HiFi43

Barbara (boatbob)… I suspect Oceania will do their best to accommodate your request when you are on board. Find the Food and Beverage Director or one of his direct reports, the Restaurant Manager, and either of them can help you.

Chris, Thank you for the staff picture. As avid Oceania cruisers we know Dominique, Peter, Juan Carlos and many others very well having sailed with them many times and are hopfull they are still there when we get on Marina in Oslo September 13th on our cruise to Lisbon. When you sail Oceania often not only do you make new friends with the unique passenger set Oceania attracts, but you develop lasting relationships with the crew. For the record, we are also long time fans and users of Cruise Critic and we’ve probably run a couple of dozen Cruise Critic “Meet & Greets” on Oceania cruises over the years. We jumped on this upcoming cruise this week when our Oceania cruise from LA to Tokyo was in late September was canceled and we wanted a replacement about the same time. Bruce

Waves opens at 7am so we often order room service on the card Oceania provides in your cabin the night before by placing our orders on the card and putting it in the slot outside our door before we go to bed. You should note in the Daily Currents you get each evening in some ports Oceania will open breakfast earlier if they port earlier than usual. Also if you just need a continual breakfast Horizons has coffee, juice and rolls earlier and since you are on Riviera, if you are in one of the cabin levels with a lounge, you can get coffee, juice, rolls earlier.

Chris (Cruise Critic Chris)… You may have missed my question yesterday. Can you publish the names of the current Marina senior staff (we are getting on in a couple of weeks and would love to know) Specifically: General Manager Cruise Director Food & Beverage Director Thank You…Bruce

We will be on Marina in a few weeks from Oslo to Lisbon (our LA to Tokyo cruise was canceled Monday). Can you tell me the names of the GM, Cruise Director and Food & Beverage Director currently on the Marina? Thank You…

No reason to do it…there is plenty of room and without seating group hours like some cruise lines they just never do it…just show up…

We’ve done repositioning in both directions and loved it. The only problem with going west to east is you lose an hour almost every sea day as you reset your clocks. Going in the opposite direction you gain an hour almost every night. But there is plenty to do and it makes a good restful cruise as compared to ports every day.

I suspect for the difference in price you’ll be perfectly happy in the PH cabin. If you were on a much longer cruise that included many sea days, like an Oceania crossing, a Vista suite might be worth it because you’d spent more time in your cabin. I say this as someone who will sail his 40th Oceania cruise next Spring and being less than 2 weeks a PH is just great for us on that cruise. We’re doing a much longer cruise next month that includes a ocean crossing and will be in the Vista suite, which we love, on that cruise with so many sea days.

I talked to Mr. Rodriquez a number of years ago in a conversation with he and Frank Del Rio when he was at Oceania. I found him pleasant and thoughtful (we’ve been avid cruisers for years & have experienced many top cruise lines…Oceania is our most cruised). I’m hopeful he will be able to bring aboard experienced management and staff to bring Atlas up to the standards it must meet to compete effectively in the industry. I like the Atlas concept and would love to give it a try. If someone finds his email I’ll try to connect.

KBrote, if you are comfortable doing both the ground reservations and the air reservations yourself I’d suggest you do so. We do that part on every Oceania cruise. But, transferring the cruise booking to an experienced cruise specialist who has a relationship with Oceania. It gives you leverage if any issues arrive. Second if the TA you choose is an Oceania Cruise Connoisseur member (top 30 Oceania Cruise TA’s) you are ore likely to get what Carol mentions above. I’m sure you can find a good one even though Cruise Critic does not allow us to recommend any specific TA.

Cliff-fill, when you are on a repositioning cruise over a major ocean, as you seem to have been,, you are absolutely going to get fewer ports. We cruise Oceania often and sometimes take the repositioning cruises just relax a bit more.

Having sailed both lines I’d completely agree with Flatbush Flyer. While we’ve done many cruises longer than 35 days, if you are on that long a cruise Oceania is a more pleasant experience, partially because it will have great quality of the varied food and because it’s adult only experienced cruiser mix will provide a wonderful chance to enjoy the passenger type they attract. I’d also agree with his assessment of the Intercontinental Hotel in Papeete, where we have stayed a couple of times.

