jondfk

I will be waiting eagerly for your report as we sail Odyssey for Alaska in August. Final payment is due in about a month and we are questioning the logic of keeping the booking. It's big money (at least by our standards) and it will be a crushing disappointment if the product offers falls far short of the expectations set. Jon

I'll offer a perspective around an extra, unplanned day in port, from our sailing on Regatta last September. We boarded in Los Angeles just as a weak hurricane was approaching northern Baja, our foreign port was meant to be Ensenada the day following something that seemed foolhardy under the circumstances, we hoped a waiver to the PSA might be requested and granted sending north along the coast of California as planned, alas that didn't happen. Instead, we remained tied adjacent to the pier in San Pedro for 27 hours following our planned departure. O managed to pull together a short list of shore excursions for that extra day - a list a bit longer than their normal offload day offerings. Many took advantage, others took some time around the San Pedro waterfront or made short independent excursions to Pacific Palisades and the like. A port was lost (Eureka I think) which was a shame, but the time aboard was thoroughly pleasant. At times like these, life is what you make it, and it is helpful to know in advance to allow for a bit of planning.

Couple comments here. A year ago we were on Regatta most of April and saw pre-release materials onboard about mid April as AK1004 said. On the other hand, I used my personal cruise consultant to make a new booking yesterday and in the process asked him when the next tranche will be released, I mentioned May, he emphatically responded no, it's going to be August. Correct? I do not know, but that's from an O insider who should (but doesn't necessarily) know. jon

This was still the practice on O when we sailed last September. Know what else? The line (to the extent there was one) moved much faster with a dedicated staffer serving leaving everyone free to manage their plate and communicate their wishes.

Singapore Airlines in general and Changi airport in particular can make one forget how terrible air travel has become more broadly. Competence and professionalism are on display. In my opinion service can feel a bit cold and impersonal, but the script will be followed to the last period. Flying SingAir is sure to help put OP's travel angst aside right at the start of the journey. Enjoy.

What a spectacular idea. Here’s hoping it goes fleet wide, at least some evenings.

Okay, if we’re going that far down the rabbit hole, can I suggest you compose, but not send an email to yourself. Leave it in your drafts folder. Why? Well, who really knows how many jumps a sent email takes between you and whoever. Leaving it in your drafts folder keeps those sensitive documents available to you, but doesn’t pass them through anyone else fingers. As a rule I don’t pass my identification around via email or otherwise unless absolutes necessary.

North Wales eh, spent a bit of time in St Asaph myself 😉

So slickers, jumpers, boots and shorts huh 😂

Sailed only once with Celebrity about 20 years ago on Mercury. We migrated to O from Princess last year for the usual reasons. Very satisfied with O though comparisons to Mercury are difficult given the haze of time, but I do regard our 3 sailings on Regatta in 2022 as in our top 5. Perfect, no, we had issues particularly on our first sailing from Papeete, but still we are booked on two more with O and looking at a third. Happy to take on any specific questions.

Here’s a bit of experience from my side. We arrived in San Pedro on Regatta 3x last year. The first, terminating a trans pacific from Tahiti, the other 2 on Coastals of the sort that your booked on. on our Tahiti arrival there was no immigration check as we’d been cleared upon arrival in Honolulu some days prior. On the other hand we had ~75 Covid cases on board, STILL pax were leaving the ship by 8:30, with no pressure pushing us off early, we were still out of the terminal and in a cab by 9:15. For the two Coastals disembarkation started shortly after 8 and we were in our car after leg #2 by 8:45. Make sure the ship knows you need to be amongst the first groups off, head directly to lax and I assume you’ll be fine. Comfortable, perhaps not, but in time. Final point, in our experience cabs are plentiful at San Pedro, Uber/Lyft is a bit hit or miss.

Yes, on the June 11 sailing. Hmmm. Is that an experience based suggestion? We sailed Oceania last year for the first time and loved it, but the embarkation and lunch experiences were the very worst 180 minutes of the entire cruise with endless passport (6x), credit card (4x) and covid questions (3x) before the gangway and all 580 guests crammed into the Terrace Cafe for a few hours before cabins were released, we swore off early arrival and for two subsequent sailings we timed our arrival for 3:30pm and had a lovely experience getting on board. Seabourn aren't Oceania but we're wondering if it isn't best to arrive "late" and let those more eager get onboard for that first meal? However, if your experience has you suggesting Seabourn have the whole arriving and meal process for embarkation day worked out much better - we will follow your advice and arrive in time for lunch. In any case, we're in Copenhagen for two days prior (independent) and can arrive whenever it's best advised. That's in advance for the benefit of your experience.

