susiesan

So UK and Irish cruisers will end up paying less overall, the value of the tips, than American passengers. That's not right.😠

My Sept. 8 cruise on Pursuit that begins in Fusina ends in Chioggia on Sept. 17. We will be going to Milan by train. I have no information from Azamara after disembarking how to get to Venice, more specifically the train station. Will Azamara bus us back to Terminal Maritime like the y bus us from there to Fusina? If not, are there Ubers that will go to Venice Mestre train station? is there a train or bus from Chioggia that goes to the train station? I will be buying train tickets ahead of time and want to get an idea of what time to buy. For anyone who disembarked in Chioggia, how didd you get back to Venice?

Oceania has already rerouted their Red Sea cruises in 2024 to go around the long way via Capetown.

I just got a new phone. It's a Motorola, Android OS using the chrome browser. When I try to log in to Cruise Critic on the web site using my log in name and passport nothing happens. None of the sign in buttons bring up a log in screen. I am able to log in on my desktop and my tablet using my existing log in and password. Can you help me so I can post on my phone while traveling on a cruise?

Maybe this is why O is not sailing through the Red Sea in 2024 to get from the Mediterranean to Abu Dhabi but is taking the long way around Africa. Perhaps their insurance carrier massively raised the rates.

With SM, you will never see those prices again. At a minimum, all prices now are $800 more per person. You have to cover the cost of the beverages package and shore excursions that you may or may not want.

Have you ever been on a safari? OAT has a lot of solo and women tours/safaris where they don't charge a single supplement.

Wow. Were you offered anything for your anxiety? Are you getting free drinks to help ease anxiety?

Since there are so many empty cabins all of you should ask to be upgraded, start filling the ship from the top suites and work down. I can't believe O won't do anything special for you. An open bar would go a long way to keeping everyone in a happy mood.

The US is warning of evolving threats to ships sailing in the Red Sea https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-warns-evolving-threats-ships-112754658.html

Roger, other than all the IT problems, how is your cruise going?

Why were you quarantined, was it covid? I thought no one was reporting they had it anymore.

Hi Roger, where are you now, off the coast of Africa? I'm still planning on an AZ cruise in September, Croatia intensive. My OBC and shore ex credit do not show up in my online account. My TA says to use rhe shore ex credit I have to call AZ to reserve them. That's crazy that I can't book them myself.

I am not currently booked on a O cruise, I'm booked on Azamara for next Sept. I took a O cruise in September that was cruise only, no SM. Up until changing to SM P has been a fairly good fit. They are not perfect, but I have not been unhappy with any of my past 6 O cruises. Going forward, O won't fit my travel style.

I've sailed with Oceania 6 times over the last 20 years. My next cruise will be with Azamara. I'm unlikely to sail with Oceania again unless they get rid of SM.

Just another reason not to like O's change to forced excursions with SM. If you are going to use the SM excursion credit pick excursions early in the cruise so if ports are dropped/cancelled as happens frequently you will have had the use of the SM shore ex money.

I'm not on the cruise. Why don't you send the article if you are one of the affected cruises? I've been following along to see how terribly Oceania is handling all this so I know whether or not to book another cruise with Oceania. Right now, it's a big no.

Now ships in the Red Sea are being hijacked: https://english.alarabiya.net/News/middle-east/2023/11/19/Israeli-ship-reportedly-hijacked-by-Yemen-s-Houthis-in-Red-Sea Maybe this will get Oceania to call off these 2 cruises scheduled to sail through the Red Sea.

Wow, that's a lot of changes, especially to a different embarkation port. Are you still going to take the cruise? Were you offered any compensation in the form of a discount so as not to cancel?

Take a look at Azamara, very similar experience as Oceania. Also check out Windstar. I'm not a luxury line cruiser and was able to take 6 Oceania cruises since 2008 because of being able to book a cruise only cabin, outside, as those prices were very reasonable to be able to afford the Oceania cruises. With SM, that is not the case anymore. Although I am not impacted by O's policies regarding these ME cruises I have been reading all the comments for future reference. I am also likely done with Oceania. I might trust them again for a Caribbean cruise if the price was right, but not an overseas cruise.

SM stands for Simply More, which is simply more money for an Oceania cruise. You can no longer just book a cabin, cruise only. You have to pay for a beverage package and excursions whether or not you will use them. It's a sneaky price increase.

I never cash those checks. I like to mess with the books of the law firms that generate class actions.

I booked a Baltic cruise on Norwegian Dawn for Aug. 2021 that included 2 days in St. Petersburg. Then the Ukraine conflict broke out and NCL had to drop St. Petersburg and substituted an extra day in Helsinki and added Visby. This was before final payment so many people cancelled the cruise because they wanted to go to St. Petersburg. To encourage people from not canceling they offered a huge discount to keep the cruise. I saved over $1500 for 2 of us. Why O isn't doing this for the people willing to take these particular sailings doesn't make sense because NCLH has done it before.

You may not love Dubrovnik if you re there on a day when there are 10,000 other people from cruise ships. It has become a crowded place to visit and is very different than when it was part of Yugoslavia.

I will be leaving it. Oceania's massive price increase is not worth it to me. I understand price increases are sometimes necessary, but I would have preferred to see a transparent price hike rather than a misleading one called Simply More. Oceania no longer fits with my cruising travel style.