Psoque

And the sense of entitlement that we see rampantly, especially on higher-end cruises goes both ways. I’m not taking sides here, but there are two kinds of drama associated with people with a misdirected sense of entitlement: 1. There are always people who look down on those who are less able-bodied, thinking that their lack of optimal mobility is somehow taking away from their enjoyment of the cruise/tour. 2. We have also encountered a few, not many, but enough, mobility-challenged passengers who think is is the duty of other passengers around them to help them move around. My husband and I started cruising when we were much younger and we often cruised with a lot of passengers profoundly older than us, especially on higher-end cruise lines. We often helped those who were not entirely able-bodied, and that’s fine, except some of them basically looked at us and ordered us (really) to help him/her, saying that he/she “paid for the cruise, so he/she will get the help” from strangers. No “thank you!”. Nothing. I’m not demonizing anybody in particular, but as long as we are on a cruise with other strangers, drama will ensue. I truly believe that we can only control our behavior and how we react (or not react) to others. We cannot control other’s behavior or their reaction to others.

There are many things Oceania and other cruise lines can do to improve the situation. 1. Clearly indicate tours that are NOT wheelchair compliant. 2. Clearly indicate tour that are ACTUALLY wheelchair compliant, and ask those who take that tour to make sure the tour operators are honest on this issue. If these things are in place on all ports of call (and that’s not all that hard to do…it may take some time, but not really hard or expensive…for that matter, the cruise line can put the onus of this task to the tour operators, and drop them if they can’t do it or if they lie.), it would be a great improvement and would at least prevent some of the drama during shore excursions. I don’t think there’s anything a cruise line can do to enforce polite behavior on anybody off the ship, or to somehow “de-entitle” either the able- or not able-bodied passengers. Anybody with money required can get on a cruise ship (and that’s a good thing), but we also have to live with the fact that we will encounter people different from us, or those who we don’t find convenient/acceptable to us on shore excursions.

Is this creaking noise location-specific?

I hate to derail the conversation but after taking our first cruise on Oceania recently, we are now convinced that convoluted rules and somewhat misleading (or at best incomplete) marketing is solidly baked into Oceania’s DNA. Two examples: They have this “happy hour” that allows one to buy two drinks for the price of one…except they need to be two of the same drinks…because why??? I have no idea how that is good for anybody. We actually somehow had our bartender give us a reprieve form this draconian rule. Another is this “Free Airfare!!!” nonsense that they keep putting on their website and brochures, while you get a “credit” when you choose not to buy airfare from Oceania. If it has a dollar amount associate with it, its definitely NOT free. It’s almost like Oceania is desperately dependent on careless readers/thinkers for their marketing strategy to work. But nothing in life is completely black and white. We would still try Oceania if the price/assumed product/timing is right for us, and we did put down a deposit for 2025. But if we find a comparable cruise line (small to medium sized ships, relatively nice cabins, a good variety of itineraries, and ideally less than $400 per diem) with less or none of this marketing nonsense, we would seriously consider leaving Oceania behind.

In my (possibly limited) experience, Oceania is the most complicated of all of the cruise lines we have dealt with in terms of finding out both a) the actual cost of the cruise (how it is priced) and b) what do you get onboard. We have been on about 20 cruises in the past on a smattering of various cruise lines, and I’ve never encountered this complicated way of pricing the cruise (especially when OLife was being sold), how was misleadingly described online and in the brochures, and how convoluted the pricing of shore excursion was calculated. I think the situation is very slightly better with Simply More, but still, it can be simpler. I am convinced that Oceania is intentionally keeping it complicated to keep many of their customers blissfully unaware. It’s a shame because the onboard product is not bad at all (though they can always improve, especially if it wants to match what they claim on their advertisements.).

My problem with Oceania especially, and with other cruise lines (probably all of them…though I haven’t really looked at ALL of the cruise lines) that they create a pricing model that really makes it really hard for us to know exactly how much a cruise would cost at the end of the cruise. By creating a complicated maze of combinable/non-combinable promotions/discounts/credits and ever changing terms of yet another wave of promotions, it really takes some effort to really understand exactly what the out of pocket pricing is. I guess you can call it a “clever business strategy,” but these “strategies” are putting a customer at a disadvantage. And if consumers do not complain, nothing will change. And there are channels other than Cruisecritic to actually complain about this that are more effective. And just switching to another cruise line will not help because it seems all cruise lines are doing this in their own “clever” ways.

Thanks for your advice!!!

I believe they have extra blank ones at the cruise terminal, so if haven’t gotten them in the mail already, there’s no problem.

We were looking at Baltic cruise options for the summer of 2025, and we looked at a lot of lines (Oceania, Azamara, Crystal, Windstar, and Viking) but we could not find anything reasonably priced (less than $450 per diem) other than a few itineraries on Oceania Sirena and Vista. I guess it depends on individual itineraries, but none of the “premium” cruise lines (including Oceania) are offering outstanding value the way we received from Oceania recently. And we liked the hard product on Oceania (which is without a doubt very similar in some ways to luxury lines) but we sincerely felt the dining service onboard Riviera was as bad (or maybe worse than) as what we have experienced on NCL,Princess,HAL, and Celebrity. I guess there is no perfect cruise line, as long as we don’t have an unlimited budget.

Selling a product without giving the customer the final price is not opaque pricing…that’s just bad business practice. The word “opaque” in the “opaque pricing” applies to the product, not the pricing. But we all live in our own little bubbles, so we can call whatever anything.

I agree that a few cruise lines do this, and it is wrong, and they should either disclose their rules, or get rid of these stupid rules to begin with. However, that’s not opaque pricing/marketing. That’s just incompetent marketing.

