Psoque

We have been to Dubrovnik a couple of times, once for multiple days. The historic, walled part of the city is very compact and very walkable, with no cars. There are a plenty of detailed tourist information both online and in books. I have no idea if there's really a need to pay anybody to take you on a tour there. And I am very suspect of anybody who is going to take you on a "Game of Thrones" themed tour of Dubrovnik. I can't see why a tour like that is necessary.

Did you take out an insurance offered by Oceania/NCL? If you did so, something like that is bound to happen. Cruise lines are not offering these insurance plans just because they are nice to you. They want to make money and to spend as little as possible in managing the claims. I routinely give the same advice about cruise add-ons. Don't let the cruise line book your flights. Book direct with the airline, not even online travel agency. Don't go through the cruise line's "preferred" visa middle-man company...just go to that contry's visa application website. Don't take out insurance offered by the cruise line. Go get one from one of the travel insurance agencies online, or just as your local insurance agent that you use for your other insurance needs.

We have done Mediterranean cruises in late November quite a few times, and we never had a bad experience. Yes, it is going to be somewhat cool and often cold, depending on the location, but that did not bother us. We liked the fact that most of the popular destinations were not as crowded as in the summer. That's really the main draw of visiting Europe in the (late) fall.

I just looked up the travel insurance product sold by USAA. It is underwritten by United States Fire Insurance Company, NOT USAA. So, I'm happy you and your husband is happy with USAA for your banking services, but when you take out this plan, you are not dealing with USAA anymore. And United States Fires Insurance Company is a subsidiary of a giant profit-driven financial services company. I have no experience with them, but I would be surprised if their claims processor is any different from their competition.

Oceania really needs to simplify this shore excursion pricing process. In its current condition, it is a little too complicated, even for Oceania, to really manage the accounting part of this “feature.” And that was before this Simply More madness. Until we took our first Oceania cruise last year, we always found the shore excursion pricing to be relatively simply and headache-free with all other cruise lines, especially with Crystal, who (at least in the past) did not charge for the excursions until the day before we took the excursions, making the whole accounting simpler to perform.

I agree with this one. When you pay your cruise line or go through a “preferred” third party company to obtain your visa, you are basically paying someone (in this case, the third party company AND Oceania, through kickbacks to them) money for the work you actually end up doing yourself. Even if you use a third party company, YOU would still need to type in all of the information online, most likely scan in your passport pages, etc., in the same way you would do when applying for a visa directly with the country you are visiting. There’s nothing convenient about using a company when obtaining a visa from most countries.

Thanks. I have used them before for something more purely travel related. I have a plenty of experience dealing with health insurance companies and their dirty tricks. I knew all of it, took advantage of my knowledge of it, and forced them to do their job on time while hanging them totally dry. It was rather satisfying.

I am not reinforcing or refuting what is being said here, but it is somewhat tricky to work with travel insurance and and typically, their third party claims companies (since they essentially are being paid by the insurance company to deny as much claims as possible). We recently had our claims approved by a travel insurance company (their claims processing company, really), but I had to call them three times to remind them of the actual policy details. The claims processing company (their employees, namely) are apparently instructed to do everything (including mis-reading of the actual policy) to deny any payout. I had to e-mail the insurance company to send me a reply in writing that our policy provides primary medical coverage, and I had to send that information back to the same company to remind them that their policy covers our claim. I had to do this three times. We have received our check about a week ago.

It was $100 per person, $200 per cabin. It was credited to my “account” that only my TA can pull up. It does not show up when you I log into the Oceania website. That only shows our “Simply More!!!” shore excursion credits of $400 per person, $800 per cabin.

We booked B3 on Vista.

My TA called Oceania and Oceania finally decided to apply the credit to our account. It is listed on the invoice as “Club discount” or something like that. This discount will not be seen on customer-facing website. This credit basically reduced our final payment by $200.

