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.

I just looked at the "virtual tour" feature on the Star Clippers website. It features a view of one of the Category 4 cabins in Commodore Deck. In this cabin, there is a cabinet-like thing in the corner just above the head of the bed, situated precariously just where your head might be if you sit up on the bed. Has anybody seen this unfortunate "feature" in person? If so, is it as precarious as it might look? Or is it high enough to not be a potential hazard? Is this feature in more than this particular cabin?

I do not know exactly what was upgraded on the ship other than just adding Starlink, but for the increased bandwidth/speed to be meaningful, the rest of the path to each device (routers and antennas, mainly) also need to be capable of taking advantaged of the increase bandwidth/speed. So it is very possible that there is a weak link somewhere in the whole infrastructure. The bandwidth/speed of the onboard internet is only as fast as the slowest piece of equipment onboard.

Hi. We are booked on this cruise (a charter...not sure if we can name the company...probably not). We are looking forward to our first time on a Star Clippers ship.

When we booked a cabin on Riviera last year, we booked an A3 cabin close to midship on Deck 9. I did not see any reason to book A1 or A2, despite the fact that our TA really pushed us to do an A1. Is there a good reason to book A1/2 vs A3 on Riviera?

We are surprised to hear (even though we haven’t been on Vista, so we can’t disagree with you) that you found the storage in your cabin to be inadequate. We wonder Oceania skimped on drawer space when they built Vista. We were on Riviera late last year and thought there were almost too many drawers in the room, specially in the bathroom.

We are happy that you managed to make that kind of savings when you actually had the option to take advantage of Simply More!!! or not. For new bookings, we will not have that choice, and for that matter, we can't really quantify the actual "savings" from the program because we will never get a quote without the program. That's my point. The whole debate whether Simply More!!! is going to help us in the future bookings or not is entirely philosophical.

You missed my previous post on this. With opaque pricing, we will eventually lose an ability to know exactly what we are paying. 1. The actual quality of "free-included" wines could change without our knowledge 2. The cost of shore excursion could change, and we would never know of this change until we are ready to book 3. The actual availability of shore excursions could also change It's not that simple. Also your current per diem metric will eventually become obsolete.

Another related topic...is Oceania the only cruise line shying away from Antarctica? We are somewhat interested in visiting Antarctica on the cruise, that being the last continent we haven't visited. If this is the beginning of a trend, we might hold off on booking something like this anytime soon.

Now that the ONLY "option" you have is with Simply More!!! for new bookings, it is already impossible to really figure out if you are getting a good deal or not, unless the cruise was booked a while back. And eventually, we will never know if we are getting a good deal or not. Sad, but also makes me fee a bit liberated...but sad mainly.

Your analysis is only valid if you believe that the "price" of the items included in Simply More!!! actually corresponds to the value of the items. For example, if you believe the value of the beverage package before Simply More!!! was reasonable to begin with, it might lead you to the conclusion that the inclusion in Simply More!!! makes it an attractive offer. However, as bundling continues with Oceania, their pricing will continue to be more opaque (that's the definition of opaque marketing...bundling to hide the itemized costs), and it would eventualy (if not already) become a challenge to make this kind of an assessment.