zalusky

We did a Celebrity cruise in 2016 from Sydney to Auckland. We flew business class from SFO to Sydney via Auckland. The first leg was 14 hours plus the 2+ hour connection to Sydney. It was worth it. First we are CPAP users and we weee able to use our machines on the flight. We have another cruise booked this winter to Australia and will book business class again. I paid for the return flights with points on United’s Polaris class.

Looking at the PrePurchase spreadsheet we got from Oceania where we Took the Olife Shore Excursion package which gave us 4 excursions up to $199 for free We booked 8 total excursions giving us the YWC 25% discount The total raw price of my selected 8 tours was $1272 or $159/tour on average Sorting my tours by price descending I removed the first 4 tours under $200 I then took 25% off of those tours that left a total of $424.50 So the next out of pocket code = $424.50 / 8 = $53.50/tour on average Now to be fair I should add in the $400 Olife Excursion price to the out of pocket cost So $424.50 + $400 = $824.50 / 8 = $103.06/tour on average You can see how far ahead in my case. The question is what would the equivalent price of these tours be if they were private? It also obviously depends on what you pick as the numbers could be completely different. Booking 1 less excursion would change the game a lot as you lose the 25% discount which happened when they cancelled an excursion on us so we had to find something.

World cruises would not surprise me. They’re pretty much at the top and I don’t think they want to annoy that customer base. I wonder what their parameter are?

During the height of Covid, Viking added a Risk Free Guarantee where you would get a voucher for the cost of money paid that you gave you up to 2 years before you had to apply it. There were two iterations of this guarantee. The first iteration allowed you to cancel up to the day before and the subsequent iteration you had to cancel up to 2 weeks before. You could do this for any reason because obviously bookings were falling through the floor. This Risk Free Guarantee version 1 and version 2 only applied to booking made between certain dates. The version 2 did not apply for bookings made after June 30 2022. So even though we are now after those dates if you have one of those bookings it still applies. The other problem with the Risk Free Guarantee Voucher was it was not splittable. You could not apply part of it to 1 cruise and the remainder to another. So you had to basically apply to an equal or more expensive cruise. You also could not apply (I think) it to the down payment of the replacement cruise. The problem with the Risk Free Guarantee Voucher is it was not insurable so if you booked a replacement cruise using the voucher and purchased Tripmate they would not pay for the voucher if you had to cancel. Other insurance programs may have but not Tripmate. Tripmate which is insurance offered by Viking has a CFAR option which gives you a voucher but has the rule that you have to use the voucher within 12 months. Now that Viking now longer offers the Risk Free Guarantee on new bookings you only have the Tripmate CFAR option (unless you purchase other insurance) but Viking themselves does not offer anything other than their standard cancellation penalty schedule.

Just to reiterate.I don’t like vouchers and will avoid if at all possible. Money is always better in my hand. I have no idea what my situation will be like and being tied to a use or lose it window is not acceptable. We may have other events that pop up whether they are medical or family/friend related that can make things dicey. Also vouchers are not splittable so if you want to go on something smaller you lose the excess. Lastly itineraries and friends can drive choices of the next cruise meaning they might be with a different cruise line. So money always wins where possible.

We were in the 100% penalty period. So You have three choices: Accept a risk free voucher Good for two years but is not insurance if you insure with with Tripmate Cancel for a non covered reason and accept a voucher Good for 12 months which we did not want to deal with. Cancel for a covered Tripmate reason which Covid is one of and get your money back.

How about itineraries as well. O seems to have more unusual itineraries. For example O will circumnavigate Australia where say Regent and Seabourn will just do the usual Northern routes.

We had to cancel a Midnight Sun cruise this summer due to catching Covid right before. We made a point of going the insurance route vs the voucher route. We eventually got the money after 60 days or so and wound up using it on an itinerary on a competitor line that happen to open up for later this year. We could not have done that with vouchers. Viking did not offer this itinerary.

Doesn’t bother me. Probably better than seeing what under the robe. Some people might not pack a lot and this gives the chance at washing all their underwear.

I have switched my packages after booking and after final payment. As a newbe I learned and I went went from ship credit to the excursion Olife package. I booked a cruise that leaves in December and paid the whole thing up front. I later realized what the excursion Olife package allows you to effectively double the credit and with the YWC on top of that I was got my average price down further. Nobody complained about the change request.

