Riviera Live — February 10th

[What A Market]

Jam reappeared this morning!

 

Of course though you are limited to cherry jam and orange marmalade. 🤮😜

[jgoldchain]

I enjoyed reliving our cruise on the Riviera which ended Feb.10th through your postings.Did you go to Puerto Plata? Our cruise skipped that port because of problem with high winds at departure?

 

[rbtan]

3 hours ago, What A Market said:

A sea day for our final day with the Riviera. Mad rush for lounge chairs even before the pool staff was anywhere near finished with their set up. It’s now 8:30am and numerous groupings of loungers that were “saved” by one individual before 7:30am are still unoccupied by the saver. 

Either remove the articles(which we've done with chair hogs) or get a pool attendant to do it.We had little hogging on our trip before yours, except for like you the last sea day. One woman did try it & actually tried to get me & my spouse to vacate our loungers.Really? She was from Germany. I told her you can't just reserve chairs & then go to lunch. We had the pool attendant remove her stuff from the ones she was reserving.

[What A Market]

45 minutes ago, jgoldchain said:

I enjoyed reliving our cruise on the Riviera which ended Feb.10th through your postings.Did you go to Puerto Plata? Our cruise skipped that port because of problem with high winds at departure?

 

Same as your cruise. 
Puerto Plata cancelled due to expected high winds at the time of our departure. 

[LakeRooseveltBrews]

15 minutes ago, What A Market said:

Same as your cruise. 
Puerto Plata cancelled due to expected high winds at the time of our departure. 

Being a nerdy engineer, when the Captain announced we were skipping Puerto Plata at 9am on Feb 18^th and sailing straight on to Miami, I wanted to consider this interesting implication I will discuss here and that is how much less fuel Riviera will burn in the journey home.

The instant the announcement was made, I checked the Navigation Display.  It said there were 701 nautical miles to Miami.  By foregoing stopping at Puerto Plata, we immediately gain 8 hours to cover the remaining distance.  Thus, we can travel at a slower speed, and thereby do so using less fuel.

At 9am Atlantic time on 18-Feb, there are 46 hours before our arrival in Miami at 6am Eastern time and thus our average cruising speed would be about 15.2 Knots (nautical miles per hour).  If we had left Puerto Plata at the originally scheduled time of 5pm, there would be 38 hours before our Miami arrival and we would have to average 18.4 Knots to make our 6am docking.  

This translates into fuel burned.  A ship obeys a cube law relationship of horsepower versus speed – halve the maximum speed and the horsepower is cut to 1/8^th of the maximum speed horsepower.  Assuming Riviera uses 100% horsepower at 20 Knots (the maximum speed I have seen on this cruise), then we can fill out the table below:

Speed	% Full Horsepower	Hours Sailing to Miami	Full HP Hours
15.2 kts	44.2%	46	20.3 Full HP-hours
18.4 kts	77.9%	38	29.6 Full HP-hours

 

So, by skipping Puerto Plata, Riviera will use about 2/3^rds the horsepower-hours had we stopped and thus burned about 1/3^rd less fuel.  I am not saying that is why Oceania bypassed Puerto Plata, DR today – I do not doubt the difficulties in maneuvering a 15-deck high ship in a narrow channel with a bad crosswind – I am just saying that doing so gave the company a bonus in the economic bottom line.  Just an interesting observation.

[jgoldchain]

Thank you for the detailed explanation. We also skipped Puerto Plata and also ran out of certain food items. We have been on 12 Oceania cruises before and also found the lunch buffet was not as good as on previous voyages. This cruise was not the Oceania we are accustomed to.

[Jayne E]

2 hours ago, What A Market said:

Same as your cruise. 
Puerto Plata cancelled due to expected high winds at the time of our departure. 

Last 3 Puerta Plata stops cancelled for same excuse and numerous others according to passengers and staff. The expected “high winds” didn’t materialize but decision to suspend is made early morning. Time to remove Puerta Plata and reinstate St. Martin which was never a problem. Reducing port times and extra sea days feels more like a crossing cruise 🙁

[SSFrance69]

Just curious if the MDR has been open for lunch on sea days.  

[loriva]

17 minutes ago, SSFrance69 said:

Just curious if the MDR has been open for lunch on sea days.  

 

Or embarkation day?

[loriva]

Who is the captain on Riviera currently, please?

[What A Market]

11 minutes ago, loriva said:

Who is the captain on Riviera currently, please?

Captain Gunnar Romtveit

[What A Market]

14 minutes ago, loriva said:

 

Or embarkation day?

Not on embarkation day

[What A Market]

34 minutes ago, SSFrance69 said:

Just curious if the MDR has been open for lunch on sea days.  

I believe so. 
I checked the last couple of days of Currents, which were sea days, and yes GDR was open. 

[LHT28]

1 hour ago, loriva said:

 

Or embarkation day?

NO

Only The Terrace & Waves

Barristas for good coffee

[SSFrance69]

39 minutes ago, What A Market said:

I believe so. 
I checked the last couple of days of Currents, which were sea days, and yes GDR was open. 

