Oasis, Eastern, review LON

[mdisher]

Oasis of the Seas Jan 9th - 16th Eastern Caribbean

 

This was our first time on this ship. Our two previous RC sailings were on the Freedom of the seas and Independence of the seas respectively.

 

We absolutely loved the Freedom and took the kids with us on Indy. If the Freedom was a 10 we found Indy to be about an 7-8 overall. Same ship, lesser quality food, lesser quality service, and lesser quality entertainment. Still a fabulous time though.

 

We were hopeful that we wouldn't experience the same on Oasis. I was a bit *anxious* about the size of the ship. Thought it might be too big. Lots to do of course, but dang almost 6000 people is a lot of people and the ship is indeed huge.

 

For the most part you don't feel like you're with 6000 other people, peak times though, things get pretty congested.

 

On that same 1-10 scale I'd rate our Oasis experience as follows:

 

Entertainment:

Cats - Seriously (-3) what a horrible show. We sort of knew that going in, after reading reviews. Our waiter said *stay for the 2nd half it's much better*. The Cruise Director who opened the show all but begged folks to stay for the 2nd half. It didn't happen 2/3rd left at intermission and didn't come back. We followed shortly afterwards. Almost 2 hours of my life I will never get back.

 

Aqua show. - (8) In truth we watched the rehearsal, then about half the show. I'd recommend it. We were fortunate, they canceled almost all of the rest of the aqua shows because the boat was rolling too much.

 

Come fly With Me - (9) great dancing, great aerialists. Well done, not too long.

 

Comedy Show - (11) better than anything else, best hour and a half we spent on the boat, get reservations. Though your comedians might be different.

 

Headliner - (8) Was Earl Thomas. Ironically he was the headliner when we cruised Freedom and he was outstanding. It was a ~2 hour show on Freedom, and I went begrudgingly but it was outstanding. He's an great entertainer. Years later, he's aged a bit, but still a good entertainer. I was excited when I learned it was him. He only get's an 8 though because the show was too short, about an hour. Just when he hit his stride it was over. Fewer singing impressions in this show which was so impressive last time. Seriously he could cover/impersonate a dozen good singers very well.

 

OK the ship itself.

 

Overall (7)

 

First, we really enjoy 'chilling' with a view of the Ocean. On a Freedom class boat, playing shuffleboard or just hanging out on Deck 4 is nice and peaceful. Places like that are few and far between on this boat. We did find the fifth deck spot, behind the aqua theater on the jogging track to be decent. Noisy but decent but not until our next to last day. It's a hike to get a drink though. The Solarium is nice, we spent a ton of time there but it's still not the same.

 

Movement of the boat (10)

 

Disclaimer, we like the movement of a ship, apparently we encountered some not-normal rolling wave conditions that really had the Oasis moving around. A lot of folks don't like this. I was initially worried that the size of the boat would have take this away. Others had commented that they had been on the boat several times and it was never like this. For me, a week on a cruise ship is the best sleep I'll get all year. The white noise, and the movement are something I really enjoy. They cancelled a lot of shows mid cruise, the aqua theater, and ice shows were all canceled because of the boat movement.

 

Solarium (8)

 

We spent a lot of time in the Solarium on the 15th floor. The mostly *Kid Free Zone*, you're supposed to be 16+ to be in there, and they seemed to run off the folks who tried to bring little ones in. But there were at times plenty of younger teens who weren't 16+ and that wasn't enforced.

 

They also didn't enforce the 30 minute hold rule on stuff. Folks would drop off a towel/book on a chair at 7am, and not even come back into the Solarium until 2pm. That's kind of BS if you ask me.

 

Hot tubs were OK but weren't all that hot, we never got in a cantilevered tub because they were always too crowded.

 

Service was all but non-existant, if you wanted a drink you really needed to go get it yourself.

 

The one server we did have, or rather the guy picking things up, dropped our drink glasses spilling stuff all over the table we had in front of us, and never came back to clean it up.

