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I expect the cruise lines are watching this situation carefully.  Some cruises could decide to replace Barcelona with a different Spanish or French port of call.  The much more difficult situation is that Barcelona is a major embarkation/disembarkation port and rescheduling the flights of potentially tens of thousands passengers would be huge.  I am already in Europe and planning to arrive in Barcelona by train the day before my cruise embarks on November 6th.

I had always thought of HAL as a line that followed all the rules and that prided itself on passenger safety and environmental protection, etc.  I am disappointed.

https://www.travelweekly.com/Cruise-Travel/Judge-threatens-to-stop-Carnival-ships-from-docking-in-US

If you google Tom's cruise port guides, you will find a PDF document with very detailed information about how to do Brugge on your own.

I agree that booking with a travel agent is the way to go because they are there to solve problems and the agency almost always provides an extra shipboard credit, wine tasting, or something to thank you for your business.

There are separate threads on cruise critic about the advantages/disadvantages of booking cruise only or O-Life with air. We always arrive at least a day prior to boarding the ship so there is a deviation fee to consider. We do not live near a gateway city so there is an additional cost for the extra flight segment to consider. Some people are happy flying the lowest cost economy fare and some want more leg room and/or services or specifically wish to use a favourite airline. In each case, I need to analyse it to see what's going to work best for us.

Then I need to consider the actual value of the O-Life perks to us. We rarely do ship shore excursions although there would be some places in the world where I would do ship excursions. We drink less than the beverage package. So, the shipboard credit may be the best choice for us. But again, it needs to be analysed to see what's most beneficial for a specific cruise.

We do not live in a gateway city and bought our cruise with the O Life package including air. We've paid the air deviation fee and Oceania ticketed us through to our home city for less than we'd pay on our own for the extra flight. There is an advantage to being ticketed through as you don't have to collect your baggage and recheck it. At least from Canada, if you are doing a transAtlantic, the one way airfares are expensive. Bottom line is that I could not have purchased airfare on my own for the difference between cruise only and the O Life package even including the deviation fee. But the economics would be different for flights in North America only, so I'd have to look at it to decide.

DH and I have wine with dinner every night and sometimes on sea days with lunch as well. We'll probably buy the 7 bottle packages once we're on board. There is no way we'd drink enough to make a beverage package worthwhile. But beverage packages seem to be a big draw for some people. Our first experience with one was on a HAL ship. Their policy is to serve wine by the glass one glass at a time. You have to finish the first glass before you get another one. This is a more labour intensive wine and beverage service and can mean poorer service for those who are buying by the bottle or a la carte glasses of wine.

We don't do many shore excursions so we opted for the shipboard credit which will more than pay for our wine with dinner.

The November 14th TA to Miami will need to be altered as it had planned stops in St.Maartin and St.Thomas.

 

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Our travel agent forwarded an email from Oceania early last week with the replacement ports. If you sign in to manage your cruise you will find the replacement ports listed. When I last checked, no shore excursions were listed but that may have changed.

I think some forget how small Europe is (compared to US). BA to LHR, LH to FRA, AF to CDG, are all 1-2 hour flights to VCE.

In addition, I personally love to explore various European cities prior to boarding a cruise.

Just an option flying PE somewhere else and then taking a short and inexpensive flight for your cruise port.

Cheers,

John

I agree. We're flying to FRA and then to Bologna. I've booked the train to Venice. I think that if you're paying for a deviation [change in dates], it may be easier to get the time and routing that you prefer. Unfortunately we were not able to get premium economy this time but once we were ticketed, I could put in a bid for an upgrade [an Air Canada option].

I do not know if any of the other airlines offer this or not but Air Canada allows you to bid on an upgrade. You place a "bid" and they will tell you if they accept it 72 hours before departure. I have also noticed that sometimes when I do online check-in there is an upgrade offer available.

I know that Air Canada charges for seat selection on its lowest price fares. If you are booked on Premium Economy, there is no charge for seat selection and if I remember correctly, there is no fee for your 1st checked bag.

[quote name=Solas36;53973554

My question was rather about whether this has happened on other occasions. If so' date=' I was then going to ask how it was communicated to passengers. We were on a port intensive cruise so few passengers would have been on board to hear announcements during the previous day. We certainly were not. So how is it usually communicated to passengers before discovering it in Currents?[/quote]

I have certainly been on cruises where there have been port changes made due to weather and sea conditions. I will be sailing on the Riviera in November this year. Two years ago, I was in the Mediterranean in November and we had some terrible weather -- needed tugs to keep the ship against the dock in Civitavecchia. On that cruise line on port days, the Captain made his navigational update shortly after the all aboard. [but of course, you could turn that off in your stateroom.] The daily program was generally in print by that time -- cannot remember if there was further printed notification or not.

