bobnsandi

3 hours ago, Sthrngary said:

@WillCruiseForMoney The best butler I had ever had was on Crystal Cruises.  I also had some good butler on NCL in the Haven but also some not-so-good butlers.  The key to my butler experience and improvement over the years is my Butler Letter. Before doing this document, all butlers were just OK.  After, there was a significant improvement.  

 

It does not surprise me that your experience was different then mine. The good news is, we both had a very nice time on the cruise.  Different from the Haven but designed to be so.  My favorite part of the cruise was my friends reactions since they had never cruised before.  So much fun to see.

 

Cruise well and enjoy every moment. 

We are on the Sirena, heading for Amazon. We wrote a "butler letter", and received wonderful positive feedback from him. He was so happy to learn about us, including our needs and pet peeves. We believe that this is one of the best ways to work with a butler (when you have one, as in PH cabin).

thanks for everyone who made this suggestion!

Used Luggage Forward in 2016. Very satisfied. 

I was unable to lift, after a surgery. Yes, it cost a bit, but was very smooth. We last saw the bag as they picked it up from our RV park location in Arizona. Next time we saw the bag, it was in our Maasdam cabin in Seattle after boarding. (Delivered to the room sooner than the dockside loaded luggage.)

On 10/20/2023 at 7:00 AM, orchestrapal said:

Looks ominous for our November-December cruise but we have yet to hear a word. Chances are the will just add some more Caribbean Islands to replace what would have been interesting and new to us.😥

They could decide to go upstream  a "little bit", and not all the way to Manaus. Plenty to see. I agree that this is a big "unknown". (My DW suggests that the ship divert to Rio for pre-carnival activities...)

We are embroiled in issues regarding Oceania Air options, etc. Things certainly do get complicated quickly.

DW does not like chocolate (MORE for me, yay), so it works out  great when there are several choices, including non-choco. Recently on another cruise line where there was one choice a day, changed from day to day. Nope.

PS: loved the sticky buns on previous O cruises.

Saw this in a recent email. Pick a number!

1 hour ago, Nashna said:

Hi Gary...The anticipation of a trip truly excites me.  The planning is a delightful challenge. 

Indeed, to us, planning is as much a part as the actual travel.

I see from your signature, that you are booked on the Insignia from New York next year. We booked the entire cruise in 2019, planning for summer of 2020. Then canceled. Then booked for 2021; cancel; 2022; cancel. Didn't even try for 2023.

We have been on the Holland "Voyage of the Vikings", and loved the itinerary, but were disappointed with the rest (the cruise line, ship and service were just awful). That experience had us looking forward to a similar itinerary with Oceania.

Hope you enjoy those segments. We found Iceland to be wonderful.

8 minutes ago, Astro Flyer said:

I use a TA who also received the upsell offer in addition to me & my wife.

Sorry in advance, a little off-topic. We lived on Maui for 10 years, and have many, many very dear friends there. Have not been able to make contact since the disaster. Our hearts do go out to everyone on Maui.

On 9/21/2023 at 1:11 PM, Sthrngary said:

@Vineyard View No, this is the first time we have gone with this couple.  They are our best friends but always do family things due to the size of their family.  

 

We learned some "life lessons" early in our marriage. We both liked travel, so have always been OK with cruising, etc, and open to travel ideas. The trouble started when we had several "good friend" couples who up and said things like "let's rent a cabin in Big Bear together", or "let's drive up to San Francisco and spend a long weekend sight-seeing."

THEN we found out that people that we enjoyed socializing with, weren't always the best travel companions. Most of these schemes ended in disaster. The lesson was to treat good travel companions like diamonds, really really precious (that includes my wife of 45 years).

People we met while boating, RV'ing and on cruises, on the other hand, were generally already primed to deal with the ins and outs and ups and downs of travel. We learned a lot from them, and deeply value their friendship. We do plan and study, but we always allow for serendipity to lead to new experiences.

Thanks for your thoughts and experiences. 

PS: One RV story really got to us. We met a couple who booked up their RV park reservations a year in advance(!) They knew exactly where they would drive, where they would stay, etc. Needless to say, we didn't do that, often "following our nose".

When we met them, they were dealing with a minor scheduling glitch, and it required them to cancel ALL of the year-ahead reservations, and re-book ALL of them, so that they would be exactly on schedule. Nope. Not for us.