I've throughly enjoyed following along with Mr. & Mrs. Fudge on this Odyssey (er Ovation?). We're new to Seabourn and will make our first and second sailings this year, first to Norway on Ovation in June, then Alaska on Odyssey in August. We lap up these "live from" threads reading and rereading actual experiences with delight. Thank you so much for helping build our anticipation. Sorry Mrs came home with Covid, Mrs. Jon likewise turned up positive on a day after test following our sailing on Oceania. Hope Mrs. Fudge has a quick recovery to full strength!

Susan, Mary. I’m Jon we will be onboard as well, hope to meet you there. As to these very adventurous tours, really not for us, still I appreciate watching you work out your plans. DW was crushed when the stop for Flan railway was cancelled, something she really looked forward to.

I’ll add another factor that turns out to be important, the length of your sailing. Shorter sailings put a lot of pressure on available times as most folks want to try everything. We sailed thrice last year on Regatta, two 8 days and one 18 day, on the 8 day sailings early times and tables for two were challenging, on the 18 day, space was available same day, the vast majority of the time. ultimately being a bit flexible we got into Toscana and Polo at least once each on the 8 days and a total of 4 nights on the 18 day.

We will be on there with you, see you onboard.

DW wears basically the outfit you describe as her evening "uniform". Capri's, a nice blouse, she has a pair of white evening sandals that she wears 9 days out of 10. Never a question or raised eyebrow in the GDR or any specialty on Regatta on our 3 sailings last year. I think they are trying to keep beach shoes e.g. flip flops out of the GDR. Anything more than that is perfectly okay in our experience. One further comment. The GDR in particular, but the interior of the ship in general tended towards cool in the evenings. DW always had a scarf available and moved up to a "heavy" scarf after a few evenings when she couldn't fight off the chill. For the gents my "uniform" consists of taupe color twill "golf" pants, a long sleeved dress shirt, my "cruise loafers" (a nice pair that have never set foot on anything other than teak or carpet), never a tie or jacket - I'm done with all that. A polo would be fine, but it's just not my preference in the evenings. Again never a raised eyebrow or comment. Enjoy

I'll reply too, a long time Princess loyalist, Elite for a few years. Most recently booking nothing less that CC and when possible full suites. We gave Oceania a try for the first time just about a year ago. What motivated us was the sale of the Pacific Princess on which we had two bookings. While we've loved Princess and undoubtedly will sail again given their heavy presence on the west coast we've seen service decline and ship size increase. The final straw was our unfortunate luck sailing on the February 2020 cruise to Hawaii that landed us in quarantine for a totally of 22 days (8 on the ship, 14 at Travis). We sailed in a PH2 on Regatta in last April, the same cabin on Pacific Princess would have been a CC mini. It was clear from the first moments that we had wandered into an upgraded environment. A butler to look after our small needs and serve breakfast most days in the room, nothing like this exists on Princess. A request for "special" soft drinks in the mini-bar, no big deal (mostly) and refreshed as often as needed, sometimes more than once in a day, again, nothing like this exists on Princess. The list goes on and on. Food and dining. Quality of food was good everywhere on the ship. We were less impressed with service in the specialties, but this was because service in the MDR was quite excellent, the specialties could not hope to greatly surpass. We never failed to secure a table for 2 in the MDR when we asked for one. Terrace cafe had excellent food but we found a good deal of jostling and pushing in the very small space - this we solved by going in just a bit later - by 30 minutes after opening the starving hoards had been sated and the experience greatly improved, in this regard, the large buffets on the Royal class ships of Princess were clearly ahead (in terms of access, not food quality). Being such a small ship crew members very quickly remembered your preferences, especially bar staff who were quick to deliver excellent service. Our boarding experience in Papeete was probably one of the worst in memory. No organization whatsoever many steps duplicated again and again (6 passport checks, 3 credit card scans, 4 covid doc checks). Sailing with Princess around the same time was a breeze by comparison. The onboard experience following boarding was little better way too many people for the limited capacity of Terrace cafe and rooms made available far too late to get folk out of the hot humid air. We've sailed twice more with Oceania since, both times on Regatta. We're hooked and could be called converted if only O would plan more west coast sailings (unfortunately they seem to be moving the opposite direction dropping down of 0-1 west coast sailings before and after the Alaska season when in the past they've typically done 2). We most recently sailed with Princess to burn down the last of our credits and FCC's, while I'm sure we'll sail again, we have no bookings and purchased no FCC's onboard - for the first time in over a decade. On the other hand we have two future bookings on O and have 2 FCC's in our account. We do have future sailings on Seabourn and Viking and likely will choose a favorite once having done so, Oceania though have made a great first, second and third impression which will be hard to top.

