Wonderful cruise on Insignia!

[Issyalex]

We're on the ship now. Went to Waves for lunch. My wife got the Surf & Turf and I had the grilled tuna (The Maguro). Both were great although the fries were just eh. Sitting at the pool now with a virgin Miami Vice. We got to the terminal a bit before noon and were on the ship at 12:15.

 

The check in line for regular cabins was empty, while there were many people on the lines for suites and other fancier cabins. We had to wait a few minutes to be checked in but once that was done, we were able to walk right onto the ship. [ATTACH]427136[/ATTACH][ATTACH]427137[/ATTACH][ATTACH]427139[/ATTACH]

 

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I love their surf n turf but I prefer it without the bun. Your surf n turf looks wee’er than my last one. [emoji33] but I guess I’ll find out next week. [emoji3]

 

 

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[LHT28]

Your surf n turf looks wee’er than my last one.

Is that auto correct for smaller :confused:

Looks the same as what I have always had but maybe you get more without a bun

[Issyalex]

Is that auto correct for smaller :confused:

Looks the same as what I have always had but maybe you get more without a bun

 

Nah it’s not auto correct it’s how we say that something is smaller in Scotland. :D

[barbon2]

We were also on the 8/14-8/24 cruise. We did have a couple of rough seas but it cleared up both times and we were able to sit by the pool. I don’t consider them total washouts.

It rained in Halifax but did not get heavy until late in the day. The first 4 Days were gorgeous and so was Bermuda.

The food on the Insignia was wonderful. We ate 2 dinners each in Toscana and Polo, both outstanding.

We ate in the main DR on all other nights except once in the Terrace Cafe on All American or USA night, I forget the exact title. Both the main DR and this buffet were very good. My only “suggestion” would be to include some additional light salad items such as tuna, chicken salad, etc., at lunchtime.

We went to all of the shows. They were very enjoyable and entertaining but not the best at sea.

Our fellow pax were mostly seniors and all very friendly and sociable.

I saw 3 young girls and about 3 teen boys on board.

The staff was excellent and the ship was wonderful. I have no complaints.

I am planning to sit down and write a full review in a few days.

[Issyalex]

We were also on the 8/14-8/24 cruise. We did have a couple of rough seas but it cleared up both times and we were able to sit by the pool. I don’t consider them total washouts.

 

It rained in Halifax but did not get heavy until late in the day. The first 4 Days were gorgeous and so was Bermuda.

 

The food on the Insignia was wonderful. We ate 2 dinners each in Toscana and Polo, both outstanding.

 

We ate in the main DR on all other nights except once in the Terrace Cafe on All American or USA night, I forget the exact title. Both the main DR and this buffet were very good. My only “suggestion” would be to include some additional light salad items such as tuna, chicken salad, etc., at lunchtime.

 

We went to all of the shows. They were very enjoyable and entertaining but not the best at sea.

 

Our fellow pax were mostly seniors and all very friendly and sociable.

 

I saw 3 young girls and about 3 teen boys on board.

 

The staff was excellent and the ship was wonderful. I have no complaints.

 

I am planning to sit down and write a full review in a few days.

 

 

 

Glad you had a fabulous cruise. This time next week we will be taking your place onboard Insignia. [emoji3]so looking forward to it. Nice mini review.

 

 

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[rsquare]

Now that a hectic late summer is over, I can finally post this review. We recently completed our first Oceania trip, and I thought that it might be interesting to share my impressions of the trip. This was the same Cottages, Coves and Coasts itinerary from New York that bradpole reviewed, but we were on a trip or two before his. We selected it for the great itinerary: up along the New England coast to Halifax, then down to Bermuda for an overnight and back to New York.

We boarded Insignia in a good mood on July 25, having been upgraded to an A1 concierge balcony from a C1 oceanview for $200. We were immediately struck by the lack of photographers. Maybe Oceania would be different, and not treat us as a revenue enhancement source. The lack of both art auctions and heavy marketing for the ship’s boutiques later confirmed this.

The cabin was reasonably sized, except the bathroom, which was tight for two people’s variegated bathroom stuff. Boat drill is inescapable on debarkation day, and I was impressed that it included going out on deck and meeting the lifeboat that we would use in an emergency. Of all of the lines that I have travelled, only Holland-America does this, and I think that it is a mark of the seriousness with which Oceania treats safety. While some of our fellow passengers grumbled, I was quite pleased.

 

That evening, we discovered the wonderful Panache string quartet, and became groupies over the course of cruise, either just before or just after dinner. Some lines are cutting back on this kind of music; I’ve been told that HAL is down to a pianist and a violinist for evening entertainment. We also discovered that Oceania’s bar staff provide enormous pours of alcohol for cocktails, and we later encountered this same supersizing in the sandwiches served at tea, easily twice the size of those offered by Cunard, our main go-to cruise line.

Dinner that first night was problematic, which we kind of expected as everyone settled into new routines. However, we later discovered that this occurred every night around 8. What appears to happen with open seating is that diners seem to bunch up in the 7:30-8:30 range in order to finish before the show at 9:30. This results in a lineup of people seeking tables, or sitting around the lounge outside the main dining room waiting to be called for a table. Since we enjoy sharing, we got seated fairly quickly, but discovered that the servers were frantically running around, and the length of time it took for our orders to come out suggested that the galley was in the weeds trying to keep up with volume. Diners tended to bunch up at certain times rather than being spread evenly as happens in fixed seating situations.

Overall, our experiences in the MDR pointed to significant understaffing, even as the service was always polite and helpful. On Cunard, which retains assigned seating, we would simply walk to our table and greet our servers who knew by the second or third day what kinds of rolls each of us would want, or that I would always order the cheese tray for dessert. We also enjoyed getting to know our tablemates on Cunard and touching base about what we had done during the day, while on Oceania, we had to go through introductions every night. It is beyond me why upscale cruise lines like Oceania have gone over to open seating with such enthusiasm, since it provides a suboptimal dining experience.

 

Oceania’s reputation for good food was generally supported, although there was occasional sloppiness like this grossly fatty piece of beef from my Beef Penang or this unfilleted Dover Sole from our one experience with dinner out on the Terrace . The bony Dover Sole wasn’t helped any by a section manager who first insisted that Dover Sole is always served that way, and who later conceded that a new galley staff had joined the ship at the last port (which would be Halifax) and had not been trained to fillet the sole (!).

Dining at Toscana was also a good experience, as far as the food was concerned; wine service was something else. Our sommelier appeared minimally trained, eg unable to respond to a question about which Italian white might be closest to the NZ Marlborough sauvignon blancs that we both enjoy. He later disappeared, and one of our table-mates (it was a sharing table, us and two single travellers) had to ask for his glass to be refilled four or five times before getting a response.

 

It would also be nice if the line could cut back the large number of dishes served with pancetta; sometimes it seemed like someone in purchasing got a good deal on a bulk pancetta purchase. One evening I even found it mixed in with my string beans, about which the menu had not warned me. Oceania needs to realize that many Americans adhere to pork-avoiding religions; if all that pancetta is really necessary, it can be presented on the menu as a request option for dishes where it is used.

 

We liked the size of the ship, and enjoyed running into people from our Roll Call meet-and-greet or with whom we had dined. We particularly liked the ability to dock at St. George, which is a delightful town but reachable only through a fairly narrow channel.

Overall, an enjoyable cruise which revealed a few rough edges in the Oceania product. We’re not really sure whether we will return, and are wondering if the dining experience on the larger ships is less frenetic than what we endured on Insignia. With a portion of the MDR devoted to fixed seating (HAL does this), I think we could become big Oceania fans.