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Oceania Losing Ground - Just Back From Marina


californiacruiseluvrs
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I just returned from the Oceania Marina and posted the following review under "Reviews". I'm also placing here for those who are interested:

 

I write this from the perspective of a cruiser who has sailed with Oceania 7 times and been on almost 90 cruises. My cabin experience has always been a PH2 or PH3 on deck 10 or 11 on Riviera/Marina and deck 8 on the R Class ships. For reference and point of view purposes I have sailed on most major mass market lines. In recent years my taste has changed and strongly desire smaller ships with less passengers and a more inclusive experience where you are not nickel and dimed. Therefore, lines such as Oceania, Crystal, Seabourn, Azamara, Regent and Silversea have been strongly preferenced.

 

The condition of the Marina is tip top shape - especially for a ship built in 2011. Food remains outstanding. Cruising on Oceania is more akin to staying in a really nice floating hotel as opposed to a true cruising experience. Highlights not only include the dining room and specialty restaurants, but also tea time and the strings. I also believe Oceania and Regent have the best pool areas at sea.

 

Unfortunately, I feel strongly that Oceania has lost ground compared to the competition - so much so that we just booked our first Viking Ocean cruise as reviews seem to compare the two lines as apples to apples with Viking Ocean being the better apple. Unfortunately, Oceania's apple has become a bit rotten. Here's why:

 

Despite a beautiful ship and producing excellent food something is missing on Oceania and has been progressively more noticeable. That "something" is service and absolute lack of personalization. I've noticed on my last few Oceania cruises that the crew does not engage with the passengers and it is clear they are there to do their job and that's it. There is frequent talk in front of guests about "when my contract is up". No similes, no being addressed by name, no remembering preferences. In fact, for the most part no warmth. For example, my wife and I kept bumping into a social hostess we met at a captain's function the second day of the cruise and we would always say hello and try to engage. She would not give us the time of day. A social hostess! Another example -

this one from the top - the captain's cabin was just in front of ours and I would frequently see him in the corridor. It was painful for him to return a simple hello. Staff were regimented and inflexible. All decisions - no matter how minor - had to come from the top. There was no willingness or ability to even make small decisions to cater to guests on their own. For example, at the juice bar I asked for bananas, oranges and ice. The employee said he was only allowed to make what was on the preset menu despite all the ingredients and a blender sitting right in front of him. Sounds picky? Not really when every aspect of any small request is treated this way. The overall lack of flexibility and unfriendliness of the staff is unfortunate. Part of what makes cruising enjoyable is the staff. When the staff is miserable and stupidly rigid it impacts the overall experience. In summary - regarding the staff - they walked around like creatures from the Walking Dead and did not seem happy.

 

Unless you bought a drink package getting an honest drink is impossible on Oceania. All drinks are measured pours and quite stingy. Even the "doubles" are weak. A double top shelf (i.e. Kettle One or Grey Goose) martini costs north of $22 before tip is included. Bartenders have zero flexibility to think on their own and actually some are worried about their pours because they are "scrutinized" according to one. Remarkably, Celebrity - a mass market line - makes much more honest and better drinks without the measured pour.

 

Oceania shore excursions are consistently awful. I would not waste your money and instead visit sites such as tours by locals or Viator to arrange your own tours. Not only will you have a more customized experienced and skip out on painful bus journeys, but you will save a ton of money.

 

As an aside, I think Oceania would benefit from increasing their prices slightly and making drinks all-inclusive. They should get rid of O Life promotions and just make every sailing with included WiFi, beverages, gratuities and lastly not insult guests by requiring tokens for the laundry. Those inclusions coupled with some serious Ritz Carlton style customer service training would potentially put Oceania back in the running.

 

On all my previous Oceania cruises I booked future cruises. Not on this one. I am done with Oceania for the foreseeable future as I've tried other options and liked them better; hence the danger of trying other things as you might just like them better and change your spending habits. Sorry Oceania - what was once a fabulous product is just fair now when compared to the competition in the market.

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I'm presently on Insignia and many of the crew greet me by name and remember my preferences. And the few alcoholic drinks I've ordered have been fine.

 

Additionally, I greatly prefer the O-Life choice, otherwise we'd be subsidizing the heavy drinkers.

 

I somehow very much DOUBT any "heavy drinkers" actually require a so-called subsidy, do you?

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Oh dear. We are sailing on Nautica in two weeks' time. This will be our third O cruise. The food has always been more than excellent.

We would not be worried about the drinks as we don't drink cocktails or "mixed drinks"; only wine or beer so we don't take a beverage package.

