KetoCruiser

On 10/2/2023 at 12:18 AM, aForestr said:

Or they could add another jewelry store to reduce the crowding in the existing stores.

Here’s a stupid idea, why not replace it with extra public seating, we are on Sky And fights break out because it’s so difficult to get a seat anywhere. The ship is so badly designed that there is not enough public space for the 4000+ passengers it carrying these days.

I won’t pay the extra, when you add it all up, you might as well move up a brand and go for the more luxury end of the market. The quality of food has deteriorated so much that it’s like old school dinners . On Sky last year we had so much Semolina and tapioca, I thought I was back in school.  The quality of food on Cunard and Oceania was so much better, I won’t be cruising with Princess again.
Princess will expect you to pay extra for the entertainment and international cafe next. Where will it end.

I really enjoy Gala night on Cunard, although I miss the Captains cocktail party, I am really disappointed that they have not reinstated them since covid.  What is the point of dressing up, if you have no where to go.

Oceania is nothing like it, I  must admit I did enjoy the cocktail parties, the drinks were not limited and the hors d’oeuvre  were delicious.  
However the food overall was disappointing. I only have experience of the Regatta  ( and have been told the larger ships are better) and must say my expectations regarding the food were not met.  My biggest gripe was that entrees in the Terrace Cafe, they were on the whole cold and they never seem to have any vegetables other than steamed broccoli, carrots and cauliflower. I had to order off the grill just to get something hot.  There is nothing more unappealing than cold stir fry.   The specialty restaurant, Toscana was much better, but in my opinion, not as good as the Veranda on Cunard.  

The Waves grill at lunch time was good and suited my low carb diet.  My Husband however was not impressed with afternoon tea, it was very poor, the scones were so dry that they crumbled when you tried to cut them. I think they need to review the recipe on those.  Overall it just did not have the finesse that Cunard afternoon tea has.   

13 hours ago, rbtan said:

Is your T/A American or British? Contact them & inquire what they can do. They get paid by the cruise line, so they should assist you. If not then try Oceania directly. If you knew this on board, you should have addressed it at that time. It's hard to get satisfaction after the fact.

 We did raise the issue on board and we were told,  that within the terms and conditions they have the right to change itineraries.  Like I previously said we had no explanation or apology by the Officers on board at the time, My understanding is that the Captain left the ship the day before or just after. 
 

Our TA has come back to us and is appalled at the treatment we have received. I think they are now on the case. so fingers crossed they will get a resolution.

I am just so frustrated that this double standard happens . Are Oceania that naive that they don’t believe passengers keep in touch especially in cases where major issues arise on a cruise. 

12 hours ago, piscean said:

Hello Ketcruiser

unusually Oceania are the only cruise company I know of where we in the Uk can cancel and get a full deposit refund within a given time frame. I believe it is 90 days, just before balance due date.

l’ve recently cancelled an Oceania cruise (booked with Regent instead) and the deposit was back fairly quickly.

My TA arranged this at my request.

 

 

 

Thanks, will look into it, if we don’t get any resolution from Oceania. 

23 hours ago, oskidunker said:

 

We were on Queen Victoria in November 2022 , then our Oceania cruise in December 2022 and can say that the service was much better on Cunard than Oceania, the ship was well maintained. Cannot say the same for Oceania, Regatta loss power for about 3 hours in the Great Australian bight.  No engines, No air conditioning or lifts. We were in the Toscana and ended up having a choice of bread, soup and salad  for dinner.  Main dining room was operating to limited menu.  
 The quality of the food Oceania provided was excellent however it was poorly prepared and very repetitive.  I found it difficult to find a good selection of vegetables anywhere, they offered 5 ways to have your potatoes and only one vegetable as a side order. Veg was generally steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrot.  The best meal we had was the pop up Indian night in the Terrace cafe, which was much better than the pop up Red Ginger, which was usually cold and tasteless.

14 hours ago, CCAubs said:

I am! I've worked for Cruise Critic for nearly 12 years, and oversee PR and communications for the company. We're working with Seatrade to flag questions from real cruisers to help bring the consumer voice to this year's State of the Industry panel.

 

Hope that helps to clarify!

Perhaps you could help with mine, I am struggling to understand why it seams American, Canadian and Australian guests on our cruise received compensation whilst the British guests  did not.   I don’t want to let this issue rest because it is so unfair, and it will ruin future cruises we have booked with Oceania. My husband does not want to cruise with them again as a matter of principle.

44 minutes ago, cruiseaholic78 said:

If you booked them onboard don’t US conditions apply? Or did you transfer to a local UK based T.A.?
 