I think the itineraries are very different among the three. If I were you, I would pick the cruise with the ports you most want to visit, rather than deciding based on the ship. Also, you should realize that early September could still be extremely hot (especially with the current upward trends in temperature overall) in some parts of the Mediterranean, so that should also be considered in your decision process. We once (without thinking well enough), did an Athens to Venice cruise in mid June. Even though we enjoyed the cruise overall, it was unbearably hot in some places we visited (Acropolis in Athens, Oia in Santorini, and Dubrovnik). Sun protection with sunscreen and wide brimmed hats are a must outdoors on cruises like this.

Can the OP tell us exactly where the three ships are going?

We put a big emphasis on ports of call when we pick a cruise. I am not sure if your three choices go to similar locations. If we were in your shoes, we would really look at the itinerary and see if any one of the three has the "better" itinerary compared to the other.

I’m highly aware of different cruise lines and how they can be categorized in the way you described. My point is the common USAGE of the term “mass-market.”. I’ve heard people onboard Celebrity, HAL, and Princess ships refer to Carnival and NCL as “mass-market.”. I have repeatedly read people here refer to all cruise lines in your categories 1 and 2 as “mass market.”. I have heard people onboard Crystal and Windstar refer to cruise lines in your categories 1, 2, and 3 as “mass market.”. I have also heard those who only do mega-yacht charters or own their own vessel refer to all categories above as “mass market.” My point is that I’m starting to suspect that the term “mass market” is (maybe unconsciously?) is used by some of us to say “cruise lines patronized by people whose tastes are not as refined as mine.” And because of it I choose not to use that term. And when people ask me what are “mass-market” cruise lines, my answer is “any cruise line that we can afford to do business with.”

The funny thing is that different people define "mass market" and "premium" cruise lines differently. I have done a quick internet search and found that, depending on where I look, Princess/HAL/Celebrity are categorized as "premium," or they are categorized as "mass market." And for Oceania, I have seen it categorized as "mass market," "premium," and "luxury." depending on who is making that classification. By reading what I see, "mass market" is frequently used as a derogatory term.

Here are are our observations on the cruise we took (the topic of this thread, by the way…). Just as a frame of reference, here are our comparison to Crystal (pre-COVID…we haven’t tried the new Crystal yet) since the two ships on the line are very similar to Riviera 1. The cabins (we stayed on A4….I believe that cabin space is pretty much the same as any other lower class cabins) on Riviera were much better designed and roomier than on Crystal Symphony. There was a lot of storage, especially in the bathroom. We really like the cabin. More so than on (pre-COVID) Symphony. 2. The dining, shore excursion, and reception staff were clearly not well-trained and lacked the emotional intelligence that we expected. Was this because they are all new, post-COVID hires? That’s a possibility. They were not “bad” or “unintelligent” people, but they were absolutely not prepared for their jobs, especially when things did not go as planned. All we know is that this type of staff behavior was commonly encountered by us (or for that matter, expected) when we took cruises on less expensive (NCL/RCL/Celebrity/HAL/Princess) lines. 3. The age range and “able-bodied-ness” of the crowd was profoundly “advanced” than in our previous port-intensive Mediterranean cruises around Thanksgiving on Crystal and all other lines we have tried. Believe us…we have done quite a few port-intensive Mediterranean cruises during Thanksgiving. Is this typical for Oceania? We don’t know and only Oceania has the actual data. We have no idea if this is more of a norm these days on all cruises itineraries like this. We don’t know. 4. Even though the Riviera is a well-designed ship, there are a few areas in the ship that really needs to be maintained better. The gym/spa area really needs a lot of fixing. A few work out equipment needs to be replaced/repaired. Quite a few locker doors were missing their hinges. There were weird stains in the ceilings by the main dining room windows. A few (decorative??) screws were missing from the main dining room windows. This lack of maintenance is not really acceptable for any ship of any size. The biggest take-away we got from our first cruise on Oceania on Riviera was that Oceania, especially on this cruise, showed that their general approach to their product is highly inconsistent…some features are very good (and rivaling those on real luxury lines) some features are squarely appropriate for a mid-range cruise line, and some features are entirely unacceptable, even for a budget line. Based on this one-cruise observation, we put Oceania as a solid mid-range product. We will try Vista on a Baltic itinerary next year, giving this line a second try. Also we personally think the use of the term “mass market” to describe cruise lines is somewhat comical and irrelevant. We have heard people onboard Crystal call Oceania/Azamara a “mass market” cruise line. And we repeatedly hear people here label Celebrity/HAL/Princess a “mass market” cruise line. And we also heard people onboard RCL/Celebrity call Carnival/NCL a “mass market” cruise line. Our guess is that this nomenclature is very fluid, and is used mainly by a cruise line/travel agency to reassure their customers that they paid for an excellent product. Or perhaps some people use it as a derogatory term to indirectly judge people who take cruise that are more “budget” than others?? We have no idea. We consider any cruise line that we can afford to be “mass market,” and we have no use for that term. But people can use whatever term they wish to use.

