pinotlover

+1. Nothing of outstanding qualities, but a couple of each that will go adequately with a meal. That is their primary purpose with the package, to complement the meal adequately. When cruising in wine making areas, we typically pick up high quality local wines and pay the corkage. However, not all areas are wine making areas, nor are high quality wines always available onshore. Then you suck it up and lean of those identifiable wines above.

It would be an interesting experiment to determine during 2023, how many days were the cruises participating in a special “ Sale” versus regular prices. The primary issue is the old 3:1 ratios.” It’s not over till the Fat Lady sings “ as the saying goes. Oceania works hard to sale the cruise, most anyway they can, and ends up having to resell it again and again . We were on a waitlisted early Visita cruise. Come FP, and the Lookie Loues bail, and Oceania never got the ship full. Our upcoming April cruise was fully waitlisted on 12/1/23, then 1/1/24 and FP came and the LL bailed, leaving capacity nearly ship wide. Oceania will be doing sales right up until sailing trying to get a full (er) cruise.

For the OP; Remember that there is not “ a” wine list. The Polo Grill, Toscana, and Jacques all have their own exclusive wine list with wines only available in that venue. However, as FF stated, the markups can be staggering.

Purely coincidence. The system merely keeps track of how many people are eating where. In the past, they monitored how many Specialties meals the cruisers had. Not sure if that’s still part of it.

All this while the senior officers are making continuous announcements to NOT go to your cabin until your deck is called. 😒 Let me guess, you believe that (1) the cabin attendants outrank the senior officers; or (2) you don’t care what protocol is, you’ll just ignore the announcements and do as you please. #2 occurs frequently on Oceania. Ignoring officer and CD announcements.

You will need to keep your possessions with you until your cabin deck is cleared and called. If PH, 1:00-1:30. Below that, anywhere out until 3:00 or 3:30. Another reason we don’t board until 3:00 or after.

I’m on that cruise. Have patience. Have you noticed that in the last two weeks our cruise went from totally waitlisted to availability in most all categories except the top three. FP is 1/2/24. Give it a week for all those cancellations to get updated into the system and you’ll see plenty of tour availability. I haven’t a clue as to reason, but the lookie Lou’s (LL) really pounded this cruise. Now they’re bailing out. I’m expecting Oceania to soon throw this cruise on massive sale. I’ll make some here mad, but I’m glad Oceania is moving to a 150 day FP date, so to get rid of the LL early. Imo, most of those cancellations knew months ago they were bailing, but we’re too impolite ( nice word) to cancel earlier. 🤬 Good Riddance to 90 day prior FP dates! Rant over. Check the tour status again on 1/8. Guessing things will have changed dramatically. I’ll repeat myself from an earlier thread, Oceania needs to block the LL from spending their SM dollars before FP! 😤. The LL are castrating the system! 😡

+1 We avoid Boardamania like a hacking Covid patient. A leisurely lunch ashore and a 2:30-4:00 arrival works wonders for us. No crowds, no hassles, and straight to our cabin. Plenty of time for the buffet line another day. Boardamania 🤮

This has been posted multiple times, but I’ll repost. If one is embarking the ship after a high turnover cruise, and the vast majority of passengers are just embarking likewise, then the chances of getting an extra Specialty reservation is high. This occurs on cruises where the ship runs repeatedly over an itinerary. If, however, one is on a cruise with a low turnover rate and the vast majority of passengers are on B2B+, then the chances for that Embarkment day extra reservation diminishes significantly. All those onboard passengers, carrying over to the next Segment will have first shot at getting that extra reservation. In fact, for them it might not be an extra reservation, but one of their guaranteed. I have been on full Oceania cruises where only about 20% of the passengers have newly embarked. To best evaluate your odds of getting that first night Specialty without a pre booking, carefully analyze your cruise, the embarking port, and if it’s a segment of a popular longer grand cruise.

Begrudgingly agreed. People won’t read Currents. Won’t listen to CD announcements. Won’t read T& Cs. Put up a large sign, they won’t read it. Case in point is the large sign Oceania put up about facial recognition and doing temperature checks. How could people miss it. Oblivious to the Nth. There’s nothing to do with the Speeecciall guest.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. But Oceania cruisers are special and easily offended. Very easily. Case in point is an ongoing thread where a cruiser was made to change their shoes in Toscana. Lots of things that poster could have done to prevent the situation, but they chose to be offended because a Restaurant Manager actually enforced the dress codes. Something many of us applaud. So what happens when a chair hog is Offended because the staff moves his belongings after a couple of hours of absence? We’ll hear about it here. As for the heinous situation at disembarkation, it amazes me how often we get posters wanting to know if they can make that 9:30 flight out of Miami, or some 10:00 out of FCO! They booked them because the itinerary was convenient for them, then months later they want to know if they’re actually doable. Clear the tracks, the morons will line up in front of the elevator doors, with all the luggage, blocking all trying to get off. There is a limit to the number of “ special “ passengers you can have and maintain order. Oceania often exceeds that number.

This was true in South America also. During Covid, many of the small operators went under. They couldn’t make payments on the vehicles and other properties. The big operators bought them. So even though you thought you were dealing with a small operator, it was now part of the big boys being ran out of the main office. We were merely there during the transition.