It was transferred to our TA in the U.K. they did it automatically. Don’t think there was a choice.

20 hours ago, ToxM said:

 

Good - please let us know how this goes. Did the others who were on the cruise get notified of FCC whilst on board and did you get the same or any notification? 

 

 

We did not even get an apology whilst on board, Oceania think they are like royalty, they don’t apologise and don’t explain. 
 

like most of us on the Roll Call we sent in a letter to Oceania explaining our dissatisfaction and disappointment.  Did not realise at the time that we should have gone through our TA to get a result.  All we received as a reply was a cut a paste letter similar to everyone else, but no offer of compensation.  
 

Unfortunately  prior to all this  inconvenience, we had booked a couple of future cruises with Oceania whilst on board. If our disappointment means nothing to the company, in comparison  to everyone else, then I would prefer to have our deposit returned and we will look for a company that wants our business.  Unlike the US if we cancel we will loose the deposit we paid. 

8 minutes ago, ToxM said:

To be fair, Travel Agents don’t have the same level of clout with providers in the UK as they do in the US, but as I stated above the first port of call (excuse the pun) is O or the TA. 

We have started copying in our TA and have asked them for help.

Just returned from our first Oceania cruise and must say I am disappointed regarding the Cruise as a whole. We had a number of ports cancelled without notice because of biofouling and New Zealand’s requirements to clean the hull of the ship.  Our cruise was not operating in New Zealand waters but the following cruise was. Oceania made the decision to inconvenience our cruise so that it could meet  New Zealands long standing requirements .
 

We received no explanation or apology whilst on board, we even picked up tender  tickets the morning we were due to visit Kangaroo Island.  As you can imagine passengers were not happy as we were looking forward to visiting Kangaroo Island and the Great Ocean Road and our private arrangements had to be cancelled at very short notice.

Like many we wrote and complained to Oceania on our return home, we have kept in touch with fellow passengers via cruise critic roll call and as of today we have been the only passengers not offered any compensation for the inconvenience.  Passengers from Australia and the US have received a future cruise credit as an apology , however both my husband and myself plus another British couple have received nothing.

Does this happen often and can anyone explain why we are being treated differently. 

Just returned from our first Oceania cruise and must say I am disappointed regarding the Cruise as a whole. We had a number of ports cancelled without notice because of biofouling and New Zealand’s requirements to clean the hull of the ship.  Our cruise was not operating in New Zealand waters but the following cruise was. Oceania made the decision to inconvenience our cruise so that it could meet  New Zealands long standing requirements .
 

We received no explanation or apology whilst on board, we even picked up tender  tickets the morning we were due to visit Kangaroo Island.  As you can imagine passengers were not happy as we were looking forward to visiting Kangaroo Island and the Great Ocean Road and our private arrangements had to be cancelled at very short notice.

Like many we wrote and complained to Oceania on our return home, we have kept in touch with fellow passengers via cruise critic roll call and as of today we have been the only passengers not offered any compensation for the inconvenience.  Passengers from Australia and the US have received a future cruise credit as an apology , however both my husband and myself plus another British couple have received nothing.

Does this happen often and can anyone explain why we are being treated differently. 
 

On 2/13/2023 at 12:01 AM, wookie78 said:

We too have been loyal Princess cruisers for a long time. We recently we decided to try Oceania this past January as we had been steadily upgrading to suites on Princess to get some of the amenities. 

We stayed in a concierge level 3 verandah and were happy with the cabin.  It is smaller than a Princess balcony cabin but the bathroom more than makes up for the smaller room.  The shower size and the added cabinets were wonderful additions.  On Princess you have to upgrade to get a shower that size!

As for the food Oceania beats Princess hands down.  I had lobster of some sort almost everyday.

Being able to order room service at any time and from the Main Dining Room was a plus.

Barristas coffee bar is similar to International Cafe but with smaller food options.   Light snacks as opposed to the wonderful soups and sandwiches in the IC. Nice that it is all included not an upcharge.

The entertainment on O was not to my liking.  They try very hard but I felt like it was like high school musicals as compared to the big production shows on the larger Princess ships.  But I did not mind missing the shows as we sometimes enjoyed the quiet decks outside.  The pool and deck areas were not crowded from our perspective(Princess deck).  We always found chairs in the shade or sun.  They cover their deck loungers with thick cushions and then cover them with terry cloth covers that are changed out whenever needed.  They also seem to keep up with chair hogs and move their stuff if left too long. On our cruise in January there was a lot older crowd then we are used to on Princess.  We are in our 60's and felt very young!  But everyone was having a good time and it did not bother us. It was so nice not to have photographers everywhere. Nice to not have art auction people trying to get you to an auction with "free" champagne.  

