Oceania Cruises

Excellent vacations that we have taken with Oceania. I am impressed with food, room, cleanliness, cooking school… internet could be better but I survived !!!

We were on the Insignia years ago. It is half the size of the Riviera. The ship is great and the staff is fantastic. The food is upscale where the specialty restaurants are included. Jacques was superb, Red Ginger was amazing and the Polo Grill was very good, only Toscana was disappointing. terrace cafe was great serving lobster every night.

It is nice the water and specialty coffees are included. No photographer constantly taking pictures. Also no cocktail staff in the theater during the shows.

The rooms are very nice, larger than most other ships and the cabin attendants were unreal.

Love Oceania, there’s no one can beat it

I first experienced “Your World, Your Way” service on the Riviera in 2017. A 21 day Med cruise, It was fantastic! This was largely due to the fact that Peter Roberts was the Cruise Director and his partner Jason Parsons was the Assistant Cruise Director, they were amazing. The food and service on Riviera was also amazing and due to this experience the folks that I met on the Riviera decided to book Insignia 14 day Caribbean. Thank goodness we were with 6 other friends, or we could not have bared the thought of 2 weeks on this ship.

Where to start…let’s start with the biggest problem, the cruise director! We disliked him so much, we can’t even remember his name, we believe it was Ray. We heard the guy on the loud speaker announcements daily and didn’t get to see him until day 5. We tried to be friendly with him and one person in our party went over to him to see if he was going to sing at karaoke or not – the Cruise Director was staring at his phone all through the event. He looked up at the person in our group and very sarcastically said – “I hire singers, I don’t sing”, then went straight back to his phone. All of us were dumbfounded! Believe it or not, it got worse, he then went over to the bartenders and started pointing and laughing at our group – we had no idea why, perhaps he thought his sarcastic remark to a gentleman in our group was funny???? Disgusting!!! Remember, when traveling as a group of 8 on Oceania we spent over 50K for the two week cruise – this type of behaviour should not be tolerated. School children are better behaved!

The food quality, in my personal opinion, has dropped since we cruise on Riviera in 2017. On Riviera, the quality and selection were extremely good – especially in the specialty restaurants. On Insignia however they were marginal. My entree in Toscana was horrible – how on earth can you mess up a plate of pasta? The pasta in the buffet was 100% better. I went to culinary school for 2 years, and believe and am qualified enough to remark on the food quality.

* The buffet was mediocre and repetitious.
* The main dining room was the best place to eat, but again, the quality was not up to par
* Bar Services at all venues were quite good

This ship underwent a dry dock very recently and it appears they just concentrated on the cabins and updated the furniture and carpet in the public areas. On the pool deck the boards were loose and warped. I watched more than one person take a stumble on it. There were very elderly people on this, you would thing that Oceania would spend the money to fix the teak deck. The ship also looks tired on the outside – lots of rust.

Overall – Your World, Your Way – I think not. This will be our last Oceania Cruise. The cost associated for this trip was NOT fulfilled in any way. We have paid much less on Princess, Celebrity and Holland American and no longer see the benefits of this marketed “UPSCALE” line. This line needs to re-think their approach, it’s not working any longer.

Oceania’s Corp. Office is nice but the Reception Desk is what caught me 🙂 The Receptionists Joanne and Gisyma greeted me and assisted me so smoothly and I will never forget the experience.