 

Too Many Kids. I don't know if every sailing is like this but there were too many kids. This is a great boat for kids, and we'd probably bring ours but there were too many 12-15 year olds. We're not old people, mid 40's with kids ourselves. The teens on board this ship were ill behaved.

 

The Entire Port side (left) of deck 15 was the smoking side. Which we had to walk through often. Didn't bother me, I smoked two cigars under the stars during the sailing but my wife was not a fan of that large an area and I tend to agree. It was way more space dedicated to smokers than was needed. It was rarely crowded.

 

The Boardwalk (7)

 

Meh, the carousel is cool, and the different stages of horse carvings are neat but the whole thing just seemed cheap to me. The Zip line is a joke, a token Zip line to say they have one. 80 feet is not worthwhile. We didn't spend any other time on any of the sport decks. I had planned to ride the flow riders but a recent injury prevented any of that.

 

Central Park (10)

 

This is the best part of the ship. Get up early and hit Park Cafe for breakfast and just enjoy the park. Park Cafe for lunch too but be early, it gets too crowded and their flow through the restaurant is stupid.

 

Promenade Deck 5 (8)

 

For the most part, with the exception of parties and parades and what not this wasn't too crowded. For a boat with 6000 people you don't really notice it except for peak times. If there wasn't such a high concentration of some really ill behaved latino teenagers on this trip we probably would have enjoyed it a lot more.

 

As one comedian said, this boat is 5 years old, you'd think by now someone would have given Sorrento's a recipe for Pizza. It's pretty bad pizza, it seemed a lot worse than I remembered on Freedom or Indy.

 

The quality and selection of deserts/snacks and what not at the coffee shop was pretty poor as weel.

 

On the Freedom class boats, you could also get salads and light pasta dishes at the Pizza joint. That wasn't the case, you had to go up to the park cafe to get a salad.

 

 

Our Room. (8)

 

We had 12178 12th floor, port Side, near the front elevators. We liked our room. It was pretty standard, balcony was nice as expected. A/C was not working "well". It was warmer than you'd like but "borderline good enough". If the AC worked our room was a (10)

 

Service (4)

 

First our room steward was awesome. He really took care of us, and as a result we took care of him. After this cruise I am not a fan of these prepaid gratuities. Nobody and I mean nobody earned their gratuities except for the room steward and of course any beverage you buy already has an 18% gratuity tacked on.

 

We did not buy a beverage package. By our math it would take 5 plus drinks a day to make that worth while. For 3 of the days we weren't even going to be on the ship for a good part of the day so we just ordered what we wanted when we wanted it. On the 4th day they offered a 10 drinks for $79 punch card. We purchased that. I'd say the waiters only punched the card about every other time so we certainly made out on that deal. It was rare that we bumped the 18% gratuity and tacked on more. I'm also glad we didn't spend half our cruise life waiting in line at bars. They did not have enough bar staff, period.

 

Service wise it was almost like they all got reamed for a bad cruise the week before. Attitudes were horrible for the first 3 days.

 

The day we arrived as soon as we got our luggage we pulled all the things out we wanted pressed. Before the cruise my wife had checked the Royal Caribbean website for the laundry and pressing price list and it seamed reasonable. The in-room price sheet however was 2-3x the prices she had originally seen. She pulled up the website and confirmed they were different. Apparently they were displaying pricing from 5 years ago.

 

They did honor that pricing.

 

- Service Fails -

 

The evening we arrived we ordered breakfast room service with the intention of having breakfast in our room on our balcony. The breakfast never came, after it was 30 minutes late we called, and they said they'd check on it. 45 minutes later we just went to the Solarium.

 

In the solarium, one bite into my wife's scrambled eggs was a HUGE hair, nasty. We showed it to the head waiter, and he just kind of shrugged it off.

 

Dining that night we discovered we were never assigned a table and were escorted to a temporary table, right outside a service area. It was horrible, and the service was bad. Table 530 to be exact. We were promised a permanent table for the following night. We asked to please not be seated along the main dining room runway by a service area and were promised we'd like our permanent table. Again, it was kind of clear that we were there temporarily and service was below standard, no attempt to build a rapport.