If have any more questions please feel free to ask.

We have just completed our first cruise on Oceania and agree with  many of your remarks where comparing against Princess. We liked the smaller ship  and the quality of food on offer was great, however the service on Oceania Regatta was very poor. One night in the main dining room it took over an hour and half to get our entre.  When it did arrive one of our dinner companions meat was still raw inside.  Food in the buffet was also regularly cold.  

We have travelled extensively with Cunard and  I would say that the quality and service is so much better than we experienced on Oceania.  The ships are beautiful and you don’t have art auctions, instead , you have brilliant insight lecturers . 

We will be sticking with Princess, just left Sky Princess on Saturday, the cruise was not without its problems but overall we had a lovely time.  The disembarkation was  chaotic  and we had large number of passengers with covid but won’t let that spoil the memories.
 

 I just felt sorry for staff who had to deal with all the complaints, also those who were cruising for the fist time as many would have been put off by the experience.

4 hours ago, KetoCruiser said:

We are trying to book a British isles cruise in May 21 using this FCC, our Travel Agent is Speaking to Princess to ask them to extend the deadline as April/ May is the earliest we can take a cruise from Southampton and it was not our fault we did not use the credit, Princess cancelled the cruise.

 

If Princess doesn’t extend it, I don’t think I will book with Princess again, and pursue getting a refund rather than taking cruise credits Which they don’t seem to honour .

Just heard back from our TA and Princess has extended the FCC to cover our May 2021 cruise around British Isles. 
 

Thanks Princess

We are trying to book a British isles cruise in May 21 using this FCC, our Travel Agent is Speaking to Princess to ask them to extend the deadline as April/ May is the earliest we can take a cruise from Southampton and it was not our fault we did not use the credit, Princess cancelled the cruise.

If Princess doesn’t extend it, I don’t think I will book with Princess again, and pursue getting a refund rather than taking cruise credits Which they don’t seem to honour .

35 minutes ago, casofilia said:

@KetoCruiser

 

used before  end Feb 2021

 

Check if it actually means "USED", as in the cruise has to be "taken" by then, or "BOOKED" before then.

 

  Princess has just informed us that our FCC is ready to use .On the breakdown it states the expiry (sail date ) as 28 Feb 2021 for the first element of the FCC we received from our cancelled cruise in Feb. The other 2 elements have a 2022 sail by date.

Our cruise to Asia was in mid Feb and they cancelled it 2 weeks before we were due to sail. We received full refund + 50% FCC as compensation which had to be used before  end Feb 2021. 

We booked a Baltic Cruise using the FCC and that was later cancelled and that FCC expiry date remains the same as the initial one. Don’t understand why taking it up with Princess.

We have just noted that our first FCC which we received in February when our Asia cruise was cancelled expires at end of Feb 2021. We tried to use it in May on a cruise to the Baltic and again that was cancelled . However Princess has kept the credit showing  the original expiry date.  That does not seem fair and we are asking if they can extend it as there has been no opportunity to use it.

 Until Government allows us to cruise these cruise credits are worthless especially if they do not extend the expiry dates on them

On 4/6/2020 at 10:08 AM, Windsurfboy said:

 

 

No  I think it will be hard to raise prices, but if their costs have gone up by maybe $100 per cabin week due to interest payments  and prices come down, as I said in earlier post, in a few years time if this happens they will be in financial trouble. 

 

This is one reason I won't be booking a cruise for 2022

My thought is at  there’s a lot of FCC to be spent in the next year and a half, therefore putting up prices initially may not be palatable but people will probably pay it as it’s not real money it’s FCC and if they don’t use it then they loose it.  They will perhaps book a shorter cruise or lower cabin grade to compensate.  Once FCC has gone then prices will fall , as people will think more clearly and way up alternatives etc.
 

if you have FCC you are going to have to decide whether book now for 2022 or hang on to see if prices fall. It could go either way. Lucky for cruisers from US who have refundable deposits if they decide to cancel.  How does that work with FCC.

17 hours ago, oskidunker said:

Agree. I would take the cash. 

17 hours ago, Canuker said:

If and when they start cruising again, can you imagine the lineups at the purser's desk, with all these 'trust us, it's automatically credited to your account'? I wouldn't be an onboard "guest services" employee for all the tea in China. It all presupposes that the land-side administration know what they're doing and get it all right, up front.
Just like their website.

