Snaefell3

We've sailed PH and Concierge (once each).

• Dinner served in your PH by your butler was so-so because of the small table and -- at least in our case -- he had other things going on, so he wasn't as much to hand as a waiter would be; you refilled your own coffee cup, etc.

• We'd really rather not sail with an 'R'-class non-suite bathroom again.  Nevermind the shower, the commode was awkward, too.

• If 6:30pm non-shared specialty reservations are important to you, then PH is important to you, but that makes them *expensive* reservations.

• If you have to quarantine, you *will* appreciate the extra space.  ...and for the record, in-your-cabin dinner from the specialties in that case does not include butler service -- they put everything in one pile on a waiters stand outside your door and play ding-dong-ditch.

2 hours ago, thebsinmiss said:

No idea, best to ask Oceania directly.  My "guess" is that if you booked it as a designated balcony suite that was NOT part of concierge then you would not benefit from the concierge designation.  Cynically if they can't get more dollars from you they aren't going give you the concierge perks !

 

Either way enjoy your cruise

 

 

Different cruiseline, different corporation, but several times when Princess reclassed additional vanilla mini-suites as Club Class, the lucky folks with existing reservations got upgraded.

There is hope.  🤞

"Revenue enhancement".  😢

1 minute ago, ronrick1943 said:

We'll be on a late September/October cruise-should have longer nights--after Alaskan we head for Tokyo.

Better chances than July.  🙂 

https://www.spaceweather.gov/ has Aurora forecasts -- but be aware the green only marks less than 50:50 chance, what you want to see is red.

1 hour ago, pinotlover said:

In the U.S. , neither the airlines nor most the hotel chains pay commissions to the Travel Agent.

Yep.  Good point.  I was thinking/speaking about cruise bookings only.  I always tell my TA that I'll take care of those myself unless he can somehow get a commission.

1 hour ago, WESTEAST said:

Our TA changed agencies and reviewing the 'new' agency invoice for a recent onboard booking, it now states service fees will apply over and above the main component of cruise booking. Service fees include: booking domestic - international air $50-$100.00 pp; changes to booking - $25.00 pp for hotels, transfers, shore excursions, etc.  File cancellations are $100 pp. Kinda shocked as have been with this TA for many years. Always was an advantage to have TA book non-O air, transfers but now the advantage is diminishing. No doubt 'new agency' is trying to recoup lost Covid revenue. Would like to know if anyone pays such fees as news to us? Will shop around or, transfer booking back to Oceania.

Methinks that TA should be your ex-TA.  😉 

Please, for all our sakes, educate them that -- at least for the nonce -- we have other options.

13 hours ago, Vallesan said:

I would have thought with a ‘75 day window’ you won’t have any trouble getting the times you want even after a good nights sleep! We’ve never had an issue even with the 60 day window.

Easier on an 11- or 14-day voyage than a 7, or on a 'R'-class with 2 specialties than on a ship with 4.

O is usually accommodating except when pesky cabotage laws (like the US's PVSA -- often mistakenly cited as the Jones Act) get in the way.

Best to ask O directly (and if you can figure out how, Italy).  We here on CC aren't maritime attorneys -- at least not yours. 😉 

Just back from the grocery store.  Wish I could have "booked my milk early".  😉 

Psst!  To see the Northern Lights, you need night -- which is in short supply during Alaskan summers  😉 

Service can be superb or egregious on any size ship, so let's leave that aside.

The remaining tradeoff is ports-of-call opportunity (smaller ships go more places) vs economies of scale (bigger ships cost less per Gross Ton to operate).  O has chosen to use part of those economies to give pax "elbow room".  We don't know about food venues yet, but I suspect the new ships will also have more venues like AquaMar and  Bakery -- they'll have the room.

Frankly, there are not that many places that a 67,000GT ship can get into that an 86,000GT ship cannot, so there's not much opportunity lost there.

The new ships will sail with 61.4 GT/pax, noticeably less crowded than the 'O'- and 'A'-class's 55.8, and spacious compared to the 'R'-class's 50.  For comparison, Oasis of the Seas offers but 40.5.

15 hours ago, Janet- said:

If you have 8.30 reservation your table would have been used by whoever had a  6.30 reservation. Oceania advise  2 hours for a speciality dinner, so if you turned up early there wouldn't be a table available.

Data indicate otherwise.  😉 

11 minutes ago, EJL2023 said:

A couple of seconds after midnight Eastern Time Zone. Don’t have the window already open before as it will act as if you were in there before midnight. At least that is what we have found to be the case. 

Or, alternatively, hit "Refresh" button every 5 or so seconds.

45 minutes ago, EJL2023 said:

Yes, but they will still move nightstand and put bed in line with the bedside outlets. 

