ak1004

18 minutes ago, pinotlover said:

Bland dishes and sauces. Made up Americanized recipes. NoNos don’t like garlic, so don’t expect garlic even in dishes that call for it. Nothing new here folks. Remember the NoNo call all these dishes excellent. 

I guess I'm one of those NoNos because I considered food on on our Riviera cruise last May excellent. And for the record, I like spices and absolutely love garlic, and I never found the food bland.

On our cruise in November on the Marina, the minibus full day tour in Casablanca is $1,000, up to 10 guests. This is very reasonable I think, even if you have only 6 people, it's around $166 per person for a full day private tour. For 10 people, it's only $100 pp, I would consider it cheap.

4 hours ago, RetiredOnVacation said:

That's interesting to know! However we also avoid 1000+ capacity ships - just don't like to be around so many people especially boarding/ports etc, and much prefer the 400-800 passenger class but with high space ratios.  So 1400 or so on the newer O ships explain the greater choice of venues, due the greater capacity, but wouldn't work for us, but thanks for your info! Guess you won't be seeing us on O! 

Riviera and Marina are 1250 guests. Never felt more crowded than Spirit or Dawn, and it took around the same time to get on/off the ship. Honestly, if we didn't know the numbers, we probably couldn't tell the difference.

But that's fine, everyone has their preferences.

7 hours ago, RetiredOnVacation said:

For us it's not just cabin size - though that is what you're spending a good deal of time in, so you'll want comparative cabin sizes; it's more the space ratio (defined very well on cruisemapper). Not been on O so can't comment on how it actually feels, but comparing a typically similar passenger capacity O ship to SS ship (ie. O Insignia/Nautica, with SS Dawn/Moon) cruisemapper has space ratio of 38 for O, versus 56 for SS. Far more space per person on SS and that's an important consideration for us worth paying for! 

I agree that space ratio is a significant factor, but you are comparing older O ships. To me, they are less attractive (smaller cabins, tiny showers in standard cabins, so PH is almost a must, less dining options etc). We sail on the newer ships only (Riviera, Marina and Vista), and those ships have much better space ratio (closer to SS), good size cabins, more dining options etc. Riviera never felt more crowded than Spirit or Dawn - in fact, I would say that the buffet on SS felt a bit more crowded than on Riviera.

If you looked at the older O ships, I can completely understand why you looked at PH (and the pricing is really not competitive in my opinion), but on the newer ships standard balcony is 240 sqft, which is more than sufficient, and if it's enough for you, I believe it's a better value than SS.

3 hours ago, pinotlover said:

Not a similar cruise.

 

The missing link for O cruisers is port fees. Barcelona, Venice, Dubrovnik, etc., have been both drastically reducing the number of cruise passengers ( thus ships) allowed, but likewise drastically increasing port fees for those ships that do make it in. While labor, food, and fuel costs have all increased; it’s a worthless exercise to compare cruise prices without including port fees.

 

Recenting read a cruise industry rag talking about this issue. Those of us signing up for cruises two (2) plus years in advance may find ourselves more and more disappointed as many of the ports opt to reduce ship visits. 

I understand about port fees, but the cruises I compared are very similar. Same period, same region, both have overnight in Bordeaux plus Saint Malo, Brest and Paris. So considering the fact the port fees have increased, you would expect even higher price increase than 3.7% increase.

7 hours ago, Woodrowst said:

Neither the choir nor exclusive use of the Giant’s Causeway was listed in the tour descriptions.  They have been trying to delight us and exceed our expectations on a regular basis and usually announce any “above and beyond” a day or two in advance.

 

i have not been on the Dawn or Spirit so do not know if this occurs on both the Silversea expedition and traditional cruises.  I am sure there are cruisers on this thread who have and can provide an informed comment.

Well, this is exactly my point.

Your example is definitely very nice and if it was done on a regular basis, this is something I would definitely be willing to pay for. But I'm not sure how often does it happen on SS traditional cruises on ships that are 3 times larger.

Also don't forget that when you are talking about service in general,  Endeavour also has much almost 1:1 guest/crew ratio, much higher than other SS ships, and I'm sure it is reflected in the service (but also in the price). So Endeavour experience is probably more luxury, but does not necessarily representative to luxury/premium lines discussion.

1 hour ago, RetiredandTravel said:

 

I always compare a veranda on SS vs PH on Oceania and when I include a drink pakage , excursions etc I often find the price to be close to the same.  Full disclosure I've only compared a few cruises.  I'm actually looking at a South America cruise right now.

 

The main complaint I've read about Oceania is the food & service in the main dining room.  Comments?