 

The cruise did not start well, all of that was the first day.

 

The next morning was a port day (Nassau), Mini-port actually, docked at 8am, get back on the boat by 1pm.

 

While waiting to disembark my wife walked into the cafe to get a cup of coffee to go. She had to wait for quite some time to even be acknowledged. When she finally asked for a to-go cup, something they should have, she was was completely dismissed, "just use those over there" as she pointed to the china mugs.

 

At that point, I wasn't sure we were actually on a cruise ship. My wife was a little upset. Fortunately the cafe is right next to guest services. So we asked if what we'd experienced so far was normal and showed the lady there in charge a picture of the hairy eggs we'd received. She indicated it was not and wanted us to stay and file a report. We told her we'd be back after the shore day.

 

When we returned we had a conversation with the head waiter, who seemed to take it all very seriously. He promised us that our table would be set for tonight so "No Worries". He then told us our table number was 824. He asked if there was anything else he could do for us. We thought for a second and asked for a complementary dinning experience to one of the specialty dinning areas. He asked us if we wanted Chops or 150 Park, we selected Chops. He called and made a reservation for us for the following night.

 

That evening we showed up at our 6pm dinner time to discover that our new table 824 was basically the equivalent of 530, one dinning room lower. There were three problems, One, another couple was already sitting at the table and like the other table it was on the main drag, right next to a service area. Not gonna happen... We talked to our new friend "Mohamed" the Head Waiter who promised us a better table and temporarily sat us at a table for four. Durring dinner he stopped by and asked us if we liked this table. We did and he promised it to us for the rest of the cruise. Table 907.

 

The following evening we dressed and attempted to make our reservation at Chops. It dawned on me that when he asked us what he could do for us, it was clear on my end that we were asking for a complimentary specialty restaurant. It was also clear to me that do to the language barrier we seemed to have with Mohamed that might not be the case, and in deed it was. Or wasn't. He made us a reservation alright, but it wasn't for a complementary meal, or complimentary anything which was a disappointment.

 

So...

 

Instead of eating at chops (5:30 reservation), we headed to the main dining room, to our normal new table (907) and low and behold, it wasn't available. We were presented with another opportunity to talk with Mohamed about the miscommunication. He apologized and explained that he thought we just wanted him to make a reservation. We didn't argue but did our best to explain that under the circumstances, just how absurd that was. He said he'd find us another table and do something for us.

 

We finally got seated at table 936 which was another temporary table for two, my wife watched him seat someone else there the night before who was clearly unhappy about something. This is where we met our new waiter Darvin. Which started out OK but as we observed, he just didn't like people. After that experience we pretty much decided we were out on the whole "Main dinning room" for the rest of the cruise. We only returned one more time on the last formal night aka Lobster night. Mohamed did stop by and let us know that he had secured for us a complimentary lunch at Giovani's, normally a $12 cover charge. He did explain that only the cover charge was complimentary, should we wish to have beverages those would not be covered. We thanked him and left it at that.

 

At this point we were mostly put off by the dinning room experiences. The food was OK, not great, just OK. Portions, were incredibly small. The Caesar salad was almost a joke.

 

On one hand I could appreciate smaller portions, but that's not what you go on a cruise for.

 

Tuesday and Wednesday were shore days, we mostly ate off the ship. When we returned it was later than our 6pm dinning slot, so we ate at the Windjammer, or at other spots around the ship. I am not a fan of the Windjammer, to me it's Golden Coral at sea. Food quality is not much better. I know some folks live up there though.

 

On Thursday we had a wonderful lunch at Giovani's. The best food on the boat that we had experienced. During times in the hot tub we had heard that Chops was good, though they were not without their issues, on the first night some folks waited 3 hours for their food and had their meals comped as a result. Others were given 50% off coupons for chops because they couldn't be seated in the main dining room. It seemed the treatment was pretty inconsistent.