I was watching one of the YouTube cruise bloggers who made a good point that with all this FCC about, it’s likely that when the cruise lines do start operating again then it may be difficult to get on the more popular cruises. The cruise lines are likely to also hike the prices up and you will find your FCC not going as far as you thought.  He suggested taking land based holidays until things settle down again 12 to 18 months.

 We will be taking the cash with Cunard as we have cancelled cruises with Princess and FCC  with them can be transferred to  an existing booking and we have one booked in Oct 21.

3 hours ago, Canuker said:

The form referred to in the red-type hotlink above applies not only to bookings directly with Cunard but those via TAs as well. This seems to be a departure from a fundamental tenet of Cunard and most other cruise lines.
If the FCC option is selected and funds are credited to the customer's 'guest account' at Cunard, I wonder if this means that the ensuing future booking(s) must be made directly with Cunard also and not through a TA.

Can anyone in the know clarify, please?

We had FCC with Princess and once we chose the cruise we wanted, our TA contacted Princess to apply the FCC. I think it works similar to a future cruise you buy on the ship, you can still book it through your own travel agent.

28 minutes ago, ellie1145 said:

I can only tell you our experience. We are in the 70+ age range. When the FCO advised no cruises it made not one iota of difference to either the cruise line, our flights or our hotel bookings. It had no time limit (in other words it might be rescinded by May) therefore none of them would allow us to cancel.
 

Ours is a ‘package’ as we allowed the TA to book the other elements of our vacation. Nobody, not insurance, not the TA would acknowledge we had a problem nor would they allow us to cancel without a total loss, as it was an advisory not mandatory.

 

Even now we are in lockdown, and cannot even leave our house, we cannot cancel anything without a huge loss. We spoke directly to Princess who were very helpful but as our cruise is at end of May and they are still not cancelling cruises that far ahead, there is no way we can cancel without losing our money. Or more specifically we could get some back in cash from Princess, but the rest would be in FCC. But if we cancel the cruise we still have all the rest booked and the TA says cancel the cruise and you will lose all your money on flights etc.

 

But as the FCO has said no cruising, no travel to the USA, then if we were able to cruise (and that’s not going to happen) it would, as others have said, invalidate our travel insurance.

 

So we are between a rock and a hard place.

 

The insurance company refuse to talk to us until we are 48 hours before our holiday.

The TA says they are inundated and will only deal with us in order of sail date, though they will cancel the whole thing if we want to lose all of our money. But will they still be in a position to refund anything by the end of May? I have my doubts.

 

Our ‘package’ is protected by ABTA and ATOL and technically we should get a full refund if we wait until it’s cancelled, but by the end of May the proverbial pot of money is likely to be empty. Those who had their cruises cancelled early on should be very grateful as they will have been compensated fully.

 

i doubt we will be so lucky.

As an aside, I checked our seats on our plane yesterday and there are loads available now. When we booked there were literally half a dozen seats empty, so people are definitely cancelling! But not Virgin.

 

I think you have 2 choices

1) hold fire as the cruise at the end of May will in all likelihood of being cancelled. You can then claim a refund like the rest of us. I have one booked with Princess for 30th May to the Baltic from Southampton and I am expecting that to be cancelled probably about 2 weeks before it is supposed to sail.

2) You could cancel now and get whatever refund is available and claim the rest from your travel  insurance company. This only applies, I guess if the foreign office travel advisory covers the date you propose to travel.  At present it’s in place until 14 April in the U.K. So you will need to wait until that’s extended .  Once that happens I don’t think the insurance company can refuse. Money saving expert web site has a list of main travel insurance companies and what they are paying out for. just heard that America will now remain closed until end of May so it may depend on that date as well.  

option 2 will depend on your travel insurance and when you took it out to cover this trip. We were told by ours that they will not cover trips booked after 17th March 2020.  That’s one of the reasons I am reluctant to take FCC as I don’t know if when we would be able to book a future cruise that would cover us for covid -19.  I believe Princess allows you to use FCC on bookings already made as long as you have not paid the balance.  I hope that is the case 

Hopefully Cunard will get its act together now following this independent article

Went out for my daily exercise this morning and had a good laugh, one of my neighbours in the village has spent all this free time making bird boxes from odds and ends of wood.  They are not for sale, he has decided that bartering is more beneficial during this shut down and is asking 2 toilet rolls for a bird box .  I believe he will consider other offers.  Perhaps I can persuade him to let me have a bird box for a bottle of tonic