Flatbush Flyer

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).

I’ll bet my almost 500 nights on O ships against your total experience on other cruise ships of equivalent vintage. Relatively speaking, Regatta is what we sailors refer to as “Bristol.”

Not about to do your research for you. That said, my knowledge is based on professional experience with standards of hotel and restaurant management. Thus, if you want citations and can afford it, I’d be willing to find you some valid literature references.

Zero scientific rigor to your comment (based solely on personal experience) while self serve buffets (on/off ships) are notorious for disease transmission.

This “R” ships “going away” is a much debated topic. One only needs to look at the various Vista (and other “new build” issues across the industry to realize that dumping the “R” ships may not be the best decision. Time will tell.

You are entitled to your opinion. But, those original Renaissance ships were built like a “brick out house.” As each of the four “R” ships (R for Regatta Class, NOT Renaissance) started the Oceania cruise line [Regatta and then Insignia], they received a multi-million dollar renovation (including Sirena which took $40 million to turn the Ocean Princess into an O ship (which then received a recent NEXT Era makeover. If a little rust here and there really bothers you, than a classic cruise ship like any of O’s four R ships are definitely not for you. But, don’t worry. The R ships have a very loyal following including us. All that said, note that, with Vista and Allura joining the fleet, the future of the R ships is a bit uncertain. O knows that, without the “R”s they will lose a significant number of regular passengers. But, then there’s the question of the viability of an 8 ship fleet given an uncertain future of the cruise industry. In any case, if you’re not a big fan of the “R”s, O may not be a good cruise line for you.

Not necessary on O, which uses only “local time.” Leave iPhone set to “auto” and put ports (plus “sea day” equivalent longitude cities) in your “world clock”) app.

If, after allowing some time for your device to lock onto a new location, all else fails in your attempts to correct it, a hard reset should work.

The major misconception I have encountered (and fully researched for accuracy in most cases) is the belief that “premium/luxury” cruises are more expensive than “mass market” ones. While it’s true that the published cabin fares for similar itineraries/dates between the various industry segments may be significantly different, the true cost comparison should be based on the “net daily rate.” The “net daily rate” is the total of all required and optionally desired trip cost items (not just the cruise fare) divided by the number of days in your cruise vacation. And for folks who fly to embarkation, enjoy soda plus alcohol and specialty restaurants, use internet and do excursions (plus other stuff), having some or all of it included in your base cabin fare is quite different than being nickel-dimed for everything on a mass market ship. And then, there’s what you don’t get on premium/luxury ships: thousands of passengers, smoky casinos, amusement parks on floating apartment houses, pesky photographers, incessant announcements, phony art auctions, lines for everything, lecturers who are salesmen rather than teachers…… So, next time you’re planning a cruise, particularly an intercontinental one where airfare is a necessary consideration, base your comparison of cruise lines on the complete “net daily rate.”

If you upgraded from the basic booze to the Prestige package, there is no charge for cocktails on O ships as long as there is a bar open AND you’re not ordering the top shelf single malt scotches and highest end cognacs. Gratuities are included too. Also, if you upgraded, you would need to get a new key card with the upgrade notated or else you would then be charged the full price of the drink. As for the “arrival” time you selected for embarkation, that time is for when you should enter the terminal. Depending on the specific port, what then happens may vary. Usually there are separate lines for different cabin levels and the highest category ones have priority in completing the check-in process. As for “room readiness,” that’s done by cabin category. So when you embark and when you can access your cabin are two different things. Just like there’s no self-service allowed in the casual restaurant/buffet, there are no ice machines to keep passengers from touching food products (including ice) with their grubby hands. This is actually a feature that helped many passengers choose O for sanitary/food safety reasons.

Setting your Apple device clocks to manual requires that you keep changing time zones as you traverse them. Really not necessary. if you leave your iPhone on automatic time adjustment, it will eventually change zones when your reach a port and your device’s GPS pinpoints that zone (even if the device is on “airplane mode”). Another tactic that avoids having to deal with manual time setting is to leave your clock on automatic zone setting and add your home city, embark city, and port stop cities to your device’s “world clock.” Then, when the ship says “adjust an hour” + or -, you can use your “world clock” which is showing you accurate times + or - from your home city. (BTW, you can accurately estimate a land setting by longitude for sea days and your world clock will then display each hour change across your entire trip). Next trip: leave click on “auto” while home and just change the listed cities to your new itinerary. Finally, all O ships on all itineraries use “local time” as the “ship time” (even on sea days).

There were no lids in May.

There haven’t been lids for take out cups on O ships since before the Pandemic started. They do have recycled paper sleeves for hot cups. Sadly, O has not renewed its coffee contract with Illy Coffee. Now they use a proprietary brand.

Actually, one of O’s strengths is to consider and pursue all possible avenues to maintain an original itinerary before making a change and also to not inform passengers prematurely with incomplete information that may change numerous times before all is finalized.

What exactly do you mean by “really long cruise?” For us, anything less than 4 weeks is a “boat ride.” That said, if you want a month+\- multisegment (minimum repeat ports) cruise, look to lines that specialize in that type of trip. We prefer Oceania particularly for the great crew and space ratios AND the excellent food/service. In addition, we’ve done numerous bottom line comparisons of O with both mass market and luxury lines and found that the net daily rate of required and optionally desired added costs above the fare is far better on O.

Regardless of who pays them (you, O Club, TA, OCAPP), the debit and credit for gratuities appears on your shipboard account.

Call it whatever you want- gratuity, tip, service charge. The gratuity charges for the cabin et al. are not posted daily to your account. Rather, they appear as a single total amount. For booze, it’s 20% on all non-package booze purchases and each of those purchases appears as a separate charge on your account.