 

That thursday evening we returned to the dining room for formal/Lobster night. Mohamed greeted us, and seated us again back in the temporary Darvin section. He explained the options for tonight, Lobster and Prime Rib, if you wanted both just ask for Surf and Turf.

 

As we were seated by the glass we could look down into the 3rd floor dinning room we watched as the waiters down there either delivered 'Surf and Turf' entres, or they delivered a Prime Rib Dinner with a lobster tail on the side. Darvin just dropped off two complete entre's for us. The prime rib was good, the lobster was also OK. We had had a stuffed 'tiger shrimp' dinner the night before that was horrible. It wasn't tiger shrimp, it was regular small shrimp, that was stuffed, but still had the shell and was tough as leather. We sorted of expect that for the lobster but was presently surprised when that wasn't the case. That was however, our last foray into the dining room. At Giovanni's we asked about their shrimp entre and the water talked us out of it.

 

Behind the scenes tour (10)

 

It's not cheap but I'd recommend it. Apparently there is more than one, ours started at the Aqua theater, we saw behind the scenes at the theater, some kitchens, some prep areas, some storage areas (provisions), the laundry, the engine and environmental control room, the crew windjammer and crew bar/nightclub and the bridge. We got swept by security twice, once right befor the engine control room and right before we entered the bridge. It's unclear to me what other things you get to see if your tour starts at the other theatre.

 

Ports / Excursions

We booked all our excursions ahead of time and didn't use RC for any of it.

 

 

Nassau - (8)

 

This stop was really, really short. Our goal was to get to the Run distillery which opened at 10am. We simply walked off the ship, to the right, until we found a beach. My wife like to collect sea glass so we spent an hour and a half looking for sea glass on the beach. We were going to walk up the hill through town to the distillery but thought better of it and grabbed a cab at the end of the beach walk. The tour was short and sweet, we paid to taste their rum. It was good, not $55/bottle good though. Certainly not at that price PLUS the hassle of bringing a bottle back on the ship, and home through the airlines. Just not worth it. We stopped by a few other sites along the way as we walked back down into town from the distillery. In town we did a little shopping and I bout a half dozen hand rolled cigars. They have been excellent.

 

St. Thomas (8)

 

This stop our only goal was to get to Trunk Bay on St. John's, snorkle, then get back into town for some shopping. My wife has been dying to shop for a new diamond for a while and St. Thomas was the place she wanted to do that. We hopped a cab from where we docked St Alamie? to Red Hook, (about a 30 minute ride) and $11 each. Then from there it was $12 each for round trip ferry tickets to St. John. Of course we just missed the 11am ferry so we had to sit there for an hour. We were led to believe they ran every 30 minutes but that wasn't true. Right now they were only every hour. We made the 12pm ferry and were at the St. John dock in _____ by 12:30 from there another ~20 minute cab ride to trunk bay. The water was up, those huge swells that were rocking the Oasis followed us here. The snorkle trail was closed (unswimmable) and they were recommending we don't swim at all. We grabbed a spot on the beach, and did swim a little bit. The waves were brutal, Claudine got hit by one that knocked her down, taking her sunglasses. As I reached for her I got pulled under and was separated from mine as well. She got up and decided that was enough for her. I stayed in the water for the next 40 minutes searching for our glasses. I was lucky enough to find mine. The water was cloudy, and not very clear. Every 4th wave or so would leave the beach calm for like 10 seconds with two feet of water. I was lucky to spot my glasses and get to them. Someone will find a nice pair of Sea Chrome Hearts some day on the beach. After the brutal swimming we hopped a cab back to the dock and changed our tickets and caught the last 3:45pm ferry back to ______ . We were starving and had some food at the 'in between bar'. Some really really good Ahi tuna taco's and a margarita that I had to water down to be able to drink. After dinner we did a little shopping and found my wife the ring she wanted. Outside of the poor swimming and closed snorkle trail, it was a very successful day. An 8 and not a 10 because of the poor conditions at Trunk Bay. If that were as advertised, calm clear waters, it would have been a 10. There has to be a way to find out about that ahead of time.

