ClafoutisFoodie

Thank you for your heartfelt and touching message. You understand our perspective very well. Our son attends a day programme and swims with Special Olympics, where many of his friends and teammates have Downs Syndrome. Sharing their life really changes our perspective on life doesn't it...

Angels DO walk among us, that is for sure. Raising a child with special needs has been challenging but it has also put on our path extraordinary people who actually choose to work with that special segment of the population. Please thank your wife on my behalf!!

Very good advice, thank you. I had no idea that there was a Special Needs desk or service. Our son is considered highly functioning, and our daily life is so full of exceptions and accommodations that we don't always think of him as a person with special needs. He has adapted to many aspects of life that may not necessarily make sense to him that we sometimes forget about his exceptionalities. As for the language question, my first language is French and we had a lovely experience at Jacques where our server was French. He was delighted to speak French with some guests and it truly enhanced our experience and his. Heck, I was even able to chat in French with the man himself, when we took a Jacques Pépin cruise a few years ago and he was on board. In that instance too, the pleasure of having a conversation in our first language was a mutual pleasure that I will not soon forget.

Thank you for your very sweet and supportive message! Our son was not supposed to be part of this trip at the beginning, as the cruise was meant to happen in 2020 to celebrate my 60th birthday. We all know what happened in 2020, and since then, the circumstances changed for the person who usually takes care of our son while we are away. Our son is a young adult with autism and an extended absence has to be carefully planned to ensure he is well taken care of. We decided to take him with us and we are so happy we did, to live this experience through the eyes of a person on the spectrum. That is largely the reason why we decided not to stress the minor things like canapés and butler issues, and live the experience to the fullest. We would love nothing more than to cruise with you also!! 🙂

Well, this PAX was on vacation and chose not to invest the time to chase down the GM who surely had bigger fish to fry. We found an alternate solution to the severe problem of canapés and Coca-Cola in our fridge. We explained to the butler that we didn't want any more canapés. JMO.

I am not sure I understand your comment, but English is not my first language so I may have expressed myself in an unclear manner. Bear with me, I am still learning. What I was trying to say is that when we realized how generous the portions were, we decided not to place an order. Seems to me that if an order is not placed, it means that the guest does not wish to have canapés. Bringing them double may not be the best solution. When the butler said that he thought we had forgotten to leave an order and brought us double, we thanked him and explained that no, we had not forgotten, but preferred not to eat that much before dinner. Problem solved. But it was awkward and made an unnecessary waste of food. As a parent, a consumer and a chef, food waste is an important issue for me.

Duly noted on the paragraphs, I will pay closer attention in the future. Perhaps reading the whole post before would help before offering a snarky comment. No, I did not request the fridge to be restocked, as it was clearly indicated that this was done every day. Plus pointing out to my son in front of the butler that the fridge had Coca-Cola, his favourite drink, should be enough. No, we did not speak to the GM or Concierge about the poor service, because the service was otherwise good. The thought of tracking down the GM for a fridge restocking concern never crossed our mind, and we didn't want to cause issues for our butler. It was just as easy for us to go fetch it where we knew. My apologies for calling it Concierge Lounge instead of Executive Lounge. My syntax and terminology were not on point but we were indeed in a Penthouse Suite and we knew where to find Coca-Cola.

Thank you for your detailed explanation. You should change your handle from GeezerCouple to SuperOrganized!!! Your written instructions really take any guess work out of the equation and optimize chances of success. I will definitely keep that in mind for future cruises if we decide to go for a PH. Our steward was fantastic, and we let her know as much. She really went the extra mile to make our son feel comfortable and welcome. He is a young man with autism, and our steward had this magic ability to communicate with and acknowledge him without being pushy or overwhelming. As for the butler, there was a language barrier, but I would never hold that against a person, since English is not my first language either. Thanks again for your very helpful insights!

That makes sense. I understand the reasoning and if the butler had explained it to us from the get-go, it would have been a lot easier for all of us. I did extensive reading and research on the question in preparation for our cruise, and many posters had expressed that butlers had the discretion and ability to provide additional specialty restaurant reservations. We enjoy all the restaurants, but Jacques is by far our favourite, and we had hoped to enjoy it once more time. Thanks for taking the time to explain it clearly!

