lorimay

Yes, but we were able to have two devices on each of our two accounts. I had my phone and tablet both logged in at the same time, as did my husband. I just went with it and didn't ask questions.

On our recent Vista cruise in an A stateroom, we were able to have two devices each logged in. No clue why and I wasn’t going to ask and rock the boat. Also, although we only had basic wifi, when I turned on my VPN I could stream content from Netflix and other streaming platforms.

We had a very uncomfortable late dinner in Jacques on the Riviera. It was an “extra” reservation for either 8 or 8:30. I can’t remember which. Some tables must have lingered because we had to wait about 15 minutes to be seated. By the time they seated us, there were only a few tables left. Service was slow. At the main course there were only us and one other table. They left and the staff started resetting all the tables and using the carpet sweeper all around us. It was not a great experience.

I guarantee that if you want open seating, you can just show up at the podium on the open seating level of the dining room (or one of the four complimentary dining venues on the Edge class) and tell them you want open seating. They will either switch you to open dining for the rest of the cruise or they can accomodate you night by night. They are really willing to help and won't insist you go to your fixed dining table.

In December, we went on our first cruise on Regent. They have the same system for specialty dining reservations. Like you, we had incredibly high expectations for the cruise in every way. We were in a regular veranda cabin on their newest ship, so we could only make dinner reservations at 45 days out (although their regular veranda cabins are about the size of the PH cabins on the larger Oceania ships). The night to make reservations came, I was on at 12:01, and we could only get 8 or 8:30 reservations. In one case, we could only get a sharing reservation. We usually eat at 7pm and we don't usually like to share. However, there was nothing we could do. The ship was full, and there were no changes that could be made once we got on board. I was very upset - the whole system did not seem fair. We made it work. The meals were later than we would have liked, but the food was the same amd we adjusted to the later schedule. I think the biggest issue is that our expections for everything, not just the food, were impossibly high. It was our first cruise on a premium line and we thought everything was going to be magical. Especially because the people on the Regent CC board played it up so much. It was a great cruise, we enjoyed it, but it was not perfect by any means. There were some huge service issues in the main dining room and some things we were promised before we boarded did not happen. The lesson I learned is that I will never again go into a new cruise line with such high expectations. I would rather be realistic and be delighted.

I have been on all classes of Celebrity ships on itineraries in the Caribbean and Europe, and I have never had a problem getting a kettle for my stateroom. On one ship the room steward was reluctant but said he would ask his supervisor and it was delivered.

The tea on board is make your own from tea bags. The only "real tea" (not herbal) is either Bigelow, Tetleys, Twinings or no-name, depending on what they might have. Usually they have plain black tea, Earl Grey and English breakfast at least. They do make some more upscale teas in al Bacio for an upcharge (if you don't have a drink package), although they served me a disgusting Darjeeling iced tea there on our last Celebrity cruise that had clearly gone bad and they kept insisting it hadn't. There's always hot water and tea bags out, plus coffee, throughout the day in Oceanview.

I think so too. She also booked us into the wrong cabin on Deck 9. I would much prefer to book myself but am taking advantage of a credit card offer if I book with them. Another question about these deck 7 cabins - is there noise from the dining room below?

We are in the process of booking a cruise on the Marina next April and trying to pick a cabin. On the Oceania website, the deck plan for Marina shows aft cabins on deck 7, 7108 - 7126 and 7111 - 7131 as A2 concierge staterooms. However, our TA said those cabins are showing up in the system as B3 cabins. These are cabins with the extra wide veranda. Did this happen during the refresh of Marina? Is there a reason why these cabins with the bigger verandas are now a lower category? I do see that the dining room is below - is there a noise issue?

I guess calling them non-alcoholic spirits instead of non-alcoholic liquor is marketing. It's a growing market - if you google it, you will see there are dozens of brands now. I've had the gin and vodka substitutes on Regent last December. They carry them in some of the bars. I stopped drinking alcohol over 30 years ago just because it didn't appeal to me anymore, but sometimes I still crave the taste of a gin and tonic. The substitutes are quite realistic. I'll be on the Apex in December with the classic drink package and it would be nice if the non-alcoholic versions were available.

That's an interesting question. Are non-alcoholic spirits available and are there any included in the classic package?

Also, they aren't billed at the end of the cruise, the gratuities charge shows up on your onboard account about halfway through the cruise. We had plenty of time to note that we were going to have much more refundable credit than we needed for the gratuities and were able to withdraw cash for the rest.