Not on Vista's voyage of Mar 16-27.

Have they violated minimum clearance electrical safety regulations for you?

7 minutes ago, EJL2023 said:

Have had it done before on Marina in a standard Veranda Stateroom.  On Marina they were still close together but separate bedding. Not sure if bedside tables were movable or not, but if they were only real option would be to move one closest to the sofa due to closet configuration on Marina veranda staterooms. 

The problem is not so much the nightstands, but that the pillow of the moved bed would be rubbing the bedside power outlets ... and anything an incautious pax might plug into them.

You can get separate bedding and maybe 3".

1 hour ago, pinotlover said:

As I understand the issue as explained, the O ships cabins were stick built, meaning built out aboard ship. The new A ships, as well as most recently built ships, have their cabins built modularly, off ship, and then slid into place individually as modules. This process is highly cost efficient, but eliminates most of the sound proffing between the cabins. The only effective fix requires a massive amount of sound proffing material added to each pre constructed cabin module. This equals more construction costs. 
 

Pray for quiet neighbors.

Agreed.  Right up to the "but eliminates".  Were that the case, we'd have been having sound issues with just about every ship built for any line this millennium.

8 hours ago, pinotlover said:

Besides the availability of certain ports, I see the larger changes being in dining? Do they make the GDR and Terrace larger yet? How about the Specialties? With 200 more passengers I’m guessing extra Specialty nights, except for top suites, will mostly disappear.

Were the 1400 pax squeezing into 67,817GT like Vista and Allura you'd be right.

They new ships are being built at 86,000GT.

49 minutes ago, njhorseman said:

1,400 passenger ships are hardly large. 

Divide the GT (which is a measure of the ship's enclosed volume, not its weight) of the new ships by their double occupancy capacity and compare that to the same calculation for Vista and Allura and you'll see that the space per passenger is higher on the new builds.

In other words, for the new ships, 86,000/1,400 = 61.43, while for Vista and Allura, 67,000/1,200 = 55.83 .

Yep.  But the "ratio" I'm more interested in is pax to hotel department staff.

37 minutes ago, WESTEAST said:

IMO, this is an indicator that the R ships will be history... Disappointed that Oceania is increasing the passenger capacity to 1400 and not sure this will be appealing to current loyal (but aging) Oceania passengers. Perhaps larger ships will appeal to the younger generation. We are not thankfully, in the mobility challenged/aging passengers (as seen in our recent cruises), however by 2027/9, it maybe time to look at options. Times are a changing...

The 'R'-class ships are late 1980s design.  They are comparatively expensive to run on a per-pax basis, have really-out-of-environmental-vogue propulsion, and ...have you ever showered in a non-suite cabin?  😉

O would have disposed of them long ago except O didn't want to be a 2-ship cruise line.

5 hours ago, ak1004 said:

 

There are many things you can say about O. Some wonderful, some good, some just ok. But when I read someone describes food as "edible", to me the whole review loses its credibility.

Or at least makes it clear the reviewer's standards are so much more ...elevated than mine, that it's a waste of my time reading his opinion.

10 minutes ago, 1985rz1 said:

Personally, I wouldn't depend of WiFi priority alone.  I've been in situations where, because of a change in the relative signal strengths, my phone switched from WiFi calling to standard cellular text and data.  It's much safer to make sure you are in airplane mode if you don't want an accidental switch.

I was listing what was needed.  Methinks we agree what is wise is to set *both*.  😉

1 hour ago, pinotlover said:

We have all those folks with 2:30 boarding times showing up at the ship at 10:30 expecting to be accommodated.

With 600 or 1200 passengers, it appears Oceania doesn't much care.  Port of LA doesn't care, either.  Port of Miami, with 67,000 passengers to worry about *does*.

1 hour ago, edgee said:

Just bring your ear plugs and white noise machine.The noise bleeding issue between cabins is a damn shame on that ship!

...or not, considering the blissful silence we experienced in 11014 from Mar 16-27.

7 minutes ago, clo said:

And how many billions in debt is the O parent company???

Not sure how that relates to forgetting to do move-up/down/over offers and leaving folks on the dock or not, but $12 billion, about half of it from the shutdown.

On the other hand, NCLH is in the black and looking up: $8.6B earnings for '23; estimated $9.3B for '24, and $10.0B for '25.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:37 PM, Snaefell3 said:

But as I said upthread... Now that we have a terrible example, *nobody* is going to be making *that* mistake any time soon.

Pass the salt, please.  I've got some words to eat.

Genting Dream left 46?, 50? passengers at the dock in Singapore on Mar 29 2024.

No word on whether they were "guarantee" or "assigned a cabin", but they'd "printed out their boarding passes".

All I can say is it's China-owned, Jake.  ::shrugs::