Hi. About a week after returning home from an Oceania cruise, we received a $200 certificate in the mail for a future booking. We were asked to write down the details of the future booking and send the certificate back to Oceania for $200 credit. This will be our second Oceania cruise, so we haven't used this certificate before. So how does this work? Is $200 going to be credited to our payment now, so that we pay $200 at final payment? Or is this in the form of an OBC?

Yes, I can appreciate that every cruise line has its way of selling its product, each with its own convoluted set of policies. However, the fact that you can describe what Silversea does with just two short paragraphs convinces me that what Oceania does is far more convoluted than than Silversea.

I’m sorry about the whole flight problems. We’ve only booked a flight with a cruise line once (since this was a very wide open jaw (fly to Chile, return from Florida) that costed a lot otherwise), many years ago (with a luxury cruise line) and figured out that the whole scheme was not customer-friendly, and downright irresponsible. Our home airport was fogged in and we called the “customer hotline” for those booked flights with this cruise line. The person on the phone told me that I am calling her “way too early in the morning” and that she is not really hired to help us find alternative flights. Not sure what she was paid to do, but we just bought a last minute one-way ticket to the port of embarkation, and had the concierge onboard to book us the return flight home. It took about 3 months or so to get our out-of-pocket cost reimbursed, after sending 3-4 letters in total after multiple denials. After this experience we never book air with a cruise line, regardless of the cruise line or the destination. My assumption is that buying airfare from the cruise line is a huge gamble, and house always wins, regardless of which cruise line you are dealing with. They buy the most restrictive “consolidator” airfare, and somehow they can continue to swap out the itineraries for the lowest bidder until the day of the flight.

I’m assuming (maybe incorrectly) that SG was looking at (mostly?) Delta flights from BHM and maybe ATL. If that’s the case, you can get to VCE with just one connection from BHM and to TRS with two connections from BHM. From ATL, there is a nonstop flight to VCE and one-connection itinerary to TRS. (I’m sure you know this…not trying to tell you what you know). Or maybe SG wants just just fly Delta, then you would need to fly ATL-VCE?? I’m also assuming that SG is trying to minimize connections, which I also try to do when I am catching a cruise. Based on that, flying to VCE, either from ATL (nonstop) or BHM (just one connection) would be preferable to him, maybe??

There are multiple factors that should be considered before deciding to do your airfare vs. paying the cruise line, but my personal bias is to just book your own to Marco Polo (VCE) and spend a night in Venice, then take public transport/taxi to Trieste. Or, if you don’t need to do anything in Venice, I would perhaps fly into Trieste on your own. I’m partly suggesting this because if you let the cruise line book your flights, they may fly you to Venice or Trieste and you probably have no control over how, and for the matter, when, you will arrive there, unless you pay them more for “deviation.”

I say that if this is done consistently and correctly on each port, things would be much better. I also suggest that the cruise lines mark wheelchair-compliant, and especially non-compliant excursions with a clear marking.

I guess if you rely on others to label your tags, that could be a chance for a problem to occur. I usually travel with a black magic marker (fine point!) whenever I travel, and I have used it to clearly mark our blank tags at the entrance to the cruise ship terminal more than once. I don't trust others to label my tags. But maybe I am over-prepared.

I personally don't think having the luggage tags sent to us before leaving home is really a benefit to us. I would prefer just having our tags waiting for us at the cruise terminal. I think the cruise lines send the tags to us ahead of time to make it easier for them to process our bags. Either way, you really do not need your tags sent to you.