Flatbush Flyer

This is why it is so important pre-cruise to get a copy of the “prepurchased shore excursions …. PDF. It has all the math of all optional purchases as it is supposed to be. Checking that before one leaves is paramount and bringing it on the ship settles any disagreements quickly.

Did you read your O ticket contract and T&Cs. As do most (if not all) cruise lines, O assumes zero liability for the performance of its contracted services which include things like air arrangements, port services, spas, ship’s excursions, luggage forward….)

Web maintenance is done on Saturdays Eastern time - usually in the afternoons/evenings but it could be earlier if needed. During that time, passenger accounts are locked for security.

If industry leading Luggage Forward says it can’t deliver to Mumbai, I wouldn’t trust others to do it. FWIW: when we do certain pre-cruise land stays (e.g., Safari), we’ll fly to the embark port (e.g., CPT) and leave our main luggage at the hotel we’ll use for two nights pre-cruise. We pack duffels in our checked bags and use them for the initial land trek and any local domestic flights (e.g., Safari). Works great!

It only takes watching some one guy not wash his hands after using the head and then immediately enter the Terrace and touch serving utensils or the food itself to change many folks’ minds about their being okay with self-served food.

Shorts are shorts. And jeans, by definition, are casual. Neither is appropriate at dinner in the GDR and Specialty restaurants.

Please- no jeans, shorts, tee shirts in GDR and specialty restaurants for dinner. No bathing suits only in any dining venue at anytime. O truly is “country club casual.” No need for suits, gowns, etc.

The San Francisco Dept. of Public Health - Travel Clinic recommends Malarone for Malaria Prophylaxis.

When you’ve got legitimate complaints about the CD, provide complete details (including their names) in the mid-cruise and end-cruise surveys. Also helpful to identify them here.

What a lot of folks don’t understand is that WiFi calling still may require involvement of multiple cellular providers along the transmission. And you may see a charge from one of them on your future bill from your provider. And some providers (e.g., AT&T on iPhones) allow wifi calling primarily as a hand-off when cellular service is weak to non-existent (you can’t choose their wifi calling in place of cellular - perhaps that is what you’re hearing now from Verizon).

Really depends - not only on the port but also on who’s supposed to be checking. On one mid-Covid era cruise from Sydney, lot’s of surprised folks when they found out they had to have negative Covid tests (required by the Port Authority) though Australia and NSW didn’t require it. Terminal checkin staff checked everyone. BTW, Vietnam ETA visa is easily done online with the government site (and less expensive than if O does it for you).

We’ll - maybe not. We’re DIYers and, due to Covid-related itinerary changes, our destination port was once changed from Singapore to Dubai. O covered tix change fees for DIYers - up to $250/person (and also provided free satellite phone service to make any needed changes).

Malarone prophylaxis script should be good enough if you have concerns. Don’t know about a Malaria vaccine or it’s effectiveness. And, if you’re a geezer like me, I’d pass on the Yellow Fever vaccine. We use the San Francisco Dept of Public Health Travel Clinic which is up-to-date on all requirements. They do not recommend YF vaccine for geezers. So, when they issued my WHO “yellow card,” they stamped “exempt” next to YF vaccine. we’ve traveled to many countries with vaccine YF and Malaria requirements/recommendations. We’ve never had an issue re: shots. (Of course, however, we’ve got all Covid shots/boosters).

Amen to your Cellular@Sea note!!! Hopefully, OP doesn’t think that the AT&T marine service (Cellular@Sea) is included in his Verizon Day Pass (or even in AT&T’s Daily Passport). As for “wifi calling” with iPhone, perhaps it depends on what generation phone and iOS you’re using but, my understanding is that iPhone’s “wifi calling” (turned on) requires cellular service to be turned on and the phone then will automatically “hand off” the call to wifi if the cellular service is bad. If true, that would mean you’d need Airplane Mode “off” and cellular service ON (which we’ve already established is not the best thing to do ($$$) on a ship with Cellular@Sea!

In general, dialing “800” numbers won’t work from most countries outside of the US and Canada. As I understand it, the receiving end of these calls are billed for them and, most often, will block “foreign” calls coming in via an “800” number from other countries. Just use the regular telephone number plus relevant country code(s).

You may want to rethink “net daily rate,” which is far more accurate than “bottom line” in comparing different cruise companies and their products. If you don’t fully understand this, do a test comparison of two similar cruises with one being one day longer than the other. As for smoky casinos and crowds, “many” DO mind them and end up unhappily surprised if they didn’t do their comprehensive research beforehand.

We were on Insignia for the final leg of the most recent ATW (SFO-NYC) this past July/August 2023. Ship still looking good from its relatively recent NEXT overhaul. Food great as usual. Crew great. You’ll probably have a different GM and CD. That said, I’ve got my small cadre of favorite officers and am always a bit disappointed if I don’t see at least a couple of them at embarkation.

Though things sometimes luckily got lost in the shuffle, the “per person restriction” was also the O Life policy for the tours perk. Not only were the allowable tours allocated per person on the O invoice, the dollar details for each person’s tour orders were specified on the “pre-purchased shorex pdf.” Of course, with O Life (not sure yet about SM), if O cancelled a tour once onboard, you could opt for a $100 credit on your account that could then be applied to an added tour purchase by either cabin mate.

I’m not conflating anything. Using the World Clock on your iPhone with consecutive longitudinal landmark time settings remains the easiest way to coincide with the nightly instructions to “change your clock at/after midnight.” All you need to do then is to move to the next landmark on your clock. And, of course, there are those rare occasions when a zigzag time zone will require you to look at the previous landmark time rather than the next one.

As I said…. Regatta Class

Of course, anything is subject to change. But, my experience with the concept of ship time being anything other than local time is pretty much reserved for the low end of the industry segments (e.g., Carnival) where there’s a misguided attempt to not confuse folks with the “rocket science” of time zone changes.🤔

If you want the facts, you can start with a search here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

I’ve got more than 500 nights across multiple cruisea in the entire fleet and, having discussed this with numerous skippers on numerous occasions, I am confident that O’s MarOps direction is “local time” only. direction

Someone “yanked your chain.” Woodford is barely a step above “rot gut” and no O bartender I know would try to charge you for that as a “top shelf” exclusion.

Ask any officer on an O ship: O’s “R” class is designated as such in recognition of its rechristening of it’s first acquisition as “Regatta.” (It’s an often asked O Trivia question).