 

St. Maartin (7)

 

On this day we had booked a 4 hour excursion with Captain Alan. Reviewing our itinerary, we booked this on 'boat time', of course the islands were on hour ahead of us. We were fairly certain we'd miss it since the were supposed to meet us and pick us up at 9:15am, and while we were nearly the first ones off the boat we didn't start disembarking until 9:30 island time.

 

We found the transportation, and they informed us that because of the swells, the snorkling areas were unswimmable, that our tour was cancelled but in place of it they were offering a 4 hour boat tour. We decided to pass on that, we just didn't want to sit on a boat for 4 hours in rough seas.

 

We wandered back toward the pier and asked at an information booth for suggestions. My wife asked for a nice quiet beach. It was suggested that we got to Pinel Island. A short cab ride ($10 each), then a ferry ($12) round trip would get us there. We ended up meeting another couple and spending the day with them (Pam and Rich). Sadly because so many other things were closed Pinel was packed, super packed. There were two pay beach areas $25 for a pair of lounge chairs. If you go pick the one near the dock, it has better food. I could see this being a really great place if it wasn't crowded. We lucked into some chairs and within 15 minutes of us arriving every chair on the island was booked. We just relaxed, swam, and got sun burned. Towards the end of the day we wandered the nature trail on the island to see the other side. If we had it to do over again, we probably would not have rented a chair and just taken ou stuff across to the other side of the island. Not a lot of beach there, but there was some. It was amazing until I stubbed my toe on the trail and split it open. It was bleeding quite badly. I tried my best dual-survivor trick, and wrapped it up with a leaf and some twine that had washed up on shore. We hobbled back to the first beach and asked for a bandaid at the bar. I cleaned it up a bit, applied the band aid, and was done for the day.

 

We hopped the next ferry back, and took an 'unsanctioned' cab back to the pier. All in all a great day. A 7 and not a 10 because of the weather forcing our booked thing to be cancelled, the crowdedness of the beach, and the toe situation. I would go back there again.

 

All of our sea days were spent lounging. Mostly in the kid free solarium.

 

Would I do this boat again? No. I might however do the Alure, we heard from multiple folks who had done both ships that they liked or felt the Alure was better, better service. Most importantly it doesn't have Cats. I would also hope that the kids on board would be better behaved though fully admit the ship has nothing to do with that. We're not anti-kids we have 5 of our own, there was a glut of kids who were just loud and obnoxious.

 

What would we do differently?

 

- Verify ahead of time that we had a table. I'm not sure if this was a byproduct of us booking through Costco or not. But it caused or was I'm sure a big part of our dining room issues. Had we had a good permanent table from day one we could have built a rapport with the servers.

 

- We gotta get off this pre-paid gratuity thing. That seems to me to be a big contributor to the lack of service. I can only assume to many people stiffed the staff and that's not good. If it's prepaid like it is, give us an opportunity to divert it to charity if we get bad service. I'd be OK with that.

 

- Pack less than we did. We still brought too much stuff.

 

- Have a small first aid kit. At the very least some anti-biotic ointment and decent bandaids. I was able to buy bandaids at the peer in a store, didn't think about the ointment until i was back on the boat and saw how bad it really was. I know the boat has medical but it didn't need stitches so I didn't go there.

 

Photos and less review info can be found here:

 

http://www.dishers.com/2016/01/17/cruise-2016-oasis-seas

[TreeCity]

Thanks for the review. We go in 3 weeks. Now wishing had gone with Allure:(

[Lionesss]

Wow

 

You wrote a very detailed review.....

 

THANKS

 

It looks like you had your ups and downs, and spoke honestly.

 

Thanks..for taking the time.

 

Safe travels.

[mdisher]

Folks I was torn about posting that. I'd hate to read that just prior to getting on the ship.

