Preparing for our World Cruise

Welcome to our blog for our Around-the-World (ATW) in 180 days cruise on the Oceania Insignia. OK, it’s actually 196 days, but that is a nuance for later. The Insignia carries 684 passengers, so it can visit a lot of smaller ports that the big 3,000 passenger ships cannot. This will be our home for 196 days! We will have 95 ports of call to explore, some for more than one day.

Thank you for joining us on this journey!

We originally planned to take this cruise in December of 2019 as Ed’s retirement gift when he retired from Lockheed Martin. But Ed’s LM program slipped into that timeframe, so we postponed the trip, and Ed postponed retirement to finish the Orion Artemis 1 test program he had prepared for 10 years. Whirled! The benefit of postponing the trip kept us from being among the passengers who had to find their way home from Buenos Aires when COVID-19 cut the 2019 cruise short.

Ed retired in May 2020, and this cruise, while not cancelled due to COVID-19, continues to be plagued by COVID-19 fallout. Final payment for the World Cruise was originally due June 23rd, then Aug 23rd, then finally Friday, Oct 22nd. Part of the slip in payment date was tied to itinerary changes due to COVID. Oceania had to nail down an itinerary they can better control and the world voyagers would accept. Whirled!

We spent weeks sifting through over 300 pages of shore excursions for the 95 ports of call. Ed reviewed the excursions, marked up the pages, and identified the excursions that interested him. Then Joy did the same. We sat down to compare notes, and made it through to Japan, about 40% into the trip. The very next day we found that a big chunk in that first set is now in the trash – Australia and New Zealand were completely ripped out of the itinerary – they currently do not allow international visitors. It was a few more weeks until we receive the replacement shore excursion list. Whirled! (Need to recount the ports of call to see if the number changed – it was 95.)

Original Itinerary

Embarkation Itinerary

The altered itinerary didn’t sway us from the cruise. Fortunately we have already seen some of Australia and New Zealand, and the World War II sites the new itinerary added are of great interest! So we made our final payment, and booked our shore excursions!

More to come on packing fun! How do you pack for 196 days? 2 BIG suitcases… Not.