BBQ Lover

Jimmy, we have been watching your videos for awhile now, and we really enjoy them.

It's been over two years since I have cruised with Azamara and visited these boards. I'm not surprised to see that Bonnie is still here telling people how it's totally normal and okay for Azamara to cancel and/or change your vacation whenever they feel it to be more profitable for them. What I am surprised to see is that a lot of the same people are still here and lodging the same complaints about the cancellations. We said no to Azamara's self centered policies and moved on to other cruise lines. Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

Can you get coffee drinks like Cafe Mochas with the Classic Package? Also, is there a difference in the types of coffee drinks available between the Classic Package and Premium Package?

Thanks everybody for all of the information. We ended up booking with the Connoisseur Club TA in Canada and we are going on Riviera for Christmas 2019 and New Year's. We got the free gratuities and other good stuff that comes from dealing with a Connoisseur Club TA. We took the O Life On Board Credit. We found a more expensive excursion that we would like to do and the cooking classes look like fun, so we went with the OBC. Plus I always need to buy a cruise line baseball cap and maybe a couple of other souvenirs. Thanks again Kevin

Thank you both for the very detailed information. It looks like we will definitely be going with the OBC option. We haven't actually booked yet and we have been looking for an O Connoisseur's Club (OCC) TA. We actually found a brick and mortar OCC TA near us in California but they want to charge a $350pp cancellation fee in the unlikely event that we would have to cancel, and some other fees that just seem unreasonable (including a document fee, for example). We have also found a Canadian based OCC TA that we read about it in a Forbes Magazine article. The article could not say enough good things about this particular TA. We have not yet reached out to this TA. My only concern would be using a TA from a foreign country, even though I assume that we would be paying in US dollars. Can anybody see any problems with using a Canadian TA? I have even tried asking Oceania for a list of OCC TA's, but they didn't seem too hip on giving out that information

We are looking at booking our first Oceania Cruise and don't really know what to pick. We don't drink, so the beverage package is a no go. The included free shore excursions don't really seem to be doing it for us either, so that just leaves the on board credit. We normally don't spend very much money on a ship, so I'm not really even sure what to spend $800 on. Can the OBC be used to pay gratuities? We're thinking about taking the OBC and applying it towards some of the more expensive excursions, but we can't actually book those until we get onboard. We're not even sure if most of the better excursions sell out pre cruise or not, and we're curious as to what you veteran O cruisers have experienced in the past. Besides, we stopped doing ship excursions years ago because we prefer to do things independently. I guess we could always just spend the money on spa treatments, but I would like to find a little better use for the money. Or I guess we could try taking the included excursions. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

The 36" that we just had on Eurodam. It has really cool flashing and it was well worth the eighty bucks. Everyone commented about how cool it was while I was carrying it off of the dam ship

We are planning on putting our 36" tree on the counter between the coffee maker and the lamp, or we might move the lamp and put it in the corner, or we might put it in front of the window so we can see it from the balcony. It could also end up on the counter on the other side of the couch or possibly on the wet bar.

I didn't think to ask about where to hang it. We were too worried about busting out a tape measure to see what size we thought would work. We even ended up looking at our stateroom on halfacts.com to make sure it looked like there would be good spots to put the tree.

There is also a wreath available this year.

We just called and got the 36" version. We are driving home from the cruise port so we should have room in the car for it and our luggage. We are sailing from December 16th to the 23rd so we won't actually be on for Christmas ourselves. We hadn't been back to see the picture of the 16" version until just now. If so, then we may have just gotten the 28"

The Cyber Sale was definitely more than one day last year. I believe it was a full week. We got a good price, free gratuities, and a $25 soda card. We also booked through a big box TA and got a 7% OBC.

Does anybody know how to order one of the HAL Christmas Trees for our stateroom? I looked under gifts and indulgences but it was not there. Thanks Kevin

It's a good thing that you were able to quickly avert your eyes. Just take a deep breath and try to relax. I'm here to help you. The number one thing you need now is strict adherence to the Billy Graham Rule. Only Mrs W can protect you now so make sure that she is with you every time you are within 2500 feet of the MDR and those lust inspiring statues. It seems a little extreme but it is the only way to make sure that you don't attack those statues and try to steal their virtue. Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

HAL staterooms are larger and their ships hold significantly less people than Princess. For example a Mini Suite on Princess is roughly 320 square feet while the Signature Suite on HAL his roughly 400 square feet. That's why we prefer HAL over Princess. Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk