Simply More

Feel free to skip this footprint if you are not an Oceania cruiser or have no interest in booking Oceania cruises in the future.

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One other thing that ate into my writing time on our first sea day after a long series of ports was OCA Cella’s “Future Voyages Presentation.”

The focus this time was not so much on where the ships in the Oceania fleet cruise. Rather, Cella reviewed the Oceania Club “free cruise” perk and announced the details of the new booking program. The current O Life program — described as a promotion — is going away as of 1 July. It is being replaced by Simply More.

The new program basically has some inclusions in the cruise fare that one can no longer opt out of as we used to do be able to do with O Life.

(1) Ship’s excursions … in the form of a specified amount of non-refundable shipboard credit (based on length of cruise) that can only be used to book ship’s tours on a use-it or lose-it basis. There are no restrictions on which type of excursion one can book with the credit.

(2) Champagne, Wine & More … at lunch and dinner … from a select list … on a drink-it or lose-it basis. You can upgrade this package, but both passengers in the cabin must do so.

(3) Unlimited WiFi … two logins per cabin instead of a single, shared one … made possible by the upcoming installation of Starlink across the fleet.

Frankly, I don’t much care for having (1) and (2) included as part of the fare. And while having two logins to use the internet would be nice, it’s not a big enough draw for us to overlook what I expect will be some steep price increases to cover (1) and (2) … and (3) as well.

Nonetheless, we have learned to never say never. We’ll just wait and see how this new program plays out.Read more