 

I agree that comparison really depends on the category you select. SS veranda is between O veranda and O PH in terms of size, so it's hard to do apples to apple comparison.

However, around 80% of the cabins on any ship are standard veranda cabins, so this is what most people book. For us even OV is fine, so we compare OV (or French veranda on Vista) with Vista on SS, and the difference is very significant, especially for 2025 sailings.

Also, O now includes drinks with meals and some excursion credit, and we prefer to book our own tours anyway.

Food in O MDR is excellent in my opinion. Service is usually between very good and excellent, with some occasional misses, but we found SS to be the same, so I would say comparable.

To me, the biggest advantage of SS is larger cabins, but it's much less significant for us. Most other areas they are comparable, so paying 50-60% more for SS just doesn't make sense to me, especially considering we don't drink. But this is very personal decision of course.

I didn't sail on SS pre Covid so cannot compare.

But when comparing service on SS and O, I would say that general service on both was between very good and excellent, with some issues that I would consider relatively minor.

But the problem is that since SS is significantly more expensive, you would expect it to be much better. To me, I would say they were comparable.

Excursions were mixed bag on both. Both squeezed around 40 people into buses, on both the guides were not consistent.

Just now, RetiredandTravel said:

Here is the dress code after May 26.  I think its a little different for the Nova.

 

Evening wear falls into two categories:

• Elegant Casual: On casual evenings, ladies may opt for trousers, a blouse, a skirt, or a casual dress, while gentlemen may wear an open-collar shirt and slacks. A jacket is optional.
• Formal Optional: May choose a more formal attire, such as an evening gown or cocktail dress for ladies and a tuxedo, dinner jacket, or dark suit with a tie for gentlemen. Alternatively, adhering to Elegant Casual dress code is welcomed, but a jacket is still required for gentlemen in all indoor spaces.

But if eating in any outdoor venue, even jackets are not required.

Also, I believe outside of the restaurants (theater, bars etc) they don't enforce jackets even on formal nights.

29 minutes ago, yayoye said:

RE: Oceania issues - I won't mention them all as no one here wants a 9 page letter!  Just a few points.  We had afternoon tea twice.  The first time we had to chase down teaspoons.  We asked 3 times and finally got up and found them ourselves.  The second time, the water for the tea was cold.  I saw them remove an entire urn of water after we complained so obviously they did not put boiling water in it for tea.

We had issues with virtually all of the excursions - one guide broke the law (which we found out after the fact), one guide shorted us 1 hour on the excursion - 30 minutes of which was time at the highlighted site; and in Istanbul the guide did not want to allow any bathroom breaks on a 5 hour tour and, because the tour started late due to Turkish immigration, he wanted to cut out the visit to the Grand Bazaar on the basis we would return late to the ship.  Yes, but we started late and the ship was not departing Istanbul until the following day.  Everyone complained and he finally completed the tour. These were Oceania ship tours which we paid for.

Every bottle of white wine was warm - not room temperature, but actually warm.  Two bottles of red wine were corked.  I was not "allowed" to order a bottle of wine from the Jacques restaurant wine list when we ate in the steak restaurant.  Why not?  I was paying for it and I was told previously that all the wines are stored centrally. 

The steak teriyaki in Red Ginger was inedible and certainly not teriyaki flavoured (I am ethnically Japanese).  To give the chef credit, he came out to see what was wrong when notified that we wouldn't be eating the steak.  He admitted that he had trained in Japan and that he knew it was not a good teriyaki recipe, but he had to cook the "corporate recipe". 

 

The staff were nice and many tried their best, but these and many other issues just kept cropping up.

 

This is a small sample of the issues we encountered.  There were many more.

Thank you for sharing.

If chasing down teaspoons was among the worst things from the 9 page letter, then I'm not really worried about Oceania future.

btw, on our 2 SS cruise we had to "chase down" Perrier, cappuccino and sometimes even plain water many times. Would never cross my mind to call it a bad cruise, but I guess it's matter of attitude. 

14 minutes ago, Woodrowst said:

So with great trepidation I thought I would post another couple of examples of luxury vs premium cruising.  Today, our cruise on the Silversea Endeavour stopped in Iona, UK and provided a complementary tour of the Iona Abbey.  The above and beyond was that they arranged for a Gaelic choir to provide a concert for us.  Just beautiful.  Tomorrow we are stopping in Portrush, UK and the ship is providing a tour to the UNESCO heritage site of the Giant’s Causeway.  The above and beyond is that they arranged for us to have the site exclusively for the cruise ship; we won’t have to compete with the thousands of daily visitors at the Giant’s causeway.  Premium lines such as Oceania do not provide these kind of above and beyonds - at least not on any of the six O cruises I have taken.

