Stella Maris

I've cruised 10 times with Oceania, and have two more cruises booked. Clearly, I've had positive experiences, but there have been occasional bumps. And what stands out is how well staff and management responded when those bumps were brought to their attention. We find that when dining service is off more than one night, or the food isn't hot enough, all we need to do is speak quietly to the headwaiter, and someone always listens and corrects the situation. We've noted things on the midcruise survey, and quickly received calls from staff to discuss fixes. There's a dedication to customer service and quality that I still see, even as I see them economizing, and that's enough for me.

Handled about as poorly as possible. They were providing FCCs to the people who (figuratively) jumped ship ahead of the change. According to our TA, Oceania told her they ended the FCC's "yesterday." Even if you want to transfer to a more expensive cruise a few months from now, and give Oceania more money, the answer is no.

We're on the Barcelona to Dubai cruise in November, and of course our Israel ports are cancelled. For years, we were afraid to book a cruise with these ports, knowing something might happen, and with this booking we went in eyes open. We knew Oceania would have to find alternative ports, in competition with other cruise lines looking for open berths on short notice. It wouldn't make economic sense for Oceania to allow full cancellations under these circumstances. We've had port changes at the last minute before due to a hurricane in Mexico, certainly disappointing, but the best that could be done. As someone said, a lot of the pleasure is in the cruise itself, and I'm looking forward to this one.

Excursions on the O website are an adventure. Got a very good reduction on our November cruise through the Summer Sale, as well as a $1200 excursion credit. At the same time, the pricing has gone up, through elimination of the cheapest category. What's difficult is getting a clear idea of what you're paying (e.g., a total that said $3292 before credits, then said $3556 directly below it). I spent an hour on the phone with O the other night, very nice man who finally showed me his spreadsheet, and helped me back into the figure. At the same time, when he offered to book the tours for me, his final $ figure was $60 higher than mine (and he didn't know why), so I ended up doing it myself. I don't know if they're trying to keep this mysterious, but it's going to generate a lot of questions.

Echoing a few comments here. We're going on our 10th O cruise in November. We also experienced some startup issues on a Barcelona to Lisbon cruise last April. But we were on that California cruise mentioned above, and saw things like food, service, etc. returning to normal. And on Oceania, normal is pretty nice. Looking forward to being back again this year, feels like home at this point.

And that's the biggest difference I saw on the latest cruise, Nautica April 10-23. The quality of the food, even the serving temperature, wasn't right a lot of the time. Service was very good, especially the wine service, but the food was disappointing. I'm trying to chalk it up to the troubles of staffing and starting up again, but this is not the Oceania of our previous seven cruises.