We apologize if there is an active thread on this topic elsewhere, but we thought would start this one, since a thread on this topic from 2012 has been archived and closed. We wanted to share our recent experience about this program. For those who are not in the know, there is a program available American Express Platinum cardholders called the Cruise Privileges Program (CPP). https://global.americanexpress.com/card-benefits/detail/cruises-privileges/platinum One of the cruise lines included in this program is Oceania. The description on the website erroneously suggests that you have to book with American Express Travel to receive this benefit. Actually, any TA can access this benefit if they are willing to call American Express for a booking code or something like that. My (new) TA has kindly tried to get us the $300/cabin OBC through this program. Unfortunately, she was informed that Oceania (not AMEX) is telling her that $300 OBC (coming from AMEX, presumably) is not combinable with a pre-paid gratuities (coming from the travel agency, not AMEX). Since the gratuity is worth $360 for a 10 night cruise, we decided to take that instead of $300 OBC. As far as I know, every cruise line in the program decides what is combinable or not with the CPP. I guess Oceania can make whatever arbitrary decision regarding this and everything else about their cruises, so there’s no point in arguing. However, it is a bit strange. However, for a shorter cruise (8 night or less), taking the AMEX CPP OBC would have made a better sense.

One solution is to make the facts regarding the wheelchair-accessibility of each excursion be clearly marked. This sort of thing should not cost them much to do, and based on the my observation of the demographics on our previous Riviera cruise, having that kind of information would have prevented a lot of issues.

I also agree that the whole description is very misleading to those who who are wheelchair dependent. What they should do is, in addition to the “strenuousness level” icon with the number of walking figures (on, two, and three), tag those which are completely wheelchair compliant with an icon of a wheelchair, and tag those which are definitely wheelchair non-compliant with something also descriptive (maybe a wheelchair with an X over it.

We put a deposit for a B3 cabin. Based on what we experience on a Concierge-level cruise on Riviera, we don’t think we will miss much by being in B3. For this particular itinerary, cabins cheaper than B3 were all full, and my TA was told waitlisting is currently not available (despite what the website says…).

We recently put down a deposit on a 10 night Baltic cruise on Vista for June/July 2025. Our recent cruise on Riviera, which was our first cruise on any Oceania (on a side note, it makes me cringe every time I hear the lady with a fake British accent pronounce the name of the cruise line in the way the company wants us to pronounce...If they want us to call it that way, they need to change the name to Oceana...I'm done venting...), was good but not perfect, especially in the dining service aspect of the cruise. We started looking at al of the possible cruises that still fit our criteria, which are: -7 to 12 night cruises (I cannot really take too much more time since I am still working.) -Ideally a Baltic cruise -Smaller ships (less than 2,000 passengers) -Not too expensive (at most $450 per diem) When we did this, Oceania was the only line we can find that meets them. So we are giving Oceania a second try in 2025.

There are many ways people use the word "opaque" in the context of travel product pricing, but as far as I know, there are two widely-accepted usages: 1. Bundled Pricing (no access to itemized pricing) as illustrated below https://fastercapital.com/content/Bundled-Pricing--Untangling-the-Complexity-of-Opaque-Pricing-Packages.html 2. Pricing a product without revealing the actual source of the product (Priceline car rental where you agree to rent from a mystery car rental company for a reduced price as one example) as illustrated below https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/valuation/opaque-pricing/ Oceania having a non-promoted promotion or otherwise making their promotions difficult to use/understand is not something I call "opaque." I'd rather call this strangely executed marketing with no known benefit to the customer or the company.

When we took our Mediterranean cruise on Riviera recently, there were quite a few mobility-challenged onboard, and some of them were on the excursions we took, all of them requiring a lot of walking, often uphill, some with stairs and no other option. My husband and I typically end up caring for such people on excursions we take (now becoming more of a 20+ year tradition with us), since there's nobody else (definitely not the guide) who can. It is unclear exactly how some of them decided to take these tours, but Oceania (and other cruise lines, in my opinion) should clearly mark those excursions whether they are wheelchair-accessible or not.

How far away from 7028 did you have to move to escape the noise?

What do we tell our new (new to us) TA that is more than willing to get us the CPP OBC for the new booking that we made with her? Do we have to wait until after we make the final payment to request for OBC with American Express??

I was on Riviera Nov 19-29. The art class was free. I managed to snag the last space on on the class when went to the “open house” event at the loft around 6 PM on embarkation day. So, if one is very interested in doing this, one may need to sign up as soon as you board the ship.

We were on Riviera on the cruise just before yours. We disembarked in Istanbul on Nov. 29. The rumor is that your cruise only had 500? or so passengers? Do you know the actual number?

Does the request to verify/add OBC from this program occur after the final payment? Or can this be put in the system the day we put down our deposit?

I’m also very much interested in how the onboard experience would be. The pricing for 2024 appears fairly reasonable.

I’m sure some people here might disagree, but my advice to the OP is to look at the pricing of the Oceania itinerary you are interested, and potentially wait until the wave season sales to see how much it would really cost. My cursory scan of the current pricing heavily overlaps with that offered by lines considered more “luxury” than Oceania, so for the same price, you might manage to get more for your money. Or not, depending on how the itinerary of your interest is going to be priced. We recently completed a 10 night Mediterranean cruise on Riviera for a truly remarkably reasonable price, so we think we got good value on the cruise overall, though Oceania is definitely not a “luxrury” cruise line. If you are looking at cruises on a small-to-medium ships in a luxury price point, you may want to look at other cruise lines also, including Crystal. We have done a few cruises on Crystal before it was sold to the current ownership, and we really liked the product. Oceania has some luxurity-ish features (nice large cabins, etc.) but otherwise, in my opinion, is not a luxury cruise line like Crystal, Seabourn, Silversea, etc., but as long as you find a good price, it is still a good option to consider as a mid-range+ option.