We were on a cruise that stopped in Santorini a few weeks ago. The day we were in port there were about 7 other ships with a total of about 14,000 passengers (that's not an exaggeration). Unless you go on a ship's tour, the only way to get ashore is by tender to the old port and then wait in line for the cable car, which only processes about 600 people an hour so the waits are very long at the bottom and then returning at the top. Even if you take a ship's tour, they usually drop you at the end at the top and you have to wait in line for the cable car down or to walk. To be safe, you need to leave yourself several hours to get back to the ship.

Yes it is. Almost every time someone would say "Come on in. We won't tell". No value judgment on either group. It was interesting to watch and there were some tense situations.

We were on the Marina right after cruising started again in 2021. One of the requirements (besides having to wear a mask everywhere on the ship, including getting up from the table to get more food at the Terrace) was that there were four circles on the floor in every elevator (beam me up Scotty!). That restricted every elevator to only four passengers, theoretically. After a few days, you would find some people, I would say mostly Americans, would invite more than four into the elevator. There were some people from some European countries who would be very adamant about no extra passengers. It caused some friction. However, other than after the nightly show in the theater, I never saw big lines for the elevators because the ships were half full. On our Vista cruise a couple of weeks ago, at least one of the aft elevators was out of service every single day of the cruise. They appeared to be doing major work on them. It did cause delays for the elevators, especially when people were trying to get off for tours.

I think she mentioned the fee because we were there before we had officially received the letter. Although it was waiting at our cabin when we went there an hour later. I think we jumped the gun by a few hours.

On our recent Vista cruise, we had both kinds of OBC. We originally had our Simply More excursion credits and then we had refundable OBC from our travel agent. We had paid for extra excursions, so we had used our Simply More credits and paid for the additional amount with a credit card to get the 25% discount before the cruise. When several of our excursions were canceled while we were on board, the extra money (above the $300 per person Simply More credit) we had paid was refunded to our onboard account, not back to our credit card. Once the gratuities had been deducted from that amount, we had several hundred dollars of refundable credit to use. There wasn't anything we wanted to spend it on so we went to reception to get it refunded. We were told that the amount would either be refunded to our credit card at the end of the cruise or sent back to our TA so it could be refunded to us - the person at the desk couldn't tell us what would happen. Unfortunately, we went the night before the official letter was sent to tell you it was ok to get your refund, and we were told that unless we had the letter there was a service fee to get our credit back in cash. I find that to be a very strange policy. The next morning, letter in hand, we went down to reception and were able to withdraw the money in cash. I would have prefered to get it refunded to the credit card, but I didn't want the delay of it going to the TA and maybe getting it weeks later. We also had a port cancellation on the last day and the port fees were refunded to the account, so we went and withdrew that in cash also.

Based on my experience on the Vista a couple of weeks ago, the meals aren't usually plated quite as nicely as those pictures. The picture I have attached was my burrata salad from Toscana (?). I don't take a lot of pictures of food but really liked the way this was plated. I know overall my thoughts were that the food was presented nicely, but not as nicely plated as our Regent Grandeur cruise in December.

If you love lamb, then Oceania is the cruise line for you. I also love lamb and my husband won't eat it, so when we are on a cruise I tend to order a lot of it. This last cruise I realized I had lamb at dinner for the first three nights. The Terrace grill does lamb chops to order (along with lobster tail, steak, and shrimp - maybe chicken). Sometimes they are carving leg of lamb at lunch or dinner. Each of the specialty restaurants has lamb offerings and I believe the GDR does most nights too. While I am not a big fan of the buffet on Celebrity ships (very much quantity over quality), the buffet on the three larger Oceania ships I have sailed is in a whole different league. The quality and freshness of the food is very good.

We got off the Vista recently (so not a ship to ship comparison for your cruise and we were not in a suite) and the reality of the wi-fi was that we each got two regular internet accounts. However, when I turned on my VPN, I had no problem streaming content from a bunch of different platforms. There was no need to pay for premium internet.

We never saw (or experienced) any issue with slippery floors in the Terrace cafe. Yes, it's a stone floor, but it wasn't any slicker than anywhere else on the ship. The aft lift not going down to five is a huge inconvenience, though. We also experience little to no cabin noise from surrounding cabins, but we did have a loud noise from the ship (engines or something else). You just have to hope that you are lucky and have quiet neighbors or they fix the cabin to cabin noise issue on the Allura.