We have been on one of the "R" ships (Regatta). There is no concierge lounge on those class of ships, sorry to say. There are "office hours" for a real, live, concierge, and in our case, they were very helpful. For instance, we really wanted to re-visit a certain specialty restaurant, but could not get reservations. Concierge got them in an eye-blink.

We later took the Riviera, and they have the Concierge Lounge, which was often a nice place to relax and have a beverage. Again, the onsite concierge was extremely helpful, getting us reservations for the special private dining room (between steak and italian, if I recall correctly).

(added: on certain days and times, the Concierge Lounge got very crowded, so be aware that it might not always be quiet.)

Oh yes, thanks "ORV" for pointing out the spa. For us, it was a super experience. We often spent time in the spa during port days. Didn't see another passenger there.

>> We booked our cruise prior to "Simply More" so we

>> had a choice of one of three amenities.  I choose

>> the $600.00 On-Board-Credit for each cabin.

>> Then I purchased the

>> "Prestige Unlimited Drink Package" 

I still don't understand the whole "simply more" system. We

just booked, so it appears that we have no choice(s). We

do get some booze with our PH1 cabin. Adding to the

humor a little, we both stopped the alcohol a couple of

years ago, but fell off the wagon on our most recent

Princess cruise. (Maybe having dinner with my inlaws

may have triggered a new need to drink...at least

before dinner.)

Loved your detailed description of the planning process.

15 hours ago, Thrak said:

 

Current amenities: Toilet paper is provided

I agree. We almost reached a point where we brought our own tissues onboard. Attached is an all-passenger message from our World Cruise in 2018. The ship left Florida nearly out of toilet paper. In Panama, the crew filled a tender with locally-purchased toilet paper in order to restock. The passengers were dismayed by the "quality" of the local product. Hence the missive.

I'm a bit confused by this new green/blue/mauve/orange/black boarding system. There used to be a line for "Suite and Elite" during checkin. (This March, we hit the twofer.)  Anyway, I cannot find the announcement where Princess says that they no longer have expedited checkin for Elite. Have they junked that perk for Elite, with this new system?

We DO love the laundry deal, and are OK with the 50% off internet deals. Also, we often attended the special pupus in Skywalker for Elite, and were very happy with the debarkation lounge and priority.

Unlike some folks who've posted here, we actually benefited several times with tender priority. (On another cruise line that will remain nameless, we are 5-star. On our 2018 World Cruise, they said that 5-star was worthless, and everyone had to stand in line for tenders anyway. Not pleased about that.)

21 minutes ago, Steelers36 said:

When is your next voyage?  Because the whole check-in screen content and look/feel is changing - supposedly on or after tomorrow (Aug 1).  Who knows for certain when IT is doing the roll-out?  I would wait until then and try the new one.  

 

The other thing to note is that you shouldn't see a QR code nor the new check-in screen until about 11 days ahead of your voyage date.

Sorry for not being specific. We sail August 14 from New York. It is obvious that everything is changing, and it is also obvious that IT is not keeping up at all. Much conflicting information between the 3 formats (APP, Web on computer, Web on phone). It's as if there are 3 separate databases that aren't talking to one another.

Just an aside, we are Elite and used to have our own checkin line. Unclear what we'll see at the port on the 14th.

Thanks for suggesting that we wait for the 11 day advance of the voyage. (I wonder where they mention that on the princess website? I was not aware of that time window.)

Regarding the APP, some of the information on princess web indicates that we can speed up boarding if we have a QR code for our reservation. I've looked around the APP, and I cannot see where you get such a code.

We were on a March cruise on Princess, and noticed that some of the passengers getting into line were waving their phones around, and being scanned by shore personnel. I have to assume they had some QR code. Of course, we didn't. Now, the different "lines" (green, blue, puce, black, etc) have changed again, and we are getting conflicting information about them.

Anyway, someone familiar with the QR codes from the APP for checkin purposes?

Made final payment. We will be on this cruise.

BobNSandi

Some photos from 2014 at:

http://swansonphotos.com/greenland/index.html

Many thanks for the links. I also did a little "search engine" work, and found that the Polaris is delayed in construction. Hope she is ready in December.

Sorry to impose here, but is there any "roll-call" or other general discussion on the

Viking Expedition ships, such as the Polaris? I don't see any menu items

on CruiseCritic.

