Psoque

I haven’t had a chance to save the pre-April 1 pricing on these selected itineraries, but I wonder if this “promotion” is a way to soften the initial blow of fare increases on some of these itineraries. I’m just hoping that Oceania is not going to make the pre-cruise hotel booked through them as compulsory. Despite what some of us say, in my experience, the cost of hotel booked through the cruise line (which are typically priced “per person”) is typically 2-3 times the going rate. Some of us may like to still book the hotels with Oceania, but I personally don’t.

Thanks for letting me know. I somehow could not find this thread. However, looking at the thread, it has already been hijacked into a different topic (cruise air and deviation fee.). Anyhow, my point is this: Oceania (and really, other cruise lines as well) have always been selling pre/post cruise hotels with a ginormous mark-up, so I can't imagine Oceania offering pre-cruise hotel with less mark-up. Based on that, there's no way this inclusion is "Free" or "Generous" in any way. It just makes the whole cruise fare even more opaque, which was exactly the problem with how Oceania has been marketing their products. However, I guess there will be enough customers who are either blissfully unaware of this, or either unwilling or unable to make their own pre-cruise hotel arrangements, and for them, this is of value to them. To me, this makes no sense.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/oceania-cruises-offers-free-pre-cruise-hotel-stay-on-a-range-of-sailings-in-2024-and-2025-302098868.html According to this and other reports I have read, Oceania is experimenting with a bundled cruise fare that includes a hotel night before the cruise on some itineraries. I tried to look up how Oceania is presenting it to the consumers on their website, but so far there's no indication of this happening. Anyways, I was very happy that the pricing table became a bit simpler when Oceania switched from "OLife" to "Simply More," (though I'm not necessary consider this transition to be all good) it appears they are again trying to complicate their pricing model. Looking at the press release above (written by Oceania), they are calling this bundling offer a "free pre-cruise stay" and "this generous offer," giving a false impression that somehow, a customer will come out ahead when Oceania bundles their pre-cruise hotel into the cruise fare. I had some hopes for Oceania when they started to make their marketing a bit more honest, but I'm afraid they haven't really changed. I realize that most of us can tell the difference between "free!" and bundled pricing, but it still begs the question who exactly is Oceania hoping that would actually believe that these add-ons are a free gift from the cruise line?

Clicked on the link. There's nothing that specifically addresses air deviations.

I guess this is where a new roll call comes to wither away.

I just cringed a bit with the use of the word “loose” in the posted FAQ entry.

As long as you don't value the ability to book the restaurants sooner, you may not value the extra cost of concierge class to be meaningful. I would rather spend that extra cost on a nicer dinner before you get on the ship or something like that.

Only “real” benefit we experienced with a concierge cabin on Riviera was three free bags of laundry. The concierge lounge is not much of a space. Its tiny, and we rarely saw the concierge there, and I did not find her all that knowledgeable in general.

That only shows that the level of service on Riviera appears to be inconsistently inconsistent. And I can attest to that. When we were in Jacques, there were three tables (ours and two others) that had serious service issues, while the rest of the tables appeared to have had none. And the managers at two of the restaurant admitted to us that they are, in fact, having issues, and that we were not being singled out.

I have a couple of times. The manager apologized to us onboard after we sent in the mid-cruise evaluation form. Strangely enough, the manager could not explain exactly what was going on, or how they were going to fix the problem. We reported the same issue on the final online evaluation, and we haven’t heard back from anyone since then.

When we were on Riviera in late November 2023, we encountered a lot of issues in each and all of the dining venues (except for Red Ginger, where we did not dine), almost every time. It took a very long time for our food to arrive, and when they arrived, it looked like it was sitting somewhere for a long time (cold and lifeless, in some cases). The servers, especially those in the Grand Dining Room and Polo Grill, looked visibly stressed. When we encountered a problem, there was a lot of finger-pointing (server blaming the kitchen, manager blaming the slow internet (*****???), etc.). The quality of the food served was clearly inferior to what we have seen on Crystal and even on Celebrity....though our last cruise on Celebrity was a long time ago. We've never encountered something like this on any of the cruises we have taken, and we have taken cruises from a fairly wide range of lines (NCL all the way up to Crystal, including their 62-passenger yacht). We are truly hoping that this was an isolated incidence (though I don't think it is the case), and that when we do our Baltic cruise on Vista that we will not see any of this nonsense. However, I'm starting to wonder really outstanding food and service are now only available on true luxury lines and that all cruise lines are basically declining in quality, especially in the area of food and service.

It would be nice to see a great sales event like the Extraordinary Sales later this year, to see if the cruise we booked late last year can come down in price a bit, like it did for our previous cruise.

Thanks. So is the corner cabinet high enough that it did not collide with your head? Also, where does the extra storage unit go when the two beds are pushed together?

I am posting the screenshot from the “virtual tour.”

I don’t think what you are referring is what I am concerned about. There is a corner cabinet in one of the Commodore Deck Category 4 cabin. If you take a look at the “virtual tour” on the Star Clippers website, you will know exactly what this looks like.