Thank you for looking! I wish the nightly GDR menus were available to view ahead of time. From what I've read elsewhere on here though, they are not the same rotation on every cruise. It would make it easy to plan the specialty nights, as there are some GDR menus I've seen that I would not want to miss. Looking forward to my first Oceana culinary experience on March 2! Are there any not to be missed items I need to try?

 

[LHT28]

1 hour ago, SSFrance69 said:

Just curious if the MDR has been open for lunch on sea days.  

Usually open on sea days  port days  is another story

[Jayne E]

Last several years lunch in MDR replicates Terrace Cafe items but with excellent service.

[ORV]

1 hour ago, loriva said:

 

Or embarkation day?

That would be pretty much a never except for those on a B2B

[Jayne E]

4 hours ago, jgoldchain said:

Thank you for the detailed explanation. We also skipped Puerto Plata and also ran out of certain food items. We have been on 12 Oceania cruises before and also found the lunch buffet was not as good as on previous voyages. This cruise was not the Oceania we are accustomed to.

No cream for coffee this morning in MDR. No jam yesterday. No ice cream cones at pool at 3 P.M. today.  No escargot in Jacques entire cruise.  F&B Director not managing well!

[schmerl]

9 minutes ago, Jayne E said:

No cream for coffee this morning in MDR. No jam yesterday. No ice cream cones at pool at 3 P.M. today.  No escargot in Jacques entire cruise.  F&B Director not managing well!

 

WOW! That's really disappointing. I was looking forward to escargot.

[loriva]

1 hour ago, LHT28 said:

Barristas for good coffee

 

I'm looking forward to trying a crema.

[loriva]

50 minutes ago, Jayne E said:

No cream for coffee this morning in MDR. No jam yesterday. No ice cream cones at pool at 3 P.M. today.  No escargot in Jacques entire cruise.  F&B Director not managing well!

 

Since the Caribbean itineraries put into Miami on a routine basis, these shortages are mystifying.  Unless Oceania is trying to figure out how little they can order of things as a cost-cutting measure.

 

And no escargots in Jacques??  Mon dieu, c'est horrible!

[pinotlover]

Debt payments are mandatory. Escargot purchases aren’t. 

[1985rz1]

1 hour ago, Jayne E said:

No cream for coffee this morning in MDR. No jam yesterday. No ice cream cones at pool at 3 P.M. today.  No escargot in Jacques entire cruise.  F&B Director not managing well!

Maybe the F&B Director is managing as best he/she can with supply chain issues.  

[rbtan]

8 hours ago, LakeRooseveltBrews said:

 

Being a nerdy engineer, when the Captain announced we were skipping Puerto Plata at 9am on Feb 18^th and sailing straight on to Miami, I wanted to consider this interesting implication I will discuss here and that is how much less fuel Riviera will burn in the journey home.

The instant the announcement was made, I checked the Navigation Display.  It said there were 701 nautical miles to Miami.  By foregoing stopping at Puerto Plata, we immediately gain 8 hours to cover the remaining distance.  Thus, we can travel at a slower speed, and thereby do so using less fuel.

At 9am Atlantic time on 18-Feb, there are 46 hours before our arrival in Miami at 6am Eastern time and thus our average cruising speed would be about 15.2 Knots (nautical miles per hour).  If we had left Puerto Plata at the originally scheduled time of 5pm, there would be 38 hours before our Miami arrival and we would have to average 18.4 Knots to make our 6am docking.  

This translates into fuel burned.  A ship obeys a cube law relationship of horsepower versus speed – halve the maximum speed and the horsepower is cut to 1/8^th of the maximum speed horsepower.  Assuming Riviera uses 100% horsepower at 20 Knots (the maximum speed I have seen on this cruise), then we can fill out the table below:

Speed	% Full Horsepower	Hours Sailing to Miami	Full HP Hours
15.2 kts	44.2%	46	20.3 Full HP-hours
18.4 kts	77.9%	38	29.6 Full HP-hours

 

So, by skipping Puerto Plata, Riviera will use about 2/3^rds the horsepower-hours had we stopped and thus burned about 1/3^rd less fuel.  I am not saying that is why Oceania bypassed Puerto Plata, DR today – I do not doubt the difficulties in maneuvering a 15-deck high ship in a narrow channel with a bad crosswind – I am just saying that doing so gave the company a bonus in the economic bottom line.  Just an interesting observation.

Not a fan of this. There was no wind to speak of. This & the "Save the Oceans" B/S which caused the ship to arrive in some ports at 11:00 v/s the usual 7-8 AM. If there's one thing we don't like it's feeding the pax a load of garbage instead of being truthful.For those who wondered, the staff were pretty bummed at having to do lunch on a port day. This certainly can lead to shortages. The GDR as far as I know, was open for Concierge & Suite guests for lunch on Embarkation day as usual.Considering the ship has been sailing pretty much totally full(we couldn't pay for any upgrade)I would hope they are sailing at a profit.