jonthomas

Enjoyed Regatta to Alaska last Sept, booked it again for this Sept. Yes many older folks. They are inspiring on an active cruise like that. Plenty of all ages. Its a busy itinerary, the tours are pretty much all the entertainment we need. Hoping to have the good food we had last year.

Someone here said that on a luxury line they have so many more choices for liquor and constantly being offered more. I said if that is the diff between lux and premium, we won't pay for lux since liquor has no incentive for us. O offers us all that we need, even though now we have to pay more for SM.

To add to that. The recent O change to SM, does little for us. But we enjoy so much of what we get with O that we are willing to put up with the fact that we are paying for wines that we will not be consuming.

I guess I can repeat that, talk about YOU missing my point. IF a luxury line is about how much you can drink, the variety, quality, and how you are served those drinks, since we dont consume any alcohol, then we are getting all the luxury we need by sailing a premium line , without the cost. For us it has to be about something other than liquor to pay more. Hope you get my point. I really cant explain it better than that.

Happy to see no kids on O and hope that some do bring their kids will rethink it and take them on Royal carib or Celeb as we do. yes I will be on a Celeb ship next Christmas...woe is me, but its for the grandkids....

doesnt mean anything to those of us that do not consume alcoholic beverages.

And then there is the celebrity class system. They make sure you feel it, so you book their suites at costs greater than Os balconies. No thanks, been there, done that. Now I look back and feel getting to elite plus on Celebrity was worthless and just plain dumb.

is anyone booking anything today... strange to only see tropics and exotics with so many more categories to go.... we also wanted to know if there is a prem econ for the TAs.... the O rep said, the info for that is not loaded yet.... in Canada we dont have the options for prem econ with the airlines that you do in the states... we are very limited in our choices...

I'm also tired of hearing how hard someone is working. It is not the salt or coal mines. Many of us that have or are making it on our own have or are working hard.

so when does the rest come out besides the tropics and exotics till june? will ask my O rep and post it here , if he knows....

not everyone will agree with you that the automatic tips are kept and used to pay salaries. and therefore you have to give additional tips for everything and everyone...yes if you pull out the included tips, $18 pp per day...that is a large sum added daily to your account, if you pull that out, you would certainly feel obliged to reward those that serve you well by other means.... the whole idea of included gratuities ( daily deductions ) was to free you up from those envelopes and the need to make decisions .and chase after people....awful....just done ever want to go back to that...... those that still chose to do the envelopes, gifts and such really undermine the idea of included tipping... a situation comes to mind from our last cruise on the Vista in the Carib....there would be a few areas of the pool deck where it seemed that the pool attendants were gathering, flocking, mobbing, call it what you will.... on closer examination why....there was a cruiser or two who were handing out bills for every glass of water that was brought, every towel etc.... the staff was so busy dealing with this ridiculous practice that it was difficult for anyone else to get attention.... we also experienced on a couple of occasions, being told similar stories by the staff in the Terrace Cafe....single mother, several children back home, O paying very little, have to pay their own bills for training, etc and not being reimbursed by O....etc....we could almost predict how the stories would go...yes of course many have these situations, but the stories were very similar in a variety of ways, using the same English terms... there are those who ruin a perfectly good system of included gratuities by their seeming generosity, grandiosity....etc...it encourages a climate of competition for tips, not a climate of good service... perhaps there are many that are new to O and not sure about how to properly handle the tipping issue... and then there is the story of the lady who is supporting her butler's entire family back in India....

Thank you to all... Everything I have checked is upwards of 500 CAD. Sticking with the Best Western, just to sleep one night.

Anyone see any prem econ offer for TAs

and you may have seen it said that way by me when describing why we no longer sail with Celebrity....for us the food in a regular balcony was no longer edible in the main dining room and often in the buffet as well...hence inedible...now we have done our 10th on O....and are mostly satisfied....

We also moved stuff used to save the chairs.... When the woman returned in the aft, after being gone all morning, she was livid that we had done that. She proceeded to gather all kinds of people known to her and began shouting all kinds of insults at us. She did this the whole time we were there, about an hour and a half, till we finally left to do other things. We left by saying, it is all yours now. For the rest of the cruise, on the Vista, she pointed us out to others, as the low class people that took her chairs. Who needs this kind of behavior on a cruise. Wish O could do something.