 

I am fully prepared for the first response to be: This does not apply to me because I don’t like Gaelic choir music or hexagonal basalt columns ☺️

This is fantastic!

Did the tour description indicate that the activities will be exclusive to SS guests? We will be on Silver Spirit next month, and I didn't see any excursions that indicated some exclusive activities.

Maybe one of the reasons is that Silversea Endeavour has only 200 guests? Endeavour sailings are also much more expensive even compared to other SS ships, so might be not so fair comparison.. I'm not sure if this "above and beyond" happens on Dawn or Spirit.

On 4/13/2024 at 11:07 AM, yayoye said:

In the last 2 years I've been on a 25 day Silver Dawn transatlantic crossing, a 10 day Mediterranean cruise on Oceania, and I just completed a 16 night cruise on Silver Nova from Fort Lauderdale to Lima.  The Silver Dawn crossing was wonderful and just like the Silversea I expected.  The Oceania cruise was so bad I wrote a 9 page letter of complaint to the President of the company (and got no response - not even a form letter of acknowledgement of receipt).  However, even though the Silver Nova cruise was much better than the Oceania cruise, it was not up to the standards of the 2022 cruise on the Dawn.  Note that all of these are post covid and post acquisition of Silversea by RCCL.  

 

My assessment is that Silversea went from First Class to Business Class.  My main concern is that while you can get pretty much anything you ask for, you need to know to ask and sometimes you need to ask the most senior staff person to get it.  Many aspects of the cruise were great and most of the staff were excellent, but some seemed to understand that they could have done things the old, proactive way, but were now constrained by corporate rules such that they had to wait to be asked.  Also the excursions were never more than 25 people in 2022, but in 2024, 40 became the norm, or perhaps even a few more if the buses could hold more.  Included excursions are no longer a luxury experience.  Staff became more sensitive to my concerns following the mid cruise survey, but I was also highly encouraged to fill in the end of cruise survey as comprehensively as possible as that is the survey that goes to head office.  

 

I have another cruise booked for this September on the Muse and hope that all of the changes will not have filtered down to that ship.  I also have another cruise booked on the Muse for 2025.  This is the first time I did not book a future cruise while on board.  I am now willing to try other cruise lines.

We sailed twice on SS and 3 times on O in the last 3 years. We had a great time on both, and considered SS a very small step up compared to O, definitely not worth the huge premium they charge for 2025 cruises. To me, they are in the same category, and O food is better in my opinion. We had similar experience with excursions (close to 40 people on both lines), but with O you at least have an option to take private tours, while on SS the excursions are included.

I'm curious what was so bad about Oceania?

38 minutes ago, Vallesan said:

 

Have to be honest in that we have never seen, or felt, a snobish attitude on any of our Oceania cruises or even on Seabourn  and Silversea. Could be we’re ‘class’ blind ’ but I don’t think so!

Maybe one of the reasons is that unlike Celebrity, Cunard and other mass market lines, everyone is treated equally once outside your cabin. There are no dedicated areas or separate restaurants for suites on lines like Oceania, Seabourn and Silversea.

44 minutes ago, bradpole said:

I couldn't agree more, also one thing to note, just because something is "luxury" to one person doesn't mean it is luxury to another.  

 

On the surface Crystal, a luxury line, on paper should be better at all things than Oceania.  To us they weren't.  We enjoyed our one Crystal cruise, but find ourselves happier on Oceania.  We found the quality and presentation of the food in their main restaurant out of this world, however their casual options were severely lacking, in our opinions.  We prefer casual, and the dinners in the Terrace Cafe and lunches at Waves suit us better than the equivalents on Crystal.  

This was exactly our experience.

One thing that we found much better on Crystal was entertainment and activities. Service was comparable to O, food slightly better on O.

If you remove all the hype from Crystal cheerleaders and look at some objective reviews, you are left with small cabins on a 25 years old ships that even after extensive refurbishment still have a lot of maintenance issues. But they charge 50-60% more than O for this. Some people are willing to pay those prices, but please don't tell us that they are more luxury than O, especially when comparing to the new ships like Vista.

20 hours ago, lovetravel63-65 said:

Does anyone know what happens when the category of stateroom you booked is recategorised.

We booked a B3 balcony which is now categorised as a an A2 concierge do we get concierge benefits or what came with our original booking,I cannot think if some booked it as a concierge they would offer different benefits to different cabins in the same location?

I have asked Oceania but the answer I got didn’t make sense 

If you paid for a regular balcony, why would you get concierge benefits? This wouldn't make sense to me. 