We take the OBC for our O Life choice.

However, service and attitude of the staff is important to us. We will report here, on our return.

It is always good to hear others' views. Thanks for yours.

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Thanks for the review

I do hope they do not do all inclusive drinks

we prefer to just buy the 1 or 2 drinks a day

If we want all inclusive we would sail Regent or some other line

JMO

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We just returned from the Insignia and we thought the service was excellent. Several of the staff always called us by name and all of them nearly fell over trying to help us or say hello or good morning or whatever. We are sailing on the Marina in October so I hope the service is as good. I will post back our experience. As far as drinks go, we mostly drink wine at dinner, and margaritas and specialty coffees other times and they were fine.

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We are presently on Insignia and have found the service and treatment of guests to be what we have experienced on our past 14 Oceania cruises. What we have found different from other O cruises is the clientele on board. Time of year has a great deal to contribute to this difference.

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Thanks for the review

I do hope they do not do all inclusive drinks

we prefer to just buy the 1 or 2 drinks a day

If we want all inclusive we would sail Regent or some other line

JMO

 

 

 

+1

 

 

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Quote "The condition of the Marina is tip top shape - especially for a ship built in 2011. Food remains outstanding. Cruising on Oceania is more akin to staying in a really nice floating hotel as opposed to a true cruising experience. Highlights not only include the dining room and specialty restaurants, but also tea time and the strings. I also believe Oceania and Regent have the best pool areas at sea."

 

 

Got off Marina 2 weeks ago and will be back on in December. I agree with OP's paragraph on the plusses of O. I disagree completely with the rest of the review -- our experience was a complete opposite of theirs.

 

 

Staff/crew went out of their way to take time to talk with us. Many learned our names early in the cruise and it was a pleasure to walk through the buffet and hear one after another of them calling out "Hello Mr (my name here)" and "Hello Mrs. (her name here)". Vinalkumar, the grill man, knew my breakfast preference by the 3rd day. Arif, the wine steward, quickly displayed that he knew our preference to start our meal with a glass of champagne. Zoran and Tudor at the Martini Bar knew our after diner drink preference for playing Brainteaser Trivia and Name That Tune by the 3rd day and addressed us by name.

 

 

We were met by smiles and "Hello/Good Morning?How are you?" from all the staff/crew. The only time anyone volunteered to tell when their contract ended was after we asked them how long they had been with O, what ships they had been on, and when they would get home leave (contract expiring) to go home to see their family. And every one, let me repeat, every one, said it was their intent to sign a new contract and return to Marina upon completion of their home leave. Some admitted that they didn't know for sure if they would be reassigned to Marina, or, if they would go to another ship. But each one intended to return.

 

 

Unhappy? Don't think so.

 

 

During the Oceania Club cocktail party, in addition to announcing the number of passengers by OC level (Bronze, Silver, etc.) they also announced the recent start start of an Employee Recognition program for employees hitting their 5 year and 10 year anniversaries with the company -- a company that is only 15 years old. There were 4 crew members at their 5th year and 5 crew members at their 10th year anniversary. The 9 crew members were from a wide variety of departments throughout the ship, including 1 man from the laundry. I think that speaks volumes about whether or not O is a good place to work. It also spills over (I believe) into the way the crew/staff seem to enjoy their work and enjoy their interaction with the passengers.

 

 

By the way, one of the wait staff in The Terrace remember my wife and I from a cruise on Riviera last November. Many of them said they looked forward to seing us again in November.

 

 

What you get out of your dealings with the staff depends on what you put into your dealings with the staff.

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Oh, and by the way, why is there such focus on the fact that the bartenders actually measure the ingredients when they make cocktails? When I drink a cocktail, I want it to taste good, not be overpowered by the taste of booze.

 

Are people complaining about the strength of their drinks because they only want to get drunk? If so, skip the mixer and just order double shots, and maybe start with a beer or 2 from your mini-fridge before you leave your stateroom, just to get the buzz started.

 

Just sayin'.

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My better half & I spent 6 months on Insignia last year and from that experience I have to thoroughly disagree with this person assessment of O. Within days of boarding all the staff knew our names and greeted us every time we saw them. In fact many of the staff still participate on a FB page the ATW's set up.

I will say that the captain and the GM do make a difference in how things go onboard. Since the captain is required to take a break every 10 weeks we did have a couple of captains along the way. The tone of the ship did change slightly as people came and left but the staff, most of whom were with us for the whole trip, were wonderful.

We have sailed on many cruise lines but after this experience it would be very hard to go to any other line. O is my go to line for the forseeable future.