29 minutes ago, Redtravel said:

I booked a b2b as one cruise. At booking I thought it was a 14 night cruise. The first hint that it was really two 7 day cruises was when I logged in to get restaurant reservations. It said that I had double what I thought. It also would only let me book for the first week.  The down part was that the cruise is counted as one cruise not two.  It affects the loyalty program.  I much prefer loyalty that count number of days sailing as opposed to number of cruises sailed.  

Yes, I forgot to mention in my OP that there were as many reservations available as "segments". And yes, their onboard computer systems can only "see" out to the end of the current "cruise" (or is it "segment"??) We had family coming aboard for the second leg of the cruise, and I could not combine all of our restaurant reservations until the day before turn-around. That said, it was very nice to have complete access to restaurant reservations before the new passengers were to board the next day.

The on-line reservation system really could not help us, primarily because of the segment structure. Ahead of both cruises, the family was upset that they could not see the combined reservations, and ours were pretty strange, too. The first day onboard, the staff was very helpful, and I could get our reservations straightened out. However, as noted above, their system could not "see" ahead. Had to wait for that "day before" window.

The online system for pre-booking reservations has some quirks.... 

I posted this over on our August 15 2020 Insignia cruise discussion, but no replies. So, opening it

up to everyone. (We were on the Riviera Dec 2019 for two back-to-back segments from MIA)

I think that I learned something on the December Riviera cruise about how Oceania names these sections.

This is quite different from our experience on other cruise lines, so I'm still trying to get my head around it. According to the "future cruise" folks that I talked with onboard, Oceania books "cruises" with advertised endpoints. If you combine two or more that are connected (back-to-back, so to speak), they call it a "grand cruise". Based on our onboard experience of two "segments", it appears that any perks that you have (e.g., Concierge cabin), restart with each new "cruise" (i.e., segment). We were also issued a completely new cruise card at the change-over.

According to "future cruise" our booking NYC to NYC is a "grand" cruise, made up of 3 cruises. The word "segment" was not used in our conversation. Also, we discovered that the various discounts and other formulas used for cruise pricing are very different in the case of a "grand cruise".

Have any experienced Oceania cruisers here dealt with this nomenclature? 

Bob

First of all, we had great service on our recent Riviera cruise. That said, we take our own pillows onboard ALL cruise ships these days. I started it, when I first used MyPillows, and my spouse was skeptical. However, given a few more cruise experiences and now we BOTH take the pillows aboard. Easy to pack, just stuff and stuff.

16 hours ago, kimcheeboy said:

. I streamed a lot of Youtube so at the end of the cruise, I consumed about 19GBs in 7 days. Pretty good, I'd say.

Excellent!

Thanks for posting the photos. Lovely scenes.

All posters: Thanks for the useful information.

Not related to streaming, but to VPN usage in

general:

We use PIA with pretty good results. We had just signed up when we

stayed in Australia in 2016-17. Certain US websites (Medicare, some banks,

etc) will NOT connect to a user who is outside the US. Once we turned

on the VPN, using a US link, we could connect and perform the functions that we

needed.

Used the VPN onboard Holland-America, in order to bypass some

URL restrictions they have. Was clued in on this by another computer

nerd who was onboard (he was well under 30 in age!).

As noted about O, HAL uses gateways in Florida, so when you

use the onboard wifi, your IP address will be in Florida. Thus, the

restrictions I mentioned above (banks, etc) do not apply.

We'll sailed all the Queens ... most recently on QM2 .. she's showing some wear but that's ok. She's also starting to take on that special feeling we had on QE2 .. mostly due to her guests and crew who keep coming back .. She's the last of the old ocean liners ... traveling in style and all that ... The Illuminations is the very best venue for lectures at sea ..

 

....

....

 

Overall, I favor the QE, Victoria Second -- unless you are just doing a crossing ... then it is QM2 all the way.

Thanks so much for your insightful comments, very helpful.

We are getting the sell for the Boomerang cruise, which takes the QE from San Francisco to Sydney segment, then the Victoria back 2 weeks later.

Haven't put down the money yet, but we are quite intrigued.

Have been on the QM2, which is simply a magnificent ship, but have not been on the other Queens. Anyone care to provide some comparisons between QM2, QE and QV?

Bob and Sandi Swanson