format? Or is that something I have to cut and paste on my own? Thanks.

I had to ask my travel agent to look into it, and he later informed me that he was able to add this promotion to the existing cruise.

It looks like my travel agent was able to add the Black Friday pre-paid gratuity promotion added to our booking.

Is it the case that the Black Friday pre-paid gratuity offer is only available to new bookings? Or is there a way my travel agent could “re-purchase” our booking now?

I have to say that Oceeania has a very “interesting” definition of the word “FREE.” -Roundtrip airfare is “FREE!!!” if you pay for it. -You get “FREE!!” on-board credit if you pay for it in advance. -You get “FREE!!” excursions if you pay for it in advance. -You get “FREE!!” basic drink package if you pary for it in advance. I have no idea why FTC has no problems with this type of false advertising, unless nobody has bothered to report them yet.

Unless I am completely misinformed, the Black Friday “sale” Oceania is offering is utterly underwhelming.