slewis7

Looking at this web page: even though the paperwork is filled out online, it seems like the resulting form must be printed out and brought to a Brazilian consulate. My understanding is that closer to the implementation of the visa requirement, an e-Visa will become available which is completely an online process.

What an informative and comprehensive post! We have not yet made plans for Tortola for our mid December cruise, so this thread will be very helpful for us. Thanks!!!

My wife and I are currently in the Beyond in a lovely Sunset Veranda cabin on deck 9. Here are my thoughts on the cruise so far: - Service is uniformly excellent across the ship - Food in the main dining for dinner seems consistent with my many Celebrity cruises over the year - typically good with the occasional hit or miss. Perhaps the selection is not as good as in the past, but still usually I can find something I am excited about. - We have had lunch in the Oceanview a few times and there are plenty of choices and food is pretty good. Sometimes it can be difficult to find seating. - Our meal in Fine Cut was a mixed bag. We loved the salad, appetizers and desserts. The mains were not great; in fact the first Prime Rib they served me was unrecognizable as such; the second try was better but still unsatisfactory. - Dinner in Eden was superior on every aspect! We are booked there again. - We are enjoying the drinks by the pool bar. The bartenders there are great; our favorite is named Mark. - We have the Premium internet package. It is fantastic and by far the best we have ever experienced on a cruise ship! After reading many comments in the Celebrity forum that the sky is falling, I am puzzled. We are really enjoying the cruise.

Thank you for a great review with some very helpful tips. My wife and I will be on the Flora in 2024 doing this same itinerary and your write up will come in handy!

So (assuming you are trying to avoid any deviation fees) how far in advance do you notify Oceania you want to arrive early/depart late for your cruise? If you have a TA, do you go through them or directly contact Oceania?

It is so good to read some positive comments.

My wife and I will be experiencing Oceania for the first time in mid-December aboard Insignia, so I will be following your posts closely. We decided to try Oceania based on a friend’s recommendation and the promise of great food. We have recently sailed both Celebrity (which used to be our go to line, but we are moving to smaller and more upscale ships now) and Viking (we have enjoyed a number of their ocean cruises in recent years). We also have an itinerary booked on the Vista for 2025 which we will only keep if we are happy with our first Oceania foray; we do understand the two ships are quite different. Thanks for your posts and I hope you have a great cruise!

Good advice in general. However, I am not sure that applies here as, based on my recollection, you can (and probably should) buy timed tickets directly from the Sagrada website.

I am glad you mentioned this. We too have a future cruise out of Lisbon and we were planning to stay in Lisbon a few days. As we have been to Lisbon already, Madrid is a great alternative, but I had not considered it until reading your comment. It looks like flights are fairly quick and inexpensive to get from Madrid to Lisbon. Also, thanks to other folks in this discussion with some great suggestions about where to go in Madrid and surrounding areas. My comment to the OP is there is plenty to see in Barcelona. Save Madrid for another trip. I would recommend making advance reservations to La Sagrada de Familia and to go up one of the towers. Spectacular!

I am also on this same itinerary next June, so I am most curious about the ports and what you will do at each of them. Hopefully Viking can make all the ports this time, as it seems a number of have been missed on earlier sailings. Thanks for doing this. Have a great cruise with perfect weather!

Clay, I hope you and Mike take this WC trip and have a great time! Beside your enjoyment, me and many others on this forum will get to enjoy it vicariously through your wonderful posts.

We went on a Baltic itinerary on an inferior cruise line but it didn’t matter as the ports were so outstanding - perhaps still my very favorite cruise itinerary of the many I have been on. It is quite unfortunate that Saint Petersburg can no longer be included, but very well justified of course; that was a very special port. I imagine that even the current Baltic itinerary combined with the Midnight Sun is quite spectacular!

I love this thread! How good a cruise experience is will be very subjective and highly variable, but our very favorite itineraries on Viking so far are In Search of the Northern Lights and (very recently) Into the Midnight Sun.

I agree that it is always important to express your opinion directly to the cruise company. Some lines have been very responsive to us when we have done so; we no longer sail on a luxury line that did not respond to our very specific criticisms in their survey. I hope you are not implying anyone who posts a critical review on Cruise Critic is “bitching” about it.

Thanks so much to the OP for a comprehensive, well written and helpful review. One of the best I have ever read on Cruise Critic! I find some of the criticisms to be very concerning as we are new to Oceania and have two future bookings - the first on Insignia and then Vista. The main reason we wanted to try Oceania is to test their claim to having the best cuisine at sea. We also will have our first experiences with butlers having booked Penthouse Suites. If these two elements fall short, we will be very disappointed. Of course, food quality can be very subjective and quality of service can vary greatly, so I remain hopeful we will have a better experience.

@Vallesan and @LHT28 I appreciate your comments; we are aware that Insignia is an older ship and I have much higher expectations for the surroundings on the Vista, but we are still looking for the food and service to be nothing less then excellent onboard the Insignia.

Thank you so much for this review. Like several other posters on this thread, my wife and I have yet to sail on Oceania. Our interest in the line is from the many positive comments and reviews I have seen in the Oceania forum here and the emphasis Oceania puts on cuisine. Some recent comments including the OP’s have me concerned. We have a long European itinerary now booked on the Vista for 2025. After we booked that cruise a few months back, we decided we need to have a trial experience with Oceania earlier, so now we are booked on a Caribbean itinerary onboard the Insignia this December. If the Insignia cruise experience disappoints us, we will likely drop the 2025 reservation and be done with Oceania. Hopefully that will not be the case.

My wife and I visited Lofoten with Viking recently. It is a stunningly beautiful island and we had perfect weather. We booked a private full day tour and got to see quite a bit of the southern area and I would highly recommend doing this, if anyone following here is visiting in the future. It was one of the highlights of a wonderful trip!

@FlaMariner I am glad to hear you enjoyed the Oosterdam. My wife and I will be aboard her for the first time late next January and have high hopes for the South America itinerary. I had one previous cruise on a HAL ship and really enjoyed it. You mentioned an onboard “astrologist”, but I think you meant astronomer (unless it related to horoscopes).

@Clay Clayton Glad to see you enjoyed the Vigur Island excursion! That is tour I am thinking of taking when we are in port at Ísafjördur next year.

By the way, Clay, your post mentions the Secret Lagoon, but your photo shows the Sky Lagoon. Which one did you go to? We visited the Blue Lagoon on our trip and loved it, but I am definitely open to trying a different lagoon on our next visit.

Clay, I would be curious as to how you like the hotel you are staying in. We will be staying in Reykjavik next year after a Viking cruise and are looking for one in a downtown location. On our very recent Viking extension in Reykjavik, Viking had us staying in a very small room in the Hilton Nordica. It was located over a mile from downtown and we would definitely not want to be staying there again. I am happy to see it remains sunny there, just like we left it!

Tracey and I were very recently aboard the Venus and visited a number of these ports. We had a fantastic time and excellent weather (mostly)! I hope you both have a similar experience. Happy birthday to Mike!

Thanks for posting about this excursion. I would definitely love to go on this, but my wife has a knee replacement and the the site says it is too strenuous for that condition. Do you think that would be the case? She gets around just fine but we were also concerned as the website also mentioned crawling, which she would have trouble with.

I am a bit jealous of the weather you had in Honningsvag. We very recently were there aboard the Venus on the wonderful “Into the Midnight Sun” itinerary and it was cold and rainy. We still had a blast going Viking’s King Crab Safari excursion. We even enjoyed the included North Cape excursion despite the gloomy skies.