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I have to admit that I don't really care if the captain or other senior staff are personable, as long as they make sure we don't run aground/sink/generally stay safe that's good enough for me.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

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We are presently on Insignia and have found the service and treatment of guests to be what we have experienced on our past 14 Oceania cruises. What we have found different from other O cruises is the clientele on board. Time of year has a great deal to contribute to this difference.

 

I'm new to Oceania with my first cruise on the Insignia in December. I'm wondering what you mean by your last two sentences regarding "clientele/time of year/differences." Could you explain to someone not familiar with Oceania?

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I have to admit that I don't really care if the captain or other senior staff are personable, as long as they make sure we don't run aground/sink/generally stay safe that's good enough for me.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

 

Agreed!

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We just got off the Marina in mid-August and had a wonderful cruise, our fourth on the Marina. We found the staff overall to be very friendly and engaging. We ran into some who we met on prior cruises and they remembered us! One was our butler (same butler as year before) and one was Jackie who currently works in Jacques and in the Terrace Café. We have met her on three different cruises and she is a gem! After we saw her at the beginning of the cruise she addressed us by name each time we saw her. I have never met more friendlier and engaging servers in the Terrace Café. All the servers were friendly including the guys at the grill. All the wait staff in the specialty restaurants were excellent.

 

We are not big drinkers, which is why we moved over from Regent, and we like to book our own excursions so the OLife is not appealing to us. In fact I think we will book "cruise only" next time. The private excursions we did were much better and cost less.

 

As for Viking, we have been on a couple of Viking Oceans cruises and prefer Oceania (Marina and Riviera only for us). Not that it was a bad experience...we did like it, but we prefer Oceania overall. The food on Oceania is tops with lots of variety with the four specialty restaurants and the Terrace Café. We do not like the main dining room at all. We would sail on Viking again for the itinerary. And we are actually going to be back on Regent in 2018, not that I like the all-inclusive which you dearly pay for, but because we want to try the new Explorer and we like the itinerary (Cape Town to Cape Town). To be perfectly honest it cost around the same for an almost identical cruise on Oceania!

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I have been on 46 cruise segments with Oceania (and soon will be boarding Riviera for another 116 days). We have been on all the ships except Sirena for numerous days. I could not agree more with the positive comments about the crew (on every ship) and the interaction that takes place--particularly if you put a little effort into it. Wiks

 

 

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We board Nautica tomorrow, our first on that ship, but certainly not our first on Oceania. Will report back later as to how it was. Our last trip was on Marina in Jan, great as always.

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Hi to LAexNY! We met you on Nautica between Singapore and HK and I remember it fondly.

I'm happy to see most replies seem to disagree with the OP.

We were on Marina for 3 weeks in June . Everything has been said already. The ship is gorgeous, the food delightful. The service staff and cruise directors staff were always attentive and friendly. Our Stewdess always had a cheery hello. We especially like the informality and choice in the Terrace grill

as for booze, We would avoid an all inclusive cruise line simply because we only ever have a little wine with a meal. Each to his own.

The excursions have always been a weak point.

The Captain on marina was previously on Nautica. I appreciate his professional competence and that oh his crew.

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We were just on the Marina in this summer for Norway fjords. Everything was great as on our previous cruises with Oceania. Even the manicurist remembered me from 2 previous cruises on O. My only small quibble would be that the Captain did not show up for the Captain's reception (and we were not in bad weather). On the Queen Mary 2 TA, also this summer, the Captain was there smiling and posing for pics with the guests.

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I agree with most of the posters, I've cruised 9 times on "O" and enjoyed every cruise. We're trying Regent for the next 3 cruises (just need a change), what I don't like about Regent are Drinks and tours are included. We don't drink and really like to tour on are own. So we're paying for something we don't use. We'll be back on "O" next year-so I'm hoping they stay the same with the Drinks and Tours.

 

Rick

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We board Nautica tomorrow, our first on that ship, but certainly not our first on Oceania. Will report back later as to how it was. Our last trip was on Marina in Jan, great as always.

Our son and daughter-in-law will also be on Nautica tomorrow (celebrating their 25th anniversary). It's their first O cruise. We're hoping they like it as much as we do.

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Same situation as Cathi and I agree with everything she said.

 

Loved our ATW16 cruise--the staff was amazing, our room stewards were incredible and took such good care of us, and as Cathi said many of the people who sailed with us continue to post on our social media site from the Captain to the wait staff...it was just that amazing. They are family.

 

We have 4 more O cruises in 2018 (2 with Cathi) and can't wait!!!!

