DrKoob

We always tell them we are "celebrating our 50th." They are blown away, and we get hearty congratulations we have had people buy us drinks, the waiters comp us stuff (at a regular on shore restaurant). If someone says, "You look to young to be married 50 years." We tell them, "We haven't been married 50 years. We just heard so many good things about celebrating the 50th, we decided to celebrate that one this year." 😜

We did three weeks on Sky last year, and I found the mattress to be VERY hard. We got a topper, and we still found it hard. I wrote about it in my review and on my blog, and everyone who agreed with me was a Tempurpedic owner. When you regularly sleep on foam, going to a hard mattress can be quite a change. I think that others must have agreed with the OP since the ship was out of mattress toppers. That says something right there. As to the food, we thought that every bit of food we ate on Deck 7 (World Cafe, Pool Grille and Mamsens) was excellent. The best buffet we have ever had on a ship. But down on decks 1 & 2, we were totally disappointed. In The Restaurant, the service and the noise were less than the food. I am sure the food was fine, but the service was strange (waiters kept changing during the two dinners we ate there. We had at least three different servers during both dinners we ate there). And it was so loud. I am sure it is the low ceilings (compared to other MDRs on other ships). We were at a table for four and could not hear the people across the table from us. As for the two specialty restaurants, we found Manfredis a poor excuse for an Italian restaurant. My wife (and at least six other people we sailed with) got food poisoning from some bad swordfish. And I am sure that The Chef's Table can be very good, but on the only night we could get reservations there was nothing on the menu that interested me and two courses my bride couldn't eat because of allergies. So, different people have different experiences. Even YouTubers.

WOW! Talk about a blanket statement. There are some excellent YouTube cruise reviewers who supply excellent information. Tips for Travelers comes to mind or Don's Family Vacations. Both do an excellent job.

The problem with single staterooms on just about any cruise line that has them is that they are amazingly popular and so they price them off the charts compared to the usual single supplement.

We did two weeks on Vista in October and the service was amazing. It was absolutely equal or better than most of our 30+ cruises on Viking Ocean, Celebrity, HAL and Azamara. I haven't seen anyone who had problems. Had one of the best cabin stewards. The food servers were amazing. And we liked CD Ray Carr. Check out my day to day blog at jimbellomo.com and my buddy Mike's complete review at www.thepreismans.com

We did three segments of a four-segment cruise last in September 2022. The people on the first segment who were doing all four weeks got reservations for everything before we did. We got reservations before those that were only doing the two or one week cruises after ours. We also were able to get a reservation in the specialty restaurants for each week of the three weeks we were on the ship. Hope this helps.

No, the OP did not want compensation but he did want to either get a refund or be able to switch cruises to something more like his original cruise. And your situation with a decision made in April that you weren't informed of until six weeks before sailing in December is a PERFECT example of a cruise line failing to do right by it's clientele. If that isn't screwing you, I don't know what is. They knew. They just didn't tell you before final payment so you were the ones being screwed, not them.

While I agree with most of what you are saying, the OP's situation is about cancellations way outside the purview of the captain. These are happening weeks in advance. I totally get when you can't tender into a port because of weather. And I also totally get when schedules change, but when they change that much that a port becomes a place you can only get off the ship for a few hours, the cruise line should offer an out.

If everyone read those, no one would ever cruise. So you are standing up for a contract, not for a cruise line? Having been a business owner before retiring I know that what's in a contract is often best fixed when the company does something wrong. If you are a good company, you try your best to fix the problem.

Can you explain something to me? Why do people automatically excuse cruise ship companies they like? When the company has obviously done something that has truly changed someone's vacation? It's like you are shills for the cruise line. One of the things I found in my 20 years on Cruise Critic is that on any forum for any cruise line there are people who will defend that cruise line no matter what. The OP is upset that his cruise was substantially changed. And I don't I think this is an apples and oranges situation. It's a three-hour change on a flight that costs $6,000 (FC). And they offered to let me change it to any flight I wanted or to refund me. I am guessing the OP has at least $6K involved and they have substantially changed his vacation.

If any cruise line truly cared about their customers, then all they have to do when they make these changes to multiple itineraries/ports is to offer a refund or allow a move to a different cruise. No matter when the changes take place. If the changes are many and genuinely affect the ports, then you should be able to make that change. This is not the cruise you originally signed up for. The airlines do this. We were scheduled for a flight from SEA to CDG next month and they moved our flight by 3 hours. We were offered a complete rebook at no charge to an earlier or later flight in the same class of cabin.

