Yes, we have a new subtitle! Cruise-a-palooza!

I've decided to keep this blog active for 2015. I can't change the title, but I can change the subtitle and there you have it.  This continues in the vein of trying to recover our World Cruise investment from Oceania as fully as it was possible. Other than our Oceania invoiced amount, all Oceania was willing to give cancelled world cruisers for their trouble was a 25% future cruise credit. This was 25% of Miami through Singapore, or the first approximately 40% of the 180-day cruise. The email I got about this says:

This is how the 25% FCC was calculated:  Was calculated off of the 71-day part that was cancelled, not the whole 180-day World Cruise.  So Oceania took their cruise fare of $56,999 per person, divided it by 180 days, multiplied that by 71 days, and then multiplied that by 25%.

What this meant to us was $5,620.73 pp, or $11,241.46, off a future cruise with a lot of caveats, or else nothing. Here's the other thing, our single biggest non-refundable expenditure, or loss, on this cancelled cruise would be our trip insurance unless we booked another trip to be completed within 770 days of policy purchase. Now we had 2 big reasons breathing down our necks to book a new Oceania cruise. So, we booked some new cruises. A whole lot of new cruises! We won't be gone anything close to 180 days now, but right now we're feeling more whole.

 

Cruise 1 through cruise 3, we booked as one block through Oceania. It was sold as 3 segments. NY to Montreal, Montreal to London and London to Stockholm. I would have lived with just this, but Clay didn't want to fly back from Stockholm (honestly, I wasn't looking forward to that either but I'd have done it!). This cruise is on one of O's new build ships and not an R-class like the ill-fated Insignia, so we felt more positive about that too.
 

Transatlantic Treasures

New York to Stockholm
41 Days aboard Marina
Departs on May 07, 2015

Cruise Ports:
New York, United States; Newport, United States; Boston, United States; Portland, United States; Saint John, Canada; Halifax, Canada; Sydney, Canada; Cruising the St. Lawrence River; Saguenay, Canada; Quebec City, Canada; Montreal, Canada; Trois-Rivires, Canada; Corner Brook, Canada; Saint-Pierre, France; St. John's, Canada; Cruising the Atlantic Ocean; Belfast, United Kingdom; Dublin, Ireland; Holyhead, United Kingdom; St. Peter Port, United Kingdom; London, United Kingdom; Bruges, Belgium; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hamburg, Germany; Cruising the Skagerrak; Oslo, Norway; Copenhagen, Denmark; Berlin, Germany; Cruising the Baltic Sea; Tallinn, Estonia; St. Petersburg, Russia; Helsinki, Finland; Stockholm, Sweden

 

Cruise 4 we booked through Kensington Tours. It is a modified version of Experience Norway Fjords by Cruise (Northbound). We are disembarking the Hurtigruten line's Nordkapp early in Tromso and spending a couple of nights before flying to Longyearbyen. (Hopefully! It seems there is a big chess tournament that weekend, so we'll see.) Now technically, this is not a cruise because Hurtigruten runs ferries. Tomato, tomato....  Which leads us to cruise 5.

Cruise 5 we booked directly with Hurtigruten.  It is Spitsbergen and Polar Bears. Yeah! We already have all our SAS flights to and from Stockholm where we originally left Oceania. So, fingers crossed that Tromso trouble works itself out.













Cruise 6 we rejoin Oceania's Marina in Stockholm.

Treasures of the North

Stockholm to London
14 Days aboard Marina
Departs on July 07, 2015

Cruise Ports:
Stockholm, Sweden; Helsinki, Finland; St. Petersburg, Russia; Tallinn, Estonia; Riga, Latvia; Klaipeda, Lithuania; Gdansk, Poland; Berlin, Germany; Copenhagen, Denmark; Cruising the Skagerrak; Amsterdam, Netherlands; Bruges, Belgium; London, United Kingdom

 

 

 

 

We'll fly home direct from London. We'll be home for about 2 weeks and then leave again for Cruise 7. This is a Great Lakes cruise that we learned about through Tulane Alumni Travel. It is with Haimark Lines.

 

 

So, that's our 2015 Cruise-a-Palooza. Over 3 months, 7 cruises. It's not epic, like 180-days around the world. But, it checks a lot of things off my bucket list and it helps us recover from the loss of that epic world cruise. So, stay tuned.

Clay has, I guess, decided not to share his forensic accounting with spreadsheets, but he has shared it with me. So I will tell you that as far as he is concerned, Oceania cost us about $3,000 out of pocket loss when they cancelled the world cruise. I see that but I argue that the $11,241.46 is real money and wipes out his loss. We'll agree to see this differently.