PhD-iva

Frankfurt airport $ucks! I have connected 2 or 3 times since COVID and it was terrible. Your airplane will likely park VERY FAR from the terminal, therefore you must walk down the plane’s stairs (no ramps) carrying all of your bulky carryon bags. I can’t believe more people don’t trip and fall while juggling heavy bags in a crush of people jostling to board the large buses with mostly standing room only. 
Then when your bus has passed by an extraordinary number of other planes parked out on the tarmac and finally gets to the terminal, it seems like they hide the elevator/escalator. It’s probably a “eco-green” thing to carry all your heavy bags up the stairs. 
Then, guess what! You get to do the whole thing in reverse when you’re boarding your connecting flight.
YUCH! AVOID!

Keep in mind that the best excursions might already be fully booked along with a full waitlist. 
You get what you pay for……

We booked an aft G2 suite on Explorer for MAR2027 (!), RT Tokyo. Very excited!

Weekends are wonky. Try again on Monday. Sorry!

Thx for your posts! 

1 hour ago, Pcardad said:

That would be nice but they are down-sizing the department to cut costs. Hopefully, it will be a priority in the future.

Wow! Wrong place to cut!

On 7/20/2024 at 2:49 PM, DarthCruiser said:

It seems that the website has been fixed recently to the extent that the Manage This Booking button is once again displayed consistently. 🙂  Of course, most of our reduced deposit reservations (e.g., onboard bookings) still show a Deposit Needed to Confirm Booking status.  But the site seems to be back to where it used to be before it broke.  I guess that's progress.

I see the same in my account. Hope they can pull their IT systems out of the dark ages…..

1 hour ago, MEFIowa said:

While I think the words "mainstream line" obfuscates the issue a bit, a joy of sailing on O ships is that there is very little "class" segregation. A spirit of "equality" tends to exist. We ALL eat in the same specialty restaurants and in the TC and GDR. We're all on the cruise together, regardless of whether you're in a G cabin, B cabin, PH, or suite. So just feels like "one ship". One group of cruisers enjoying a cruise together.

 

I suspect that "ship within a ship" works best, assuming it works, on the GIANT ships. Where one can build in the segregation. The mega-ships aren't for us. Whether just thinking about how crowded they are or how limited they can be in where they can go.

 

So I prefer "equality" on a smaller ship. Not segregation on a mega-ship.

You nailed it! Thx!

Just now, Russiamomm said:

Looks like we’re shipmates!  We’re on the same cruise.  😃. 
 

We leave on the QM2 out of NYC to Hamburg a week from today. We’re taking an overnight ferry from Kiel to Oslo and will spend three days in Oslo before boarding the Sirena.  Really looking forward to the trip.  See you onboard!

Great See you onboard!

Sign up for the Meet&Greet. I wasn’t able to include a link to the Roll Call for our itin in this post. Must be a “crowdstrike” issue. 🙃

Pls introduce yourself on the Roll Call and sign up for the M&G!

CU soon!

1 hour ago, Russiamomm said:

LOL.  We’re actually going to be on Serena.  It’s an 18 night cruise.  We have our specialties booked, but will have plenty of time to try just about everything.  Can’t wait!

Russiamomm, on 10 August I’m embarking Sirena in Oslo for an 18-day cruise. When is your 18-day cruise on Sirena?

1 hour ago, MEFIowa said:

How could you miss the beginning? WIFE! WIFE! WIFE!

 

"Fascinating to see how disappointed my wife was yesterday…..

Please don’t expect us to assume that you are a heterosexual couple, whereby referring to your “wife” means you are not the person who generally posts using this cruise critic handle. 
To the extent I pay any attention to a poster’s gender, I generally assume that the person using this handle is a female, knowing that might be an incorrect assumption on my part.
But when someone using this handle talks about their wife, that still does not tell me that it’s not the female that usually posts usually this handle. I don’t keep track of the gender of everybody’s spouse. 
 

Since Covid, I travel solo. Oceania Does a great job of organizing solo get togethers. The first scheduled get together is probably the evening on embarkation day, if not then certainly on the following evening. It is always listed in the Currents schedule. 
IIRC, when I was traveling solo on O, the solo get togethers start around 5:30 ish (don’t quote me on this!), it was hosted, meaning it’s an open bar with a Associate Cruise Director as Host.*. I’m always surprised by how many solos are on board. The Host organizes dinner ressys in the MDR for any solos who would like to eat together. We generally had 2 large tables of diners. Again, 2 complimentary bottles of wine were provided to each table (1 red, 1 white). This was my experience traveling solo on O. I thought it was a great experience!