A rare but more difficult situation is when they have to suspend tendering because the sea conditions have worsened unexpectedly. In that situation, I would expect an announcement on board and that passengers returning to the tender dock on shore would be informed in person of the arrangements.

What oldfart432 has posted makes a lot of sense. Certainly on other cruises I've heard stories about horrendous routings by the cruise line but mostly from US passengers. I noticed that Oceania's final payment date is earlier than say HAL's (75 days) which gives them more room to maneuver.

Estimating how many passengers will be flying in for a cruise and flying out afterwards is not too bad but when you think about estimating how many passengers are going to/from each of the gateway cities, that's quite a different matter. I don't know how far in advance a cruise line buys blocks of tickets and how late they can add to those blocks at preferential pricing. I would think they know that almost all of us prefer non-stop flights and that when they bounce us around too much, we start complaining.

On domestic flights, each direction is priced separately but on international flights the pricing is generally round trip. By consolidating the cruise lines are able to split those round trip flights into 2 parts and pass that advantage on to those of us doing trans Atlantic cruises. But doing so gets very complicated. And then the airline changes the equipment or the schedule!

But the cruise lines do know a lot about us [individually and collectively], especially if we are repeat customers. Getting the flights right for most passengers can certainly give the cruise line a competitive advantage. Conversely, if they can't get it right, they should either fix it or stop doing it.

We have booked our first Oceania cruise for November 2017 from Venice to Miami. Once we had made our final payment, our TA was able to book our flights with Oceania. We are flying early because we've never been to northeastern Italy before and we are flying into Bologna rather than Venice as part of our deviation (at no extra charge). In addition, we added the flight from/to our home city to the gateway airport. The additional fare for that was quite reasonable.

I would like to pre-select our seats and upgrade to the seats with more legroom for the overseas flight. Our TA has been told that this cannot be done until after Oceania has issued the tickets which happens anytime after 60 days before departure. Our TA will be contacting Oceania at the 60 day point to get this organized.

On another thread on this topic, people have posted that they have been able to do seat selection and upgrades directly on the airline website once the tickets our issued. We will be flying Air Canada and it appears that if the flights were not booked on their website, you cannot make these changes yourself.

So far, so good but we'll see how it all works out in the end.

We always allow at least 1 "insurance day" to make sure we'll make it to a cruise. If the departure port is somewhere that we've not been before, we plan to spend some time exploring it before the cruise. I have always been astounded at the price per person that cruise lines charge for their pre-cruise hotels even factoring in the transportation to the port. In Europe, we have found that our hotel can recommend a car and driver to pick us up at the airport and/or deliver us to the port.

It has been my experience that at least from Canada, one-way flights to or from Europe are expensive, often more than the cost of a round trip ticket. So anytime we are doing a trans Atlantic, this is a consideration. There are a very few airlines that do reasonably priced one-way tickets, e.g., Iceland Air and Air Transat. The credit for not flying with Oceania arranged flights would not come close to covering even half of what it would cost me to book these flights myself.

We have booked our first cruise with Oceania and our second cruise which includes airfare. We have paid the deviation fee to go early and actually to a different city. We were not charged extra to go to the different city [as the airfares from North America were comparable]. The additional fare we were charged to fly to/from our home city to the gateway airport was about what we would pay for a one-way flight ourselves. These arrangements were made after we had paid the full cruise fare [we booked after the final payment date]. My understanding is that our flights are booked but not ticketed and that ticketing can happen anytime after 60 days before departure. We are flying Air Canada with the final segment in Europe on a shared flight with Lufthansa. I can find the booking on Air Canada's web site but I cannot pre-select seats because the booking was not made on their web site. For the overseas flight, I would really like to upgrade to the seats with more leg room so I am hoping our Travel Agent will be able to accomplish this next week.

One thing that our TA did mention to me is that if Oceania is getting free seats on a flight [because of the number of seats they have purchased], it may not be possible to pre-select our seats.

Funchal is where we leave the EU so it is where we have to get our VAT refund forms stamped. Does anyone know if there is a Portugese Customs office at the port or how to get my forms stamped? Thanks.

We'll be on a trans Atlantic (15 days). This will be our first Celebrity cruise. I'd prefer to pack light. What are the laundry options besides paying for each item individually?

Also, any suggestions on how to purchase wine with dinner most economically. I've looked at the beverage packages available to pre-purchase but we don't drink enough to justify those.

Thanks