 

Please don't let it set your mood. While our trip certainly had some sub-optimal service. At the end of the day we had an excellent time. We chose not to let it get us down. I believe had we had a permanent table from the get go to get the rapport going with the waiter and server things would have been much, much better.

 

Also at the first sign of 'bad service' beat feet down to customer care and talk to them about it. While they sort of failed at making things right, they really did want to help us.

 

I'm also pretty sure most of our issues with the ship was the large and I mean really large group of teenagers who were not well behaved when we were around them. (Walking through the top deck in groups with a bluetooth speakers booming from the pockets of their sweat shirts, etc.)

 

At the end of the day we were still in the Caribbean, on a ship with above average food, and beautiful weather. It was 9 degrees F at home :)

 

-=MD

[wolfganghowell]

Very nice well balanced review.

 

My 2 cents from a little distance (we cruised in November):

 

The MDR seems to get a lot of negative reviews compared to other ships. I noticed this going in and we never set foot in the MDR. Now - we had an advantage though. We sailed in a suite so had Coastal Kitchen. We ate there 4 nights, Izumi one night, Sabor one night and did tapas in Vintages one night. Chops is way too overpriced now IMHO. It's a shame mdisher didn't have a better MDR experience especially when he tried so diligently to give them a chance to fix it.

 

Service for us was fine but not nearly as personal as we have found it on ALL the other ships we've sailed. I have to conclude it's the size - there are simply too many passengers for the staff to "click" with you. We did enjoy meeting a few - mainly because they were in the suite only areas so had less people to deal with. Of the 3 bartenders in the casino, 2 of them seemed po'd to be there and one was delightful. Considering I'm Casino Royale where I drank for free but tipped every single time, they could have acted a little friendlier instead of mad that I was there again. ;)

 

Solarium - on our sailing it was so hot and humid in there that we couldn't even use it. Shame. It's normally my favorite place in the morning.

 

Thanks again for your review. We will probably do Oasis again someday but it's not at the top of our list. The 4 of us decided that the only way to do it is in a suite - certainly not realistic for everyone of course - but for our taste, we didn't like the enormity of it and the suite areas saved the week for us.

[Ocean Boy]

Very nice well balanced review.

 

My 2 cents from a little distance (we cruised in November):

 

The MDR seems to get a lot of negative reviews compared to other ships. I noticed this going in and we never set foot in the MDR. Now - we had an advantage though. We sailed in a suite so had Coastal Kitchen. We ate there 4 nights, Izumi one night, Sabor one night and did tapas in Vintages one night. Chops is way too overpriced now IMHO. It's a shame mdisher didn't have a better MDR experience especially when he tried so diligently to give them a chance to fix it.

 

Service for us was fine but not nearly as personal as we have found it on ALL the other ships we've sailed. I have to conclude it's the size - there are simply too many passengers for the staff to "click" with you. We did enjoy meeting a few - mainly because they were in the suite only areas so had less people to deal with. Of the 3 bartenders in the casino, 2 of them seemed po'd to be there and one was delightful. Considering I'm Casino Royale where I drank for free but tipped every single time, they could have acted a little friendlier instead of mad that I was there again. ;)

 

Solarium - on our sailing it was so hot and humid in there that we couldn't even use it. Shame. It's normally my favorite place in the morning.

 

Thanks again for your review. We will probably do Oasis again someday but it's not at the top of our list. The 4 of us decided that the only way to do it is in a suite - certainly not realistic for everyone of course - but for our taste, we didn't like the enormity of it and the suite areas saved the week for us.

 

Maybe that has something to do with it but overall, I think Allure is a better managed ship than Oasis so that is comparing to same size ships. That aside, we are doing Oasis next week and I will see if my opinion of how the ship is run changes.

Edited January 18, 2016 by Ocean Boy

[OfTheSeasCruiser]

OP: Thanks for the review!

 

Thanks for the review. We go in 3 weeks. Now wishing had gone with Allure:(

 

Don't let one review change your mind about the ship. I have no doubt that the OP's review was honest, but many things can change in 3 weeks. As a matter of fact, things change from cruise to cruise.