*Last time on Sirena, the solos were hosted by one of the dancers, a lovely young woman. It was her first experience hosting the solos, so  hopefully she is now more experienced.

I was on Voyager in February for the Super Bowl. Regent did a fabulous job hosting Super Bowl coverage in the constellation theater. All the officers, or at least several of them were there to greet passengers. I am not a Super Bowl fan, but it was a great time. I enjoyed my hotdog and sides and cold brewski Before heading back to my state room for an early night. It was quite festive night. I’ll bet they do something special for you for the Olympics.

53 minutes ago, clo said:

So the non-included ones aren't on the regular list?

The specialties offer some drinks (beer/wine) that are not on the regular list, thus resulting in a charge to the pax. 
Be sure to ask your server!

I wholeheartedly recommend that you select the four days cruising Antarctica. I had a ressy this past February on a different cruise line w 4 days cruising Antartica. I was very skeptical that we would be able to get close enough to be able to see anything other than a white blob on the horizon. Boy was I mistaken. Later I told folks we were close enough to shore that I could have reached it swimming, except that I would’ve died of hypothermia. 😂

I was quite the skeptic, but it was great! Incredible!

Here is an iceberg we passed, estimated 51 million tons (the iceberg, not me!).

(Sorry 1 pic posted upset down - a southern hemisphere thing? LOL!)

50 minutes ago, grmmybtty said:

We were on the 2022 ATW when we hit number 40, so our free cruise would have been the next cruise. It should have been on the Vista maiden cruise. When that was delayed, we changed the booking to a Riviera Med Cruise. Oceania and our TA were aware of that, but somehow we were billed and paid for the cruise. Oceania would not refund or give us credit, but said that our next cruise would count. It was a 77 day Grand Voyage and we refused to take that as our free cruise and lose the OLife excursions and the 7 cruise credits. We booked a 15day Singapore to Bangko cruise as our 40th and the second segment of our upcoming Copenhagen to Tromso to Reykjavik cruise later this month will be our 60th. That’s how we got 2 free cruises in 2024!

Methinks O should treat good customers like you better than you have been!

Since COVID, I find the response time to be varied and unpredictable. I suggest submitting forms after FP date, and follow up every few weeks…….

It gets there eventually IME.

On 7/1/2024 at 11:35 AM, EJL2023 said:

Definitely…have had the same happen to me. 

I also have had a similar experience. I had a guarantee status for a penthouse. Later, I noticed that penthouses were available however I had never been contacted by Oceania. I asked my TA to assign me the penthouse cabin and all was fine.
I really think that, O’s IT systems are not known for being high-quality. In fact, they have a reputation to be user unfriendly IMO.

I’ve been in a penthouse cabin on sistership Sirena, quite close to the elevators. Never heard any noise.

4 hours ago, Stockjock said:

Here’s a slightly different question. Let’s say that you receive a credit that is to be used only towards shore excursions and you book those. But then they cancel a port of call or excursion. Is there any sort of a refund, or are you just out of luck?

If you have Simply More excursion credits, use them to book your excursions on the first available port. Then, if a port gets canceled or a tour gets canceled, hopefully you’ll have a chance to select an excursion in a subsequent port. There are no refunds for SM excursion credits; there is no alternative use for them (that I’m aware of).

Enjoy your cruise!

On 7/6/2024 at 8:22 AM, iowananny said:

I can vouch for Robin.  She's a lovely person who is very easy to get along with.  We shared a cruise several years ago and enjoyed her very much.

Thanks! Hope y’all are doing well! 

23 hours ago, pinotlover said:

First, let me say that @FlyerTalker could probably address this issue in more detail and hopefully he joins in.

 

Background, I recently ( and foolishly) agreed to host and lead another wine group tour in 2025 ….. 

Pinotlover, pls email me at RobinKPhD at icloud dot com. Would love to hear more about your wine tour.

I am a nice person and (almost) everybody likes me! 🥰

2 hours ago, Jim_Iain said:

I noticed on my recently applied shareholder credit was split equally between both guest.   I had expected to book a solo excursion but it would only allow me to use 1/2 of it.   I decided--- why bother... so Oceania lost my excursion booking.    I will just let it be applied to our gratuities instead.

The shareholder benefit is per stateroom, not per guest. 
Enjoy your cruise!

I have 3 O cruises under my belt with several more booked, and 2 Regent cruises under said belt and 2 more booked. I’m conflicted bc I would prefer the a la carte pricing O used to have, but I’ve had a better experience on R (food, service, suite, fellow pax, itineraries). 
R is not stuffy! R Ships are fabulous, and I love O ships.
You can’t go wrong (unless Corporate gets involved).

Thanks so much for this. I think I am now less curious about sailing on Cunard..