Regatta just recently left out of Sidney for its circumnavigation of OZ. Probably be a couple days before the jet lag and Holiday cheers reside.

Ignorant people, huh! if I specifically pay for a tour that says we are doing items 1-8,aren’t I entitled to that? Why, if we only do items 1-3 because someone obviously didn’t read the part on walking two miles on unlevel paths and cobblestone streets when they can’t walk a quarter mile, shouldn’t I feel upset? If the tour description says the tour is not for those with mobility issues, why do some show up in wheelchairs and walkers? Personally, we now try to avoid this entire issue by avoiding Oceania shore excursions whenever possible.

We cruise for the ports/ itineraries, not for the ship. We do obviously drink alcohol. For the majority of the cruises we take the SM credit will be $800-$1000 per stateroom or $400-$500 each. 1. If it’s an itinerary we want, I don’t think that amount moves us much. It’s maybe two of the old $199 O’Life tours. 2. We don’t particularly like most Oceania shore excursions. We aren’t going into a port we really want to see and worry about a SM credit. We’ll take the tour, private or ship, that gives us the experience we want. I see where this affects those that cruise primarily for the ship and rarely take actual tours. I personally see this all as merely a price hike. We eat lunch ashore almost always, even though we have it provided on the ship. We certainly don’t rush back to the ship worried about getting there before 2:00. We typically have wine with our lunch ashore, even though we normally have the drinks package. We sometimes take a great bottle to dinner on the ship and pay corkage, even though we have the drinks package. Even though included in the fare, we do all these things we prefer to do that costs us extra. We’re not going to take a tour, we have little or no desire to take, because it’s provided by the ship via SM credits. Same as we rarely took Vikings included tours. Cruises have a cost. Oceania has a new price structure. What’s that total cost. I see no difference between those ship tours, I have no interest in taking, and all those lunches and occasionally dinners I plan on missing while eating ashore. It’s all part of the costs. For the itinerary we want, how does O’s cost compare? Any edge concerning food mostly disappeared. Marginally better than some, not so others.

80+ posts on dress codes just ending in the last week. The OP can gain all the insights needed by reading through them in the reference thread.Nuff said on the issue .

Please page down a page to bottom of page 2 and you’ll find answers and reading galore on your questions. Thread titled “ what do people really wear on Vista. No need for another thread on this inflammatory subject. Last post 12/13.

Did you not notice his dazzling assortment of highly artistic shoes he wears? 😂. He travels with about 30 different pairs of them.

Unless on vacation, overwhelming odds it’ll be Peter the Shoe. That’s kind of becoming his regular domain.

Hank; I generally agree with all you’ve said. However, here is the major glitch in the process. Oceania’s tour descriptions look exactly the same today as they did in 2015. Attractions close, and/or other events occur, but the tour descriptions never change. Part of this is because tours are advertised a year plus in advance. The other part seems to be the Regional VPs , whose people actually book the tours, aren’t getting the tour descriptions updated. It’s not uncommon, when arranging private tours with the actual tour operators, to have them tell you certain sites have been shut down for renovations for several years and not scheduled for reopening until X years out. Meanwhile, Oceania is advertising going to those exact sites. Absolutely, people get upset. Correcting the problem will take time, thus money, which isn’t something NCLH has a lot of currently. We did all private tours in the Vista this past June in the Med and Israel. People on O tours complained repeatedly about this issue. The issue is not limited to Asia.

As I posted above, the current issue is the idiotic plan of allowing people to book tours with the funny money (SM credits) with no skin in the game. Then the old 3-1 rule kicks in at FP and chaos occurs, especially with the more expensive tours. It would have been better to not allow SM credits to be used until after FP. Separate the wheat from the chaff. The lookie loos rarely spent their personal money early, but funny money is different. This current new Oceania plan reduces the amount of funny money they can spend, thus making the trip cost go up. Not the best solution , imo.

We have never cruised Oceania exclusively. We have two OLife cruises booked into early 2025, I believe. We have no intention to book any of the remaining available SM cruises. When Oceania finally gets around to releasing new cruises/itineries in March or April we’ll look at the total package and costs at that time. I firmly believe the new SM program will continue to evolve between now and the new Release. The defined program then will probably be different than what’s in effect now or with this new change. Since we’re not booking anything new, and definitely not converting our O’Life cruises to SM, all these changes are just noise for us and don’t matter. Ask me in April.

Simply More was merely a price increase. All this wrangling is just over the actual cost of that increase. Every sale changes the math. This current pricing means the credit will pay for a couple lower priced tours each. Whoopee. Back to my Roll Call to book the better tours. We don’t need Mother Oceania to hold our hands to go ashore . Problems are already arising from people using the funny/monopole credits. Only months away from another policy change requiring cruisers to make Final Payment before you can spend the Monopoly money. Too many people spending the funny money, tying up excursions months in advance, and then cancelling the cruise. When they do it on the expensive tours it jams up the system. Oceania should have figured that out before rolling out SM.

Absolutely all male and currently all from India.

Highly doubt that Oceania would know that. They’d probably have you utilize your favorite search engine yourself to locate such information. Oceania has worldwide regional managers that put together and coordinate the tours for their areas. Highly doubtful you’ll get much assistance or knowledge dialing 1-800 and talking to anyone there. That’s beyond the clerks pay grade.