SU-Florida

They reiterated the price guarantee in the Ambassador presentation today

I just went up to inquire about onboard price, but they would not honor pre-Oct price on cruise I was waiting to book onboard.  Oceania will now give onboard price and perks booking by phone 30 days prior to your cruise date.  Coulda shoulda woulda done that....

On Riviera terrace cafe lunch on a sea day.   Took an informal poll (yes I asked ages politely of course).  Opinion is average age around 65 on a 10 day mostly Greece itinerary. My CC M&G skewed a bit younger...a few 40's, mostly 50's. A few 70-80's.  

There are 462 Go Next assorted alumni (not us) about half seem to be still working, rest retired.  No children.   Very port intensive cruise, averaging about 5 miles and 12 flights in each port.

We took our first cruise on Renaissance (pre-Oceania) for my 50th birthday and are now in the over-65 group.  We didn't think we were too young on our first cruise and don't feel too old on this one!

We didn't even get a free drink, much less open bar...

 My point about the shuttle is that the itinerary was to Taormina from Naxos.  We would never have chosen a cruise with a overnight in Messina!  Messina was never in the plan. 

But thanks for the reminder about missed port insurance!  My Nationwide plan does include this and I have never remembered to use it!  Now I have a plan for sea day today researching what docs I need to make a claim.

Thanks!

Fifth Oceania cruise - fifth cruise to miss a port!

Yesterday we were scheduled to be in Taormina, tendering from Giardino Naxos.  We went instead to Messina. So far, so good - but farther to Taormina. So we took the "On Your Own" shore excursion to Taormina, but were only allowed about 2.5 hours in Taormina....taxi to return later would have been expensive.

At dinner they announced that we would not continue to Malta as scheduled for today due to weather.  Well...weather happens. But We are here in Messina another day...not thrilling but could be worse...

Destination Services offered us the fabulous opportunity to pay for the same shore excursion again today.  Yes, for a mere $109 per person we can spend another hour on a bus to spend another 2.5 hours in Taormina - the port scheduled in the itinerary

I hear about those "free shuttles" from Oceania

Seems like a free shuttle would be a fair solution - instead of paying for another hundred bucks for a bus ride to our planned port!

While I (and many others) are disappointed by missed ports, what really grates is Oceania's attitude about it.   We've missed ports on other lines - bad weather can happen to anyone.   But other lines have been apologetic, and usually were very helpful.  With Oceania, it's "too bad, not our problem" ....they simply don't care, it seems.

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Currently aboard Riviera missing yet another port. We are now batting 100% on missed ports on every Oceania cruise.  

Tried to start a new thread on this earlier, but poor O Internet dropped a couple times. 

More on this tomorrow....