1 hour ago, Harters said:

Bearing in mind O's generally older customer base and pom juice's well publicised alleged health benefits, I'm surprised if it wouldnt be reasonably popular. 

 

And, of course, it's the main traditional ingredient in grenadine.

This was on SS (not that SS customer base is much younger than O). But yes, you are right about health benefits, maybe many people are just not aware? 

24 minutes ago, FlyerTalker said:

 

Did you pre-request that they have this?  If not, then this come down to a simple question of "just how extensively must a ship stock their larder to be able to cater to non-standard requests from guests?"

 

I guess they didn't anticipate your unspoken needs until the ship was sailing and already provisioned.  How dare they not FedEx in a supply at the next port.

 

And FWIW, this is the first time I've ever heard of a guest wanting pomegranate juice.  So maybe it's not as desired as you might wish.

 

 

Well, one of the posters mentioned "luxury "yes" even if they have to make a special purchase ashore to make it happen"

Shouldn't be too difficult to buy a few pomegranates in the next port.. Or even few bottles of pomegranate juice if they are not willing to make a freshly squeezed one.

So yes, to me it didn't feel much different from "premium" lines.

34 minutes ago, TRLD said:

 

But really if you put a group of people in a dining room and served them dishes from the GDR/MDR in a blind taste test with meals from other lines I doubt that one could tell the difference. The placebo effect applied to food.

Trust me, if I'm served food from Oceania and Celebrity, I will know the difference even if blindfolded. We had friends with us on our last O cruise who sailed exclusively on Celebrity for over 20 years, they noticed the difference from day 1. 

25 minutes ago, babysteps said:

Ok here's my worth just 2 cents recap,

What is the answer to a special request?

mass market "no"

premium "yes" *if* it's someplace onboard and isn't already an extra cost

luxury "yes" even if they have to make a special purchase ashore to make it happen

 

No this doesn't apply in all circumstances.

Yes there are additional differences between the categories. 

Yes we can all agree to disagree as to whether we see the $ value of a given category compared to any other category

Yes the conversation as we agree to disagree is engaging!

We have been on two SS cruises and asked for pomegranate juice. I don't think this is too much to ask - on both cruises the answer was "no, we don't have it". 

Asked for cherry jubilee on SS and O - got it on both lines.

So the answer is - it depends. 

2 hours ago, REDSTRIPETYPE said:

we choose the Celebrity fruit because we can go on two Celebrity cruises for the price of one Oceania cruise.

 

Haha.. good luck with that, especially with the newest Celebrity ships.. Many times when you account for all inclusions and compare apples to apples (cabin size, refundable deposit etc), Celebrity actually becomes more expensive.

24 minutes ago, TRLD said:

Funny way you chose to pick two specific comments out of all of the comment made. Two comments not mentioned by others, while ignoring other aspects mentioned by others.

 

Some of which other cruisers have indicated are a normal aspect of Oceania cruises.

 

Especially since their post pointed out many things Oceania does well included with aspect why they will not be back. Just as we will not. Even someone with 10 previous Oceania cruises made some similar observations about this cruise.

I don't doubt comments by others, and I don't doubt that this was your experience. I just pointed out that our was completely different in most aspects. The comments I picked were in the UGLY category, this is why I picked them. Excursions prices are higher, but not higher than other lines (I just happened to look at SB excursions recently and was shocked by the prices). We typically prefer to book our own tours.

But the fact that OP posted this so called review and didn't bother to come back speaks volume.

38 minutes ago, TRLD said:

Except that there are 2 other of us from the same cruise with similar comments as well as indications in posts from a person on the next cruise.

Well, my experience on the Regatta was completely different. While I prefer the newer ships, we had a great cruise. Hard to believe that things changed so dramatically in 1.5 years.

But then again, different people look at different things. I would never mention that a singer has "distinctive European accent", but that's just me..

"Shower size frighting"? Yea.. 5 minutes of Google search would avoid UGLY surprises. 

1 hour ago, jwindham said:

I hope all of you realize that the OP was a hit and run. Has not returned at all to this thread. 

Yes, I noticed that too. Takes all the credibility of this so called review.

1 hour ago, BBGrace273 said:

Neither of your future cruises are on the Nova, correct? I'm interested in hearing about this "working" on the Nova, before I sail in Sept. I'm interested to see the likelihood of my request to my TA happening.

No, not Nova. But the process should be the same for all ships.

1 hour ago, Gourmet Gal said:

Are you on the F1 sailing?  If so I’ll look for the non-drinker swilling sparkling l’aqua minerale!

Haha!! No, one prior (May 6th)