Technically it should be called a perk if you don't have to pay for it. With Olife you are paying for it so I would suggest people call out the full amount they are paying for day not just the so called upgrade price. Now if Oceania or the TA gave it out as a special for a particular sailing then its a bit of a different story. Also if one person does not drink its effectively twice as expensive.

We had Tripmate and a Viking cruise to the Midnight Sun this last July. Unfortunately we both got Covid a week before the cruise and had to cancel. We had plenty of documentation from my wife’s doctors. Tripmate took about 2 months to come through with the cash. There were a number of steps we had to do starting with uploading documents showing the cancelled cruise and cancellation fees followed by doctors documentation saying you cannot cruise due to a positive diagnosis. After that it took about 5 weeks to even get looked at and then finally at some point it was approved. Then it had to go to accounting to verify the amount relative to what you paid, and were penalized. Finally it got sent to payments.

Add to the fact that both people in the cabin have to play. My wife is diabetic and only drinks a taste of what I get. There is no way I would come out ahead. I also prefer spirits to wine anyways so the basic package gives me nothing.

Here is what I am talking about. The first is the website display of my pre-purchased tours. The second is a display from the PDF sent to my TA from Oceania. You can see the first one is just weird. It does not show the 25% discount and only one with some sort discount. Nothing really matches up. It does not show what I got for free with the Olife excursion. I got the first one online by going to manage my booking and then clicking view purchases. The second explains everything. Now if there is a way to display the second screen under manage my booking please tell me how to do it

Exactly. We had a cruise booked and in our case the minimum to get the discount was 8 tours with 4 under $200 being free. The cruise line then cancelled one of the >$200 tours and suddenly we were under 8 and everything got out of whack. We found a cheap tour at a port we had not booked and then everything reshuffled. As mentioned the prepurchased PDF explains what is 100% covered, what gets the 25% discount. I actually made a spreadsheet for our cruise with all the days and all the tours and tried to see if I could program the shuffle game and I failed at it. The worst part about it is that the online listings don't show this nor do they show your credits that hit when you make the 25% cut. Example you book some initial tours some paid and some not paid. You pay full price. Then another day you book some more and pay some more. Finally you hit the threshold - 8 in my case. Suddenly all the paid tours are 25% cheaper and you effectively have a credit but it is not explicitly spelled out. It feels like a shell game. There software gets it right but its very confusing.

Those get marked with a 100% reduction. The thing is it can vary which ones they are. On our longer cruise we have to take 8 excursions to get the deal and 4 are free. The decision as to which are free is the 4 top valued items under $200. If for example you add another excursion that is $199 it may replace a lower price free excursion and be part of the free 4. The replaced excursion goes from free to its original value and then gets the 25% reduction applied. It’s crazy math and you can wind up with credit that does not show up in the online tools.

You should get the 25% reduction on all tours once you make the count.

My experience on this. First I had to get them to mark my booking with a YWC. It did not seem to automatically give me the discount. Second when I looked at my purchased cruise detail is a bunch of gibberish when it comes to excursion pricing. Their computer figures it out properly but they don't show it properly online. My TA did get an itemized list and it did show full price, discounted price, and payments properly but the online was off. There is a lot of weird stuff that goes on with this kind of promotion. It kind of works like this: 1) First look at all the excursions $199 and take the highest 3/4/what ever free amount you have. 2) Second look at the remainder and lower them by 25% So if you subsequently purchase a new excursion the rankings can change because its possible the new excursion will fit into the free ranking but more expensive than one of the ones in the free count. This will then push that down into the paid category. Once its in the pay for category its price is adjusted 25% and changes completely your whole bill. It would be nice for the online system to show this all in a spreadsheet as you try out different scenarios before committing. So far Oceania's IT seems to be the worse part of my experience.

We are going on a cruise thats starts in Bali. I paid for the return flight from Sydney using points. My TA and I searched around and could not find a good deal for the SFO to Bali flight. Oceania price was a better deal.

Maybe they decided they had to allocate more rooms to quarantine possibilities.

Do Oceania ships offer decaf coffee? I don’t see it listed on the Barista menu.