 

I was on Oasis last May - had an awesome time! Once I returned home, I remember reading 1 or 2 not-so-awesome reviews of Oasis cruises after mine.

[wolfganghowell]

Ocean Boy (and others) - don't get me wrong. We had a great time. But other than the suite enhancements, we still prefer Freedom and Voyager class. Seems to be the same for the OP as well.

[Ocean Boy]

Ocean Boy (and others) - don't get me wrong. We had a great time. But other than the suite enhancements, we still prefer Freedom and Voyager class. Seems to be the same for the OP as well.

 

As do we. Periodically we though in Oaisis/Allure to change things up a bit.

[maryjo881]

I too was on this cruise with my husband and I have to say your review is pretty spot on. Although, I do want to state we throughly enjoyed our cruise and I would have no problem sailing on the Oasis again. I became furious many times with those teenagers and the service, but I try to not let other people get me down on my vacation. My husband and I grabbed drinks and headed to our balcony on several occasions just to avoid the other people.

 

I can contest that those teens were annoying and they couldn't care less. While we were in line to check in my husband overheard someone say there was 1 chaperone for every 12 kids!!

 

Good service was hard to come for sure. Not once were we sat at the same table in the dining room nor did we ever have the same waitstaff even though we had reservations. Three of the nights the person showing us to our table couldn't even find it. It was table 112. They would make us follow them all over the place and just stand next to people eating waiting for them to find us an available table. We never sat at 112 and I'm not sure it even existed. Some nights I felt like they couldn't wait to get us out of there. We would get our salad and other appetizer at the same time and out in less than an hour. Other nights I feel like they forgot about us and it would take over 2 hours. Most nights they didn't even take our drink orders. We had to ask the waiter and he would say he would get the bar waiter to take our order. This annoyed us more than anything. Also, one of our male servers was obviously hitting on my husband!! It wouldn't of been a big deal but the dude would not even acknowledge me. I told my husband to order for me because I wasn't sure if the waiter would of paid any attention to me.

 

Side note... You were very smart to not go on your excursion in St. Maarten. My husband and I were booked on a different snorkeling tour. We too were told there would be no snorkeling and instead of 6 hours it would be 3 hours. We stupidly agreed to continue on the tour and the boat got hit by a rouge wave and our boat tipped over but thankful didn't completely capsize. We all walked away with only bumps and bruises and of course with memories of a terrifying experience.

 

Didn't meant to hijack your thread. Just agreeing to what you had said. You had a well written review. I hope you still had a wonderful week!

[Johnamac123]

I too was on this cruise with my husband and I have to say your review is pretty spot on. Although, I do want to state we throughly enjoyed our cruise and I would have no problem sailing on the Oasis again. I became furious many times with those teenagers and the service, but I try to not let other people get me down on my vacation. My husband and I grabbed drinks and headed to our balcony on several occasions just to avoid the other people.

 

I can contest that those teens were annoying and they couldn't care less. While we were in line to check in my husband overheard someone say there was 1 chaperone for every 12 kids!!

 

Good service was hard to come for sure. Not once were we sat at the same table in the dining room nor did we ever have the same waitstaff even though we had reservations. Three of the nights the person showing us to our table couldn't even find it. It was table 112. They would make us follow them all over the place and just stand next to people eating waiting for them to find us an available table. We never sat at 112 and I'm not sure it even existed. Some nights I felt like they couldn't wait to get us out of there. We would get our salad and other appetizer at the same time and out in less than an hour. Other nights I feel like they forgot about us and it would take over 2 hours. Most nights they didn't even take our drink orders. We had to ask the waiter and he would say he would get the bar waiter to take our order. This annoyed us more than anything. Also, one of our male servers was obviously hitting on my husband!! It wouldn't of been a big deal but the dude would not even acknowledge me. I told my husband to order for me because I wasn't sure if the waiter would of paid any attention to me.