We are finally back home after a nightmarish travel experience. Our original plan was IST-LHR, LHR-JFK. Then an overnight at the TWA hotel at JFK and a return trip to Florida that we had booked with miles on a different airline. Unfortunately, we circled JFK for almost an hour because of weather and they diverted us to Boston Logan. Because they diverted over 30 flights, most of them international, there were no jetways available and they had no place for us to disembark. We sat on the plane for over three hours and finally they had to get stairs to get us out of the plane and onto buses after midnight. They claimed the plane would be going back to JFK at 9am the next day (it actually ended up going at 9pm) but we missed our hotel, no hotels available in Boston because of all the diversions, and ended up booking a JetBlue flight from Boston to Florida at 6am, because we were trying to beat tropical storm Debby. Customs and baggage claims were nightmares, one of our suitcases was delivered missing a wheel, and then trying to re-check our bags for the JetBlue flight at 3am while waiting for security to open at 3:30 with fights breaking out around us. I've never been so happy to be home. I think travel insurance will take care of the added expenses. Meanwhile, I had a lot of time to think about our trip. Overall, we had an excellent trip. While Athens was a disappointment and we figured out the Med in summer with the heat is not for us, it was an otherwise very good time. We really liked the Vista. It's not perfect, but it's a beautful, well thought-out design. I'm hoping they fix a few things on the Allura. - Overall, the decor is beautiful. We did notice some wear and tear already. Many of the chairs in Martinis were stained and there were noticeable stains in the carpets. - The food was excellent. Is it as good as it used to be? I don't have much comparison. Our first Oceania cruise was after the covid restart. I thought the food on Vista in the grand dining room was better than we had on Marina and Riviera. For the most part we had great food everywhere. The only restaurant we did not try was Aquamar. Toscana, Polo and Red Ginger were as good as we remembered. Not every dish is perfect, but overall the quality of ingredients and the presentation were excellent. For the most part comparable to our recent Regent Grandeur cruise and of course MUCH better than any food we have ever eaten on Celebrity (we don't do suites so no Luminae comparison). Much larger menu everywhere than Celebrity, but not as big a menu as Regent in the main dining room - We really liked Embers as a restaurant. I loved the atmosphere - it felt very modern and very American. However, I think the menu lets it down a little. There's not really that much choice and the food is all over the place in terms of upscale/casual. I'd like to see more originality. - Red Ginger was the only restaurant where we didn't like the decor. It was too generic and has lost all of its Asian touches. It looks like they could turn it into any other kind of restaurant quickly and cheaply. - The Aquamar terrace on Vista is fantastic and a great space, except there is very limited shade. I think that's a big miss. - I loved the pool deck with the semi-private "cabana" areas with shade on the side. A great use of space. - The Vista Lounge is a huge miss. The low stage and the not steep enough seating means you are constantly looking around the people in front of you to see what is happening. - While I usually like big spaces divided up into more intimate seating areas, Martinis is too choppy. We had trivia there daily and it didn't feel like everyone was in the same room. The Grand Lounge next door is also a strange space. It's really just a corridor with furniture. Horizons is a huge improvement over the other ships. Those chaise lounges that look out the aft are my favorite. - I don't know who designed the storage in the veranda cabins, but a lot of small drawers is not ideal storage for a cruise. And they could have put some upper cabinets somewhere. I don't know if I could do a really long cruise in that cabin. - The covered area outside the Terrace is a huge improvement over Marina and Riviera. I love the shade there. - The library is beautiful, but there's not enough seating. Too many half empty shelves and not enough chairs. - Destination Services needs an upgrade. Their hours were poor and they were really unhelpful. I think if we do another cruise with the Simply More excursion credit, I'm going to spend it all on one or two of the private excursions at places that are important to me and then do any other excursions on my own. As it stands now, it's not fair when they cancel so many excursions at the last minute. - This was the first time in a very long time we were unhappy with the location of our cabin. The aft elevator not going down to deck five is a huge inconvenience. It's either walk to the front of th e ship to take that elevator, or go down to 6 and walk to the grand staircase. Deck 5 is one of the most important on the ship and you can't easily get there from the aft cabins. Also, we had that loud thumping noise and very bad vibrations when the thrusters were on. We were about 4 cabins from the aft. I would want to be forward of the aft elevators if we did this again. I don't know if Oceania is our one and only cruise line, but I would recommend it to others, especially on the Vista, and I would be happy to book another cruise on Oceania at any time. One last thing - if you are ever in Instanbul, I can highly recommend the Hagia Sophia Mansions Hotel (Hilton Curio Collection). This hotel is a group of restored houses that were once guest residences for the sultan at the Topkapi Palace. They are directly across from Hagia Sophia and many of the buildings (ours included) are attached to the actual walls of the palace. It's a magical place with beautiful, luxurious Turkish decor. It was a little bit of splurge for us, but worth every penny for the experience of being so close to everything. And the Turkish breakfast we had under the trees in the courtyard was incredible. Thanks for coming along on this journey on Oceania and I hope it was helpful for others who are looking to book or already booked on the Vista.