FasterFlyer, check the Roll Calls for Oceania Sirena & if you don’t find your cruise on the Roll Call you can start one for your cruise

Life is short and giving up travel and particularly cruising on Oceania with what often turns out to be needless travel worries is not even a consideration for us. We have already since last fall’s reopening gotten in 4 cruises as well as other trips. We do take precautions when we travel. For example, we always come into an embarkation port at least one day early and often even earlier to spend extra time enjoying the area. We attach an “Apple Air Tag” to each checked bag so we know exactly where that bag is at any time anywhere in the world. We even have Apple Air Tags on our carry on bags and our car keys in case of loss. As long as anyone with an iPhone is near the Air Tag we can use the “Find My” function on our iPhone to know exactly where everything is. And yes, we have used this to prove to an airline exactly where a piece of loss luggage was. We are also fortunately 1K elite travelers with United and that, plus having the United credit card, gets us through any air issues including missed or canceled flights with VIP treatment (including being automatically rebooked on replacement flights). Staying with United or Star Alliance airlines protects us well from the inevitable surprises of travel. We recommend to our friends that they pick a favored air carrier and get its travel credit card for free bags and a bit of elite status to protect themselves a bit more.

We done this before and used Uber. Had no problem getting to LAX for a noon flight. In fact we had 2. 1/2 hours at the airport to relax before our flight.

Medea, I should have added since you are in the UK their are flights to the UK from Trieste airport if you don’t want to fly from Venice.

We ended up in Trieste twice on Oceania cruises that were originally going to Venice in the last year. In both cases there were free transfers offered by Oceania to the Venice airport. Please note, however, there were not free transfers into Venice proper. If you end up in Trieste and are planing to fly out that morning you want to schedule a flight out of Venice and it is a better idea to schedule a late morning or early afternoon flight out of Venice because the transfer time to Venice to be safe in catching you flight is about an hour of driving and leaving yourself two hours at the Venice airport before tour flight, you can fly out of Trieste but the airport is smaller and this likely will force you to fly to another European city to catch a trans Atlantic flight back to the US. if you are not flying out that day but are planning to visit Venice for a few days after the flight I saw people taking the airport transfer and then because their bags transferred with them just taking a fairly easy transfer from the airport into Venice. Not sure if they did this legitimately or just gave a fake flight number and time to Oceania to get the free transfer. Oceania did not offer free transfers into Venice only to the airport. If we ported into Trieste and had a day on ship Before we disembarked Oceania did offer ship tours that day to Venice. I will tell you if you’ve been to Venice previously and don’t buy the Oceania tour to Venice Trieste is, absolutely, worth a visit.

Jan Cruz…We are actually leaving from LA port in San Pedro September 25 this year from LA to Tokyo on Regatta. Of course this cruise has been canceled two years in a row when we’ve been booked on it so maybe this is a “signal” that Oceania would prefer not to sail from LA.

My TA agent is an Oceania Connoisseur Club Member (Top 20 in North America). If your agent has that title you’ll get exceptional service because she/he can get around many issues you might run into. They don’t get that title unless they are really good and really experienced with Oceania.

Let’s make it a three…I agree with you both of you that the Wi-Fi on Oceania is in need of an upgrade of some kind or another. I suspect one question will be is If Starlink has enough worldwide coverage. As of last month it has coverage enough in 32 countries that you can buy a hook up kit.. It announced last year that it expected to have world wide coverage and they do have on their coverage map dots all over the world indicating satellites so maybe they can handle ships worldwide. Does anyone know the answer to whether they have enough coverage bandwidth to service a cruise line like NCL Corp everyplace it sales.

ORV, thanks for the reply. Yes, we know we can book without the O Life credit but we don’t make that decision until the final payment date to preserve our options.

The amount of Shipboard Credit you get is dependent on a number of items. Part of the reason we get so much Shipboard credit is our Platinum status from having sailed so much, part is because as our O Life benefit we choose credit, part of it has to do with credit we get for paying with an American Express credit card. For example, We just booked a 26/day cruise and each got: $150 Amex card $700 O Life credit $250 Platinum credit $150 spa credit For a total of $2500 in credit for both of us Plus we got a $598 gratuities credit for the cabin

Shipboard Credit is given to every passenger booking as a benefit and can be used to pay for any on-board expense not included already. These can be anything from paying for excursions, buying drinks, buying items in the shops on-board, getting spa treatments, attending wine tastings etc. As you move up in cruise points through your loyalty your Shipboard Credit amounts increase. We have taken many Oceania cruises and are not heavy drinkers so we now find we have trouble using up all our Cruise Credits on many cruises and end up buying clothes and other things in the shops to use our extra credits by the end of the cruise. Why? Because they expire at the end of the cruise if you don’t use them. As the old saying goes…”you can’t take them with you”