Exactly! I like the way you think!!!

We never figured out exactly what happened, but in hindsight, we feel that the error was probably at our end. Everything was going smoothly until we tried to book different excursions in Cartagena (tapas tour for myself, trolley train for my husband and son). The system would not allow it and calling Oceania at that point might have solved the issue but we decided to forge ahead instead of calling O and sitting on hold for god knows how long. We were halfway in the booking process as we were proceeding in order of ports of call, and time was of the essence, as we were just about 10 days before travelling. We took the Cartagena tours out of our cart and continued, but the system was not prompting us for checking out. At that point, all our tours booked were showing in our cart. We just couldn't get to the checkout step. That is when we closed our session, trusting that our reserved tours would still be in the system. I must point out though that this was our third Oceania cruise, but the first time we ever had a problem. You shouldn't have any issues. In our past cruises, we booked our excursions through our TA months in advance and had no problems. This time around it was different; the cruise was booked and paid a long time ago (2020 booking cancelled, rebooked, recancelled etc). The shore excursions were the last detail to iron out, but we were finishing up a kitchen renovation and our house was in complete disarray. We wanted to wait until after the reno was done to take the time to focus on that task, because like you, we wanted to take the time to read through all the excursions and options and make the best choices for us. Once we did this and had made choices, our travel agent was away on holidays and advised that we could do this on our own directly without her assistance. We do believe that our problem arose when we tried to book different excursions. If you deal with a TA or call Oceania, you won't have a problem.

That was our question too LOL. There was no credit to be given since no charges were placed on our cc. The system glitched and didn't like it when we tried to book different tours in a same destination 9i wanted to go on a different tour than my husband and son in Cartagena) and that is when the wheels fell off the bus.

I think that is what must have happened. Our intention was to charge them to our CC as we have done in the past (rather than our Oceania account), but we ran into a snag with one port and we believe that is when everything went sideways. In Cartagena I wanted to do a tapas tour that my husband and son had less interest in. I tried to book myself on the tapas tour and husband and son on a different tour, but the system would not allow it. At that point, all the previous tours were still showing on our account and were confirmed, so we deleted the Cartagena challenge and continued with booking other excursions. At that point, they were all showing on our O account but the system would not prompt or allow to move on to checkout. Trusting that they would remain there, we close our session and likely caused our own demise. What was surprising to us though, was that Destination Services had not trace of that and no means to walk back or investigate, and just laughed it off. Oh well, lesson learned. They were able to rebook some of the excursions we initially wanted, but we ended up doing our own thing for most ports and had a really good time doing so.

Covid numbers were not reported but we did see what we came to call the covid police a couple of times on the ship. Men dressed in full hazmat suits in the hallway, coming in and out of a few cabins. We might now have initially thought of covid, but on one of our tours, there was a couple where the husband had a nasty cough. We tried to keep a distance from him, but I was seated next to his wife at lunch and she was very friendly. But then, we noticed her dining alone for the next couple of days, on the days that we saw the hazmat suits in the hallway...and while she was very cordial, she was also keeping to herself and did not try to initiate conversation or anything. We kind of put 2 and 2 together but nothing was ever reported publicly.

I think you could be right on the butler's inexperience. He is a lovely man, but I think that in his zeal to please, he forgot to slow down and actually listen. He provided things we didn't ask for, and did not provide the one thing we wanted. Anyway, first world problems...Our steward, on the other hand, was fantastic. She remembered our son's name immediately and alway made a point to call him out and say hi etc. He is a young man with autism and she seemed to know exactly how to approach him and communicate with him. The tours we not on our final cruise summary and ironically, were the only thing I didn't print our and take with us. I had printed everything else...flights reservations, boarding passes, proof of vaccination, insurance papers etc. But since we had booked our excursions directly on the Oceania website, I trusted they would be early found and tracked, so I didn't print them. You are right, though it was disappointing, we decided to not sweat the small stuff and made the most of the situation. We had a great time and lessons were learned LOL