MEFIowa

So, when did you book that SM cruise? And was it actually booked under a SALE? For example, when SM was introduced it was in conjunction with the Summer Sale: "SUMMER SALE up to 40% SAVINGS Limited Time Offer. Book Now! Offer Expires August 31, 2023"

Did you actually BOOK that cruise under the 2023 SUMMER SALE at the start of "SM"? The SUMMER SALE, not SM, got you savings. I booked our ONE SM cruise off the SS. I booked it 13 July 2023. And I'm holding two SS brochures in my hand (received one on July 12th and the other on July 15th): "SUMMER SALE up to 40% SAVINGS Limited Time Offer. Book Now! Offer Expires August 31, 2023"

Since we did "cruise only" and brought our own alcohol on board for Riviera (12/2021), Sirena (11/2022) and Riviera (10-11/2023), that is a real concern. We only did the 12-night SM as the B2B to maximize our airfare "value" since the two cruises mostly didn't duplicate the ports and we doubt we'll ever be back to the Baltic. Same reason we did 20-night B2B in the Med on Riviera, cruising from Izmir (Ephesus) and Istanbul (Constantinople) all the way west to Marseilles and Barcelona with about 12 other ports in between (including Athens, Bari, Heraklion, Kavala, Kotor, La Spezia, Messina (Taormina), Naples, Rome, Split, and Venice). We may be done with O. I'm interested in Madagascar. O won't cut up some long cruises that go to Madagascar & E. Africa. And Guyana & Surinam, which O doesn't do. BUT I did Paraguay for 14 days all by myself in 2022, so not a problem. I travel to see interesting places and meet interesting people, not to be on a ship.

And VALUE and CONVENIENCE are two different concepts. We're discussing the former, not the latter. So they are paying someone else more for that "convenience". That isn't value, esp. if the product they receive is inferior or more expensive. So the downside is value.

Whether the cabin is a G or a C or an A1 or PH2 doesn't matter. The price increased. And they each received the same thing. Pennies on the dollar beer and wine at lunch & dinner in the restaurants and excursion specific credit. But feel free to determine the price PD for the increases based on cruise length. NOW, we see O reduce the excursion credits and people complaining about availability of getting O excursions they want. O forced people to try to book O excursions but then apparently forget to increase supply in line with increased demand. AND any "value" in the O excursion can only truly be determined by comparing to non-O excursions that one could do. An apples-to-apples comparison. I was so unimpressed with O's excursions off Riviera 12/2021 and Sirena 11/2022 that we did NONE. Had so much OBC for Riviera 10-11/2023 that we did some to burn up the credits. Nothing special about them and over priced for what you got.

Again, VALUE is in reference to ACTUAL prices paid for actual goods and services. We can compare PRE- and POST-SM prices on cruises in 2023 and 2024. I've given you my data. But those other posters never give their data. Hard numbers by cruise.

Though you're being vague and overly generalized. I WATCHED cruises I had booked pre-SM suddenly go up in price $800 PP. So, any "value" for SM starts with an analysis of: "This cruise was $xxxx.xx. Now it is $xxx.xx PLUS $800." The SM program "adds" a SMALL amount of beer and wine at lunch & dinner in the restaurants. Not even worth $20 PD. So that leaves a lot of money you've paid.... ... for their overpriced excursion credits. Yes, it all but FORCES you to use some of their excursions, but we're still doing OUR OWN for major excursions. We paid for private excursions to Ephesus and Rome off Riviera last year (Nov). The ship docked, the gangplank lowered, the door opened, and we were the very first people off the ship seeing our driver and car waiting for us to get to Rome. I'd bet we were half-way to Rome before the first O bus departed! Same for Ephesus. Our upcoming 22-night B2B is a 12-night SM cruise off the Summer Sale 2023 and a 10-night cruise book in 2022 well before SM. Upgraded our original G to a large C1 from a sale in Oct 2022. It is fascinating how the 12-night cruise is all essentially available and the 10-night cruise all essentially waitlisted. So far, cruisers haven't seen "value" in the SM program compared to pre-SM sales.