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I just returned from the Oceania Marina and posted the following review under "Reviews". I'm also placing here for those who are interested:

 

I write this from the perspective of a cruiser who has sailed with Oceania 7 times and been on almost 90 cruises. My cabin experience has always been a PH2 or PH3 on deck 10 or 11 on Riviera/Marina and deck 8 on the R Class ships. For reference and point of view purposes I have sailed on most major mass market lines. In recent years my taste has changed and strongly desire smaller ships with less passengers and a more inclusive experience where you are not nickel and dimed. Therefore, lines such as Oceania, Crystal, Seabourn, Azamara, Regent and Silversea have been strongly preferenced.

 

The condition of the Marina is tip top shape - especially for a ship built in 2011. Food remains outstanding. Cruising on

Oceania is more akin to staying in a really nice floating hotel as opposed to a true cruising experience. Highlights not only include the dining room and specialty restaurants, but also tea time and the strings. I also believe Oceania and Regent have the best pool areas at sea.

 

Unfortunately, I feel strongly that Oceania has lost ground compared to the competition - so much so that we just booked our first Viking Ocean cruise as reviews seem to compare the two lines as apples to apples with Viking Ocean being the better apple. Unfortunately, Oceania's apple has become a bit rotten. Here's why:

 

Despite a beautiful ship and producing excellent food something is missing on Oceania and has been progressively more noticeable. That "something" is service and absolute lack of personalization. I've noticed on my last few Oceania cruises that the crew does not engage with the passengers and it is clear they are there to do their job and that's it. There is frequent talk in front of guests about "when my contract is up". No similes, no being addressed by name, no remembering preferences. In fact, for the most part no warmth. For example, my wife and I kept bumping into a social hostess we met at a captain's function the second day of the cruise and we would always say hello and try to engage. She would not give us the time of day. A social hostess! Another example -

this one from the top - the captain's cabin was just in front of ours and I would frequently see him in the corridor. It was painful for him to return a simple hello. Staff were regimented and inflexible. All decisions - no matter how minor - had to come from the top. There was no willingness or ability to even make small decisions to cater to guests on their own. For example, at the juice bar I asked for bananas, oranges and ice. The employee said he was only allowed to make what was on the preset menu despite all the ingredients and a blender sitting right in front of him. Sounds picky? Not really when every aspect of any small request is treated this way. The overall lack of flexibility and unfriendliness of the staff is unfortunate. Part of what makes cruising enjoyable is the staff. When the staff is miserable and stupidly rigid it impacts the overall experience. In summary - regarding the staff - they walked around like creatures from the Walking Dead and did not seem happy.

 

Unless you bought a drink package getting an honest drink is impossible on Oceania. All drinks are measured pours and quite stingy. Even the "doubles" are weak. A double top shelf (i.e. Kettle One or Grey Goose) martini costs north of $22 before tip is included. Bartenders have zero flexibility to think on their own and actually some are worried about their pours because they are "scrutinized" according to one. Remarkably, Celebrity - a mass market line - makes much more honest and better drinks without the measured pour.

 

Oceania shore excursions are consistently awful. I would not waste your money and instead visit sites such as tours by locals or Viator to arrange your own tours. Not only will you have a more customized experienced and skip out on painful bus journeys, but you will save a ton of money.

 

As an aside, I think Oceania would benefit from increasing their prices slightly and making drinks all-inclusive. They should get rid of O Life promotions and just make every sailing with included WiFi, beverages, gratuities and lastly not insult guests by requiring tokens for the laundry. Those inclusions coupled with some serious Ritz Carlton style customer service training would potentially put Oceania back in the running.

 

On all my previous Oceania cruises I booked future cruises. Not on this one. I am done with Oceania for the foreseeable future as I've tried other options and liked them better; hence the danger of trying other things as you might just like them better and change your spending habits. Sorry Oceania - what was once a fabulous product is just fair now when compared to the competition in the market.[/quote

 

Greetings from South Beach, Californiacruiseluvrs. We were longtime Oceania fans, and particularly enjoyed Riviera. However, in 2015 we sailed Insignia across the Panama Canal and didn't like the ship too much. In 2004 hen we sailed her the first time, we didn't rely on cell phnes, AppleWatches, headsets. Now, we do, and Insignia is severely lacking in this department. The food quality had declined, as well.

 

We are thinking of giving Oceania another chance. A significant birthday, aniversary is coming up, and both Regent and Oceania have itineraries that fit it nicely. Your review in going into the decision pile. Thank you very much for writing it.

Mary

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