Eloise4Ever

Really looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Oceania, Jim. I've enjoyed your Celebrity reviews over the years. We mostly cruised on Celebrity but have done a few cruises with O since 2022 and found a lot to like. I feel the whole ship is like the Celebrity Retreat experience so will be very interested in your opinion. Have a wonderful cruise!

We have enjoyed Celebrity Retreat but for us, Oceania feels like we are having the Retreat experience on the whole ship. We think the food on O is fantastic and love being able to dine in the specialty restaurants. The O class ships are beautiful and a perfect size. The only thing you may miss from Celebrity is the nightlife. We have found it hard to adjust to the lack of late night entertainment on O but we're getting there. As other posters have mentioned, children or teens would find O boring and many other lines cater for that cohort. But if you are party of adults, I think you will love O.

Can you please confirm whether the aft deck at Terrace Café has been covered over? That canopy is a great addition on Vista. FYI, if you are dining in the Terrace, you can order items at Waves pizza restaurant and they will give you a number and deliver the food to your table. We enjoyed doing this on our recent Vista cruise when we would often order wings and a beef flatbread from Waves for the table as a starter. We also ordered pizza a time or too and it was very good.

Thanks Gary, I took your post the wrong way

Apologies if my post troubled you Gary. I'm just reporting what's happening onboard.

Thing is, in this case it was the pool attendant who suggested it, not the guest!

I asked my early-rising DH to check out the situation with the "reserved" loungers this morning. Unfortunately, due to a communication breakdown (whoever heard of such a thing between spouses ), he checked the wrong side of the ship! We'll try again tomorrow to see what's there. Some posters have expressed surprise that anybody would be taken aback by a crew member offering to reserve loungers. We've all been in places where we've tipped somebody for better service. But I was genuinely surprised to see it happen here as I assumed the ship had a strict "no reserving" policy. However, there has been no mention of such a policy in the daily Currents, nor has the CD mentioned it in her daily announcements. So I guess it's open season for chair hogs on Vista. Suffice it to say, on this sea day with beautiful weather, all the loungers are either occupied or saved. Our friends managed to get two loungers when the ladies occupying them offered to let them borrow them for an hour while they were going to a Salsa class!

Will see what we can do. It would be interesting to see what the pool guy puts out to "reserve" the beds! It's a sea day tomorrow so I imagine demand for beds will be high.

I'm lying on a day bed on the Vista pool deck and a guest approaches a pool attendant and asks him "How early do I need to get here in the morning to get a sunbed?". The attendant tells him no need to worry about that, he can reserve chairs for him. The guest is surprised but delighted. The attendant asks where he'd like the chairs to be reserved and the guest picks out his preferred spot. Attendant takes guests name and says he's going off to make a note. Handshakes were exchanged but I'm not sure if money changed hands.

Wishing you safe travels Lauren. We will be arriving in Trieste on Friday before boarding Vista on Saturday. I will look out for you onboard as I have your photo to go on! I will be interested to read your posts during the cruise and might post myself if you don't mind me crashing your report 😊.

I received a survey about the booking experience and when I clicked on the link I got a 404 error message.

There are many reports on this forum which state that when shore excursions which were booked under the Simply More package are cancelled by O, you will receive a non-refundable credit which can only be used for excursions. If you cannot find other excursions which interest you, or if all remaining excursions are sold out, you lose the Simply More credit.

I am open to correction but I think the cabin ceilings are always metal. We were able to attach magnetic hooks to the wall on Riviera before the refurb but not afterwards as the walls are now panelled with wood. However, the ceiling was metal both before and after. We will be sailing on Vista soon so interested to see what the situation is there.

I've been enjoying reading your thoughts about your first Oceania cruise Hank. We feel the same way about the early ending of entertainment each night. It's the one thing on Oceania that we have found to be very much lacking. Have you mentioned this at all on any of your mid-cruise surveys?

I am tickled to hear you are from the "Moonstruck" neighbourhood of New York Flatbush 🤩. That's one of my very favourite movies, due in no small part to the setting. Very evocative. I'm delighted to hear that you feel it was an accurate portrayal.

Really enjoying your review Hank. I've been reading your CC contributions for years and appreciate your comments. If, at some stage before you disembark Vista, you could find out who the CD will be for the first two weeks in June, I would be very grateful.

Thanks to all who have reported on the offerings at the Bakery in Baristas on Vista. Sounds like a huge improvement on the baked goods available in the same venue on Riviera and I can't wait to try it in June 😃

A half size portion of the lasagne is a perfect starter ☺️

I don't think anybody is saying O's approach in your case was unethical. I know I'm not.

Agree 100%. The issue under discussion was around the "use it or lose it" nature of SM shore excursion credits. Your post was quoted as an example of someone receiving a refund of unused SM credits so thank you for confirming that was not the case.

These are all fair points. The issue was raised by folks who couldn't use their SM shore excursion credit because O cancelled or shortened time in ports. All other excursions were sold out. I think in these cases the cruise line could see that the guest had "spent" the OBC before boarding and refund them accordingly if a port was cancelled. With the luxury lines the excursion costs don't stand out so much as everything is included in the fare. With O they are saying "pay the fare and we will give you x amount of money to spend on excursions". Which may be why folks are feeling hard done by.

Thanks for that but honestly I don't think it's terribly clear. The poster does say they ended up with "excess SM credits" which may be understood as SM credits they couldn't spend. I personally haven't experience losing SM credits but for me, unethical business practices are a red flag. Please note, I didn't dream this scenario up. It has been mentioned a few times on this thread that the SM excursion credit is "use it or lose it".

Multiple reports saying they do provide OBC to guests unable to spend their shore excursion OBC due to port cancellations?

So predictable. I wondered how long it would take for the O cheerleaders to trot out the old reliable "troll" trope.

Let's forget about the conspiracy theories. They are a distraction from the simple fact that O does not provide OBC to compensate their guests if they are unable to use the shore excursion credit that was included as part of their purchased cruise fare. I guess everybody defending this practice by O is okay with that.