As promised, I came back to add my buddy Mike Preisman's review of this cruise. Mike will have even more info about the ship than I do. Many more pics of the food. Full menus, If you would like more about this cruise or about Vista, this is the review for you. You can find it here: http://www.thepreismans.com/vista23_1.htm Enjoy! Mike does an awesome job.

Even though it isn't far to the airport, just two weeks ago we were held on the ship by Customs until 8:45. Since you would need to be at the airport by 7:45. If you get held up, you could be in big trouble.

Sorry, but on Vista this month I wanted to try some of the incredible Mocktails they had in the new Aquamar Kitchen but they were $12-$14 each. Some sounded interesting but not willing to gamble that much on something I wouldn't drink.

No. Celebrity, HAL and the others current offerings at the time included WiFi. Unlimited WiFi. No extra charge at all. No upgrade. There was no "basic" WiFi. You either got the freebie or you got nothing.

In the last five years we have sailed on Celebrity, Viking Ocean, Royal and Holland America. All have offered a free WiFi option that included unlimited devices. Every single one of them. In almost all these cases it was part of the cruiseline's Have It All program or Included or whatever Celebrity was calling theirs. Viking I am absolutely sure of with no special offer. On all river and ocean ships.

On Viking we were online instantly at no extra charge on as many devices as we could bring.

You know I used to say that about HAL. They were owned by CCL not Carnival. But then they slowly but surely put Carnival Execs into the CEOships of the other cruise lines. HAL's quality has fallen way off after the new guy (who used to be an Carnival Cruise Line exec). Princess is going down hill fast. The same was true when Celebrity became RCLisized (I know, that not a word). NCL is known as the king of nickel and diming and it is drifting down. We finished the cruise with a balance of $356 for a variety of things. When we finished our Viking cruise last fall we had a balance of less than $50. Why, because so much more is included. I want a cruise line that has ships in the 800-1200 pax ships and includes everything.

But wouldn't it just be simpler to just have it be free to everyone...all the time? No accounts. Just do it the way most cruise lines (and now some airlines) are doing it.

That's good to know. Sadly, not sure I have 10 cruises left to go.

I promise, I am not that stupid.

I really didn't want to be passive-aggressive but the CC bot kept stopping me from saying what I really wanted to say. I wanted to say....(oops–tried five times, won't put language like that through).

Thank you for a perfect response. That's what you want, that's what I want. Internet access for us is HUGE! When you travel with a group, you need to know what's going on. Someone said that they could put up with anything except a bad bed. Well, I can put up with a bad bed for full internet access...different strokes. We are still looking for that "perfect cruise line." We had it for a very long time with Celebrity. We liked where they went, we loved the food, we loved the ships, etc. But what they have become (slick, cruise line marketing to 40 and 50 somethings and carrying less about loyalty) is not for us. Still looking. I notice from your avatar that you must have done a live-blog someplace along the line. You have the stickers Cruise Critic awards for that. Can you point me to one of yours so I can check it out?

It is good to know that going in. At the same time, we now know that the beds are hard on VO and that we need to ask for a mattress topper pre-cruise. As to mentioning the WiFi, this is a very quick fix by Oceania. They just have to stop nickel and diming long enough to give everyone on board internet access and stop this silly money grab. Even their guy who does internet help thinks it's a horrible system. Oceania is owned by NCL who are the KINGS of extra charges for everything. A little of that has filtered down so to speak. My goal in live blogging on any cruise is to let people know what we experienced so that they can be ready for it and to try and push others to demand the end to some stupid stuff that can be fixed in an instant. The internet isn't the only thing. How hard would it be (and it would save O money) to not play music in every lounge, every night? How about getting rid of the Bill Murray-style guy in Martinis?

Did I say that? What an ASSumption. I have already mentioned we have booked another O cruise. And I have mentioned (NUMEROUS TIMES) that we enjoyed this cruise. We are making people aware that the elevator system is NOT a good one. Especially if any of them are out of service (which they were A LOT on this cruise). I was just pointing out that we had a larger-than-usual scooter and wheelchair contingent on board and that Oceania's choice of elevators (long, slip and narrow in the case of the glass ones) was a bad one. And that the average age was older than usual. Much of this was undoubtedly due to the fact that this cruise ended in Florida. My guess (from meeting people on board) is that more than half the ship was Floridian (as are Mike and Cathy, two of our dearest friends).