 

Side note... You were very smart to not go on your excursion in St. Maarten. My husband and I were booked on a different snorkeling tour. We too were told there would be no snorkeling and instead of 6 hours it would be 3 hours. We stupidly agreed to continue on the tour and the boat got hit by a rouge wave and our boat tipped over but thankful didn't completely capsize. We all walked away with only bumps and bruises and of course with memories of a terrifying experience.

 

Didn't meant to hijack your thread. Just agreeing to what you had said. You had a well written review. I hope you still had a wonderful week!

 

It sounds like you were on board with a Quinceanera celebration which is a tradition in Latin America/Mexico/S. America. I'm guessing these were primarily girls 15 years old? You're never going to win that battle, the cruise lines get megabucks from those bookings. What are they going to do, put all these 15 year old girls off at the next port?? LOL.

[molsonschooner]

Very nice well balanced review.

 

My 2 cents from a little distance (we cruised in November):

 

The MDR seems to get a lot of negative reviews compared to other ships. I noticed this going in and we never set foot in the MDR. Now - we had an advantage though. We sailed in a suite so had Coastal Kitchen. We ate there 4 nights, Izumi one night, Sabor one night and did tapas in Vintages one night. Chops is way too overpriced now IMHO. It's a shame mdisher didn't have a better MDR experience especially when he tried so diligently to give them a chance to fix it.

 

Service for us was fine but not nearly as personal as we have found it on ALL the other ships we've sailed. I have to conclude it's the size - there are simply too many passengers for the staff to "click" with you. We did enjoy meeting a few - mainly because they were in the suite only areas so had less people to deal with. Of the 3 bartenders in the casino, 2 of them seemed po'd to be there and one was delightful. Considering I'm Casino Royale where I drank for free but tipped every single time, they could have acted a little friendlier instead of mad that I was there again. ;)

 

Solarium - on our sailing it was so hot and humid in there that we couldn't even use it. Shame. It's normally my favorite place in the morning.

 

Thanks again for your review. We will probably do Oasis again someday but it's not at the top of our list. The 4 of us decided that the only way to do it is in a suite - certainly not realistic for everyone of course - but for our taste, we didn't like the enormity of it and the suite areas saved the week for us.

 

I have read many times about the number of passengers on Oasis class ships and not enough crew to provide the personal touches we all like but after doing a quick search on one of the travel sites it appears that oasis class ships have a more favourable ratio of crew to passengers than the some smaller ships do. At least that seems to be the way on Royal ships

[jagsfan]

I appreciate the very fair minded honest review. We sailed two years ago on Oasis and enjoyed it, and will be on her again in June.

I'm hoping we'll beat all the kids out of school for the summer. They really can impact a cruise. Of course, so can adults who want to enjoy themselves at everyone else's expense.

I am grateful for the forewarning about the dining room. If we seem to have lost the lottery tablewise, I'll jump on it quickly and with someone I can communicate with. Unfortunately, I only speak two languages, English and Southern.

When someone is speaking other than their native tongue, things can get a little wonky, and there can be an understanding gap. I've been lucky to far cruise ship wise, not so lucky with IT or other help.

I'm glad you and your wife mainly suffered the loss of a pair of sunglasses, bumps, bruises and cuts, but kept your sense of humor and willingness to see the good parts of a less than optimal cruise.

Thanks for the effort you put into the review.

[tampadee]

We were on the same cruise. Yes it was a Quinceaner celebration. Maybe we weren't in the same places as you but the four of us thought these teenagers were very well behaved.

 

We had excellent service in the dining room at our 6 p.m. seating. On the other hand, we had to wait a couple of hours for our entrees at Chops. We have never had this problem in a speciality restaurant before. I think it was because they were serving a huge group just before us. Our room steward was also excellent.

 

We thought there were just too many people on this cruise. We heard it was entirely full. We had some wonderful desserts. The "liquid center chocolate cake" in Chops was incredible. I used to be a fan of the Mud Cake but no longer. The main dining room had some very good dishes.