Please tell Luka hello from the “easy” people from the last cruise. He will know who we are!

You should have seen the size of the porcini-crusted bone-in ribeye I had in Embers. Ribeye is the same as a slice of prime rib, just cooked (or should be cooked) individually as the slice. However, I have my suspicions that they had cooked the whole roast like a prime rib and finished the steak on the grill. It was so huge the people at the next table pointed and laughed. It was also ordered medium and came medium well or beyond (no pink left). My point is that if they offer this in Embers, they should offer prime rib elsewhere on the ship.

We spent today in Istanbul. Yesterday was a sea day because of our tender port of Bozcaada was canceled due to "bad conditions". I guess it was dangerous for the tenders, but the ship was as smooth as glass on our way to Istanbul. We ate outside on the back deck of the Terrace yesterday for breakfast, as the weather was much cooler and it was finally enjoyable. I love the covered deck on the Vista, a huge improvement for me over Marina and Riviera. We went to the libray (did I mention before that the library on the Vista is also a big improvement over the other ships?) and discovered a group of children playing games there. They were a little boisterous but not out of line. We truly have not had an issue with the children on the ship. Ate lunch at Waves and although I miss the surf and turf with steak, the wagyu patty was pretty darn good. Spent some time up in Horizons on the comfy chaise lounges, played trivia, cashed in our Big O points, and then went to the Grand Dining Room for dinner. I had an excellent meal mostly consisting of the Jacques' items on the menu. Service has been excellent in the GDR as it has been elsewhere. The show last night was a production show with the singers and dancers. I can't remember the name of the show, but the singers did an outstanding job with only one song where they had a little trouble with the harmony. The dancers were excellent. Usually there's one or two that aren't up to the same level - but this cast is all strong. I don't know how they all fit on that tiny stage along with the band. I really feel this Vista Lounge is a fail on this ship. Finally, they had the crew come in, which is always very touching. They have really taken great care of us this week. The only exception to the great service is Destinations. I gave them a "poor" on the survey. I understand that some things are out of their control. We had five excursions with SM and 3 of them were canceled. Yesterday, they canceled a bunch of excursions for today in Istanbul. It was a sea day, but they kept their regular hours and were closed from 11-4. They canceled the excursions right before 11, so there were several very angry people waiting at Destinations. One gentleman demanded to see the general manager, and he got someone to actually open it up again and take care of their issue. They are just generally not very helpful. Because of the cancellation of Bozcaada, we had over $129 in credit we could only use for excursions, but the Istanbul excursions had either been canceled or were full. So we lost that money (which was phantom SM dollars, but still). I'm not sure the SM excursion credit idea works in reality, although it sounds good in principle. Today we had booked a Bosphorus cruise on our own. The company was Velena travel and we had a small group on a large yacht. We left the ship and went to the tram station. Waited in line for the ticket booth and a guy "helped" us by providing us with the refillable cards, but told us they had $10 euros worth of rides. Turns out they had four rides on each, so once again we got ripped off. The ticket machine screen had been damaged by the sun and was all in Turkish, so I guess we paid for convenience of him "helping" us. The tram system is very easy to navigate. The boat tour was very good and they guide was great. It was very enjoyable and informative. Got back on the tram and headed to the spice market, where I really over bought spices and turkish delight as presents for my family. I liked the spice market, but the grand bazaar was overwheming and we might have been in the wrong place because even as fakes, the quality of the merchandise was poor. Back on the tram to Galataport and the ship. A word about Galataport - it is HUGE. It feels like you walk miles from the ship to the street and vice versa. I feel bad for the mobility challenged. There were no trams at all and no wheelchairs when we returned. Back on the ship we ordered room service for the first time. Very quick service and although we just had club sandwiches, the food was good. They came and picked up the dishes within a minute of us calling for pickup. We ate in every restaurant except AquaMar on the ship. Right before dinner we found our fantastic room steward and his assistant to thank them with a tip. I hope I see him again someday. He was really wonderful. Last dinner tonight was a casual one in the Terrace. They had sushi (of course) plus Jacques' roast chicken, veal marsala, and several other dishes from the Grand Dining room. Another very good meal. In general, the service has been good there but the last few days they seem understaffed with long waits for water refills. Tomorrow we get off and have a transfer arranged to our hotel right next to Hagia Sophia. We splurged on one night at a very nice hotel before do our journey in reverse - IST to Heathrow to JFK and then back to Florida. I will put my thoughts about the ship together and post those later. Overall, a fantastic cruise on a beautiful ship. Not perfect, but I can make some good comparisons between the Celebrity and Regent cruises we did in 2023.