What can I say, this being our first with Seabourn, and not having a TA that specializes with them, we booked direct. Probably paid more as a result, but one small advantage seems to be that we see our onboard account prior to boarding.

Okay, happy to help. I log on to the Seabourn website. I select a booking (I have two, I'm sure some have many more than that). When the booking opens I click "Make a Payment" near the upper right. The next screen shows my balance, or $0 if I'm fully paid. Scroll down the page and I see my cabin number and my onboard credit. What it exactly says is: "Vista Suite: Veranda Suite (V4) Midship 8 (cabin number) + $400 Onboard Credit" Before I sent my shareholder form in it said ". . . + $150 Onboard Credit" it's a two week cruise so $250 for shareholder benefit gets me to $400. Hope this helps.

With all due respect, just logged on to finish our shore excursions and sure enough the onboard credit has increased to include the shareholder benefit. Go to payments, next to the cabins number, on board credit is displayed. There's no detail listed, but I know what credit was offered at booking and the figure increased by the shareholder benefit since I last looked.

I sent my request to that email last Monday. Got and automated response within 5 minutes and, on Thursday a short response confirming the amount and booking numbers. Haven’t logged on to confirm my account, but the second email was quite clear. Send again me thinks.

A few comments for OP, truly, I know what you mean emotionally. Maybe our story will help (or not?). We're looking forward to our very first Seabourn cruise in June (Ovation to Norway). We're not new to cruising moving sailed dozens of times on mainstream lines, mainly Princess. Included was the ill fated voyage of Grand Princes in February 2020, the one that was sent to quarantine. We ended up quarantined on the ship for 8 days, then sent to Travis for an additional 14 days. We wondered if we'd ever sail again. We have. We returned to Princess last February with a "starter" 10 day cruise to Mexico. Followed by 3 sailings on Oceania in April and September. With a second Princess sailing to Alaska sandwiched in between (lots of cruise credits to burn in our case). I'm quite certain we're changed forever by our Grand experience. For example, I know I'll never leave a prescription bottle at home again. What good are meds that you can't get to, "take enough for the trip and a small cushion" eh, no, we'll bring everything, every time, forever I think. Book non-refundable hotel rooms prior or post cruise, nope, never again, pay a bit more and avoid a fight over force major. We still anticipate upcoming cruises, including our upcoming first on SB. But the excitement hasn't returned to what it was previously, and perhaps it never will. A small example, I'm the sort who loved getting bags out early and starting to prepack all those little things that I only use when we sail. But I just can't do it any more, I've become a last weekend before sort of packer, and that's fine. The small satisfactions received from packing my swim suit early has to be weighed against the possibly every trip could be cancelled right up until departure. Sigh. Still we sail, we enjoy, we anticipate, but never again with the same "it'll be fine, don't worry about what could go wrong" attitude. I assure you though, once you start up the gangway, you'll find your spirits lifted and heart light.

I’ll kick in as a Princess veteran with 25 sailed voyages. Sailed thrice with O in 2022, and one with Princess to burn down our Travis quarantine credit. I’m sure we will sail Princess again, they just have too much coverage on the west coast. That said, if O chooses to do more on this coast we would be fully converted. Loved, loved loved our first 3 experiences. More already booked in ‘24 and ‘25.

My O experience is limited, 3 sailings, all in 2022. All in PH2. All on Regatta. That said, I've never seen anything other than the message you mention. I regard this as "normal" for O though I don't know why it happens. On our April sailing, I called my O personal booking person (yes, I know, I know, don't book direct . . . but it was our first O experience and the fares and add ons are so confusing I wanted expert counsel) anyway, he was able to add the drink package within 60 seconds.