O opened 2023 with a 20th Anniversary Sale and then had at least another 5-7 major sales that year. O opened 2024 with the Holiday Sale. So pretty good bet we'll see another year of sales. Always worth it to track each one as they come along. And who knows, maybe we'll both again get to use something like the ESS! We've got our 22-night Baltic B2B on Sirena starting August 2024. The 12-night start is essentially all available now, while the 2nd part is essentially all waitlisted. I'm hoping the 1st may go on a serious sale soon! We booked the 2nd part in 2022 before SM.

We bring our own beer, hard liquor and wine on board. And we try to spend as much time off ship in ports and doing excursions that we can. So a glass of wine or a beer at lunch, when we're ashore, has very limited value. But then in Italy last November off Riviera I found a nice bottle of Italian red in a grocery store for E1.49. And I could buy 3 bottles of decent Italian red or white wine in Naples for E5.00 total. We have not and will not buy a "drinks package" whether a cruise is SM or not. We've had 4 cruises (40) nights on O since 12/2021, none SM and two more cruises in 2024, 1 SM and the other not.

We paid E15.50 each to take the train from Venice to Trieste 10/30/23. Worked perfectly. Simple taxi ride from pier to train station in Trieste.

We're on a 22-night B2B on Sirena from London to Stockholm and Stockholm to Copenhagen in Aug-Sept 2024. I don't anticipate any changes and so far it has all been good. Booked this back in early 2022 when the itinerary was released. The 2023 and 2024 about the same time in early 2022.

Though it depends entirely upon your cruise. Spent 20 nights on Riviera in the Med, 10/30-11/19, 2023. They did change Venice to Trieste in early 2022 and gave us OBC. The ONLY port problem for 16 ports (Istanbul had overnight both cruise) was rough weather diverted us from Livorno to La Spezia. We made all the other ports. And IIRC minimal changes in arrival and departure times when I compare the original booking from 2022 with the actual cruise more than 18 months later.

I believe the pool depths were about the same on both Riviera and Sirena, so... I'm 6'2". I could stand up and breathe. Pool over 5'. Closer to 6' than 5'. Salt water pools, so easy to float! The Riviera pool a bit wider and longer than Sirena's. You could "swim" some short laps back and forth, if a lot of people aren't in it. Or just float. I loved to do that, just looking up into the sky. So really up to her given her height and ability to both swim and float.

We did an A4 and an A3 on Riviera along with a B3. All 3 cabins essentially identical. Just differing in locations fore & aft or starboard & port. The concierge cabin gets you its perks. Being close to concierge lounge & laundry facility forward on deck 9 is nice, esp. if you do laundry on board a couple times. (We did our laundry 5 times on our 20-night B2B because we had 3 nights prior in Venice and 3 nights after in Barcelona.)

I originally booked these as lower-level cabins but used the Extraordinary Savings Sale to upgrade. We did an A4 on Riviera in 12/2021, so I knew the benefits of the concierge cabins. We only paid $1749 PP for the B3 which was a bit less than the $1899 PP for the A3.

READ your daily CURRENTS the night before to KNOW exactly what will be offered, exactly where and when.

We were on Riviera 10/30-11/19, 2023 on a B2B from Trieste to Athens and then Athens to Barcelona. Magnificent ship and crew. We had a wonderful time. We were in an A3 and then moved to a B3. We cruise mainly for excursions and doing things off the ship, so we have pretty reasonable expectations about the lack of night life, the limited entertainment, the small pool, etc. We absolutely love the food, esp. the Terrace Cafe buffet. So much so that in 30 nights on her we've never eaten in the GDR. We don't like slow meals and prefer to serve ourselves. And I am so thankful I can bring all my own beer, hard liquor and wine on board at embarkation and at ports! (We first fell in love with Riviera on a 10-night W Caribbean cruise on her 12/2021, our very first cruise ever.)

When we were on Harvest Caye off Riviera 12/2021 there were golf carts to take you to the boat and vice versa, avoiding the long pier. Being in good health, wife and I walked both ways and just looked at the people on the carts. IIRC the pier at Roatan was not very long and there was the tourist trap area with shops at the bow of the ship. [There were some very elderly gentlemen on board. Spoke with a man in his 90s during the veterans' meet & greet. He was Merchant Marine from the 1940s. Remember him looking longingly at the cranes for the crummy industrial Santo Tomas Port (Honduras). His son, my age, said it brought back memories for him.]

We were on Sirena 11/19-29/2022 for 10 nights in the E. Caribbean. Loved her and our smallish B2 cabin. So much so, that we're back on Sirena 8/28-9/19/2024 on a B2B in the Baltic. This time in an F and one of the upper deck big C1s. Just have reasonable expectations and be prepared to be happy. (We just did a magnificent 20-night B2B on Riviera in the Med in Oct-Nov 2023.)

And that can be a serious reality. On Sirena 11/2022 there was a woman my wife and I called "The Ghost". She'd come up once an hour to the smoking area by the pool, ask what time it was, smoke, and then leave. One evening she told me wife (who smokes) that she needed help getting to her cabin and getting ready. My wife, an angel, escorted her to her cabin and helped her prepare. She came back and said, "I didn't see any signs of anyone else in the cabin." This lady should NOT have been cruising.

No, your World Card is just plastic and gets you in cabin. You'd have to get your own tracking devices or system. Me, I leave my CP behind when I'm on vacation. Though I'm chuckling a bit thinking of the 22-year-old on Sirena 11/2022. Met him and his family (younger sister, mother and father). He got so drunk one night on his birthday at the casino... He had the 2-day hangover. I'm sure his mother wished she had some active tracking system to keep him from bars and casinos on cruises!

Do keep in mind that the specialty restaurants require a reservation. On Riviera 10-11/2023 we found that there really wasn't a 9 pm reservation. We had been forced to take a 9 pm reservation, but they changed that to 8:30 that day. The few last dinners arrived at 8:30. The restaurants emptying out around 9 pm, so weird experience. We don't like to eat late so for the 8:30 reservations we had to take off our B3 cabin (non-concierge), we skipped bread and/or appetizer or dessert, and told the waitress what we wanted up front, to expedite things. This got us out by 9:30. When the place was all but empty. (We did a 20-night B2B so our A3 concierge cabin got us earlier reservations on the 1st 10 night.) NO reservation needed for the GDR or TC (the buffet).

"Southern Gary" and I met on Riviera in 11/2023. He uses his TA. And yet we both booked the same cruise off the Extraordinary Savings Sale. His TA didn't directly get him that price. That was an O sale. And I met people on the cruise who used a TA and paid a lot more than I did, as I watched SALES and used the ESS from earlier in 2023 to get 10 nights in a B3 for just $1749 and 10 nights in an A3 for just $1899. When I told some how LITTLE I paid, they almost teared up. IIRC, one said something like, "I wish I'd paid that little for this cruise!" Southern Gary's booze bill alone was a significant % of the cost of my cruise. And I didn't lack for beer, hard liquor or wine on the cruise or in the suitcase flying home, as I bring my own on board at embarkation and in ports. I didn't need a TA to book a cruise only ESS cabin where we did our own airfare and excursions, again saving a ton.

Yes, IF I were to rebook the future 2024 cruise I booked in 2022 SM would cost me the extra amount as I've documented. A truly significant amount of increase. I even gave you the prices from the years and sales. SM did not reduce cabin rates by a penny. Sales may. But SM raised prices pretty much across the board. AND I can compare the SM price increases to the prices I paid in 2021 for 2021 and 2022 cruises. Again, significant increases in price.

The prices of the booked cruise WENT UP HUGELY under SM. That's the basic issue. I can readily compare my pre-SM booked cruise to the ongoing price of the same future cruise (which won't happen until the end of summer). And I DO compare the price for EACH NEW O SALE. So, far I've tracked the price across the original Summer Sale to the later Black Friday and to today's New Year's Sales. All SM. What is weird but telling is that I'M GIVING ACTUAL REAL PRICES, from 2022, 2023 and 2024 for the same cruises in 2024! Pre- and post-SM. Everyone else? Crickets on real prices. Vague statements.