4.25.05 Regatta Review

[Hapster22]

REVIEW - 4.25.05 – Oceania Regatta – Barcelona to Venice – 14 days

 

Well, here I sit at 3:00 in the morning after returning from the above cruise. This is what I usually do after a trip abroad – either write a few thoughts or manage digital pictures AND try to shake off the jet lag in the process.

 

Usually I write a full review but I think I’ll just go through a few subjects about Oceania and the cruise.

 

First of all this was a very enjoyable cruise – how can most of them not be?

 

 

 

EMBARKATION

 

 

 

Embarkation can either be smooth or not. We were literally the first passengers to arrive at the terminal in Barcelona at around 9:30a.m. We had 2 days in Barcelona and were able to see as much as we wanted there and then were anxious to begin our experience aboard Regatta so we checked out of our hotel and arrived early. Speaking of the Barcelona hotel, make your own reservations as opposed to booking something through the cruise line. We spoke to many passengers who had paid DEARLY for the precruise package and their accodmmodations weren’t much better than ours. Speaking of ours, when we finally arrived at our 3-star booked hotel, the Europark, they were overbooked. This initially sounded horrible after having just arrived from a 24-hour ordeal from the west coast, but since they were overbooked, the hotel clerk informed us that there was a 4-star hotel just up the street they would book us into at no extra charge and they’d also throw in comped breakfast for everyone and also the extra cab ride to get us over to our new hotel, the Nunez Urgell. By European standards, they were nice accommodations and the comped breakfast was fantastic. If you can’t deal with your own taxi transportation to the pier, then book your hotel with Oceania, but I highly recommend doing what we did!!!

 

 

 

Back to embarkation, once we arrived at the terminal, obviously the ship wasn’t ready for us yet, and if you had a “concierge level” booking you were free to board from 11:00 a.m. on. All others had to wait till 1:00 p.m. This really was annoying for the bulk of the passengers as everyone seems to be getting on from 11:00 but they had to wait till 1:00. Not a great way to start a vacation. This seems to be the running comment in these reviews. I think they should just let you board if you’re there ready to board. They can make up the extra frills for those paying for them once they’re starting the cruise. I mean there were a few people literally yelling at Bruno, the concierge, who was also doubling as the ‘greeter’ in the terminal.

 

 

 

Also one VERY ANNOYING thing was if you weren’t concierge level or an Owner’s suite occupant, you got a letter presented to you at embarkation that told you you could ONLY have one sitting at Polo Grill and one sitting at Toscana for the duration of the cruise. The letter the ‘concierge level’ got was TWO sittings at each, and the letter that the suite residents got was UNLIMITED sittings at the specialty restaurants. If I’m not mistaken, when perusing the brochure before I booked the cruise, I could have sworn that two sittings were standard for EVERYONE so that everyone could have an opportunity to eat there. Well, at 1:00 p.m., naturally you have to make the dash up to the restaurants to secure your sitting in the 2 specialty restaurants since everyone who got on starting at 11 was able to make theirs. So I made one reservation in each for our party of four and midway through the cruise, I demanded another sitting in Toscana. It was like pulling teeth, but I was successful. You just have to know what you want and you have to ask for it. We didn’t bother dining again in Polo Grill as it wasn’t that much better than the Dining Room, but Toscana had OUTSTANDING food.

 

 

 

THE CREW

 

 

 

Generally, the crew is outstanding. A few names and positions are worth mentioning here. Bruno Haag, the concierge, is outstandingly attentive. He is very patient – especially at embarkation (see above) – and will get you anything you need. We needed a cab called to the ship to take us to the Vaporetto station in Venice for a sunset cruise up the Grand Canal and he came through wonderfully. There were a few other things we required throughout the cruise and he was always very friendly and efficient and you can get whatever you want done and done right. The dining management is fantastic. Actually most of the dining staff and some other crew are frighteningly psychic, too. It’s almost as if there are microphones/cameras in the staterooms and public areas. They seem to know exactly what you need when you need it. Names worth mentioning: Anatoly, Terrace Café manager; Andreas, Grand Dining Room maitre’d (On the morning we docked in Civittavechia (Rome), obviously there were hundreds of passengers on excursions and we failed to receive our preordered continental breakfast in our stateroom before heading out on our own tour; Upon our return to the ship that day, Andreas had realized the oversight and provided a bottle of Chianti for us to enjoy with our dinner – very nice touch!!!); Florin, Grand Dining Room waiter (why this gentleman isn’t a maitre’d is beyond me. I’ve never come across a waiter so attentive and pleasant on any cruise in my life, and I’ve cruised about 12 times or so.) Florin serves table no. 27 (a well-placed table for 4 not too far from the windows; highly suggested) in the GDR and we always requested his table and only once did we not get seated in his area. The service that one night – while good – was not as good as at his table – once again, worth mentioning. I’ve read reviews from others complaining about having to wait for a table for the GDR. Only once did we have to wait and that was because we wanted a certain table. Other than that, we never waited more than a minute to be seated in the GDR.

 

 

 

THE FOOD

 

 

 

This is a little difficult to review. Having not sailed with Oceania but with Princess several times, Norwegian a couple times, RC a few times, and a couple of defunct lines many years ago, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The food is good – don’t get me wrong – and one of the nice things about Oceania is that they don’t ‘overfeed’ you in the dining room like Princess used to do. The food portions are adequate and there’s a big ‘fancy’ variety on the plates, but, some nights in the Dining Room just seemed boring is the best way to describe it, while other nights were outstanding. Also, a nice place to eat is the Tapas on the Terrace if you don’t want to go through a complete 4- or 5-course meal and want to be a bit more casual. Lots of tasty seafood and neat stuff up there. The Polo Grill was so-so and Toscana had an excellent menu and great food. The service was GREAT in Toscana on the first night we dined there but was noticeably not as good the second night in there. Continental Breakfast in-cabin was typical and always served promptly – other than the Rome hiccup. Room service had an extensive menu and came in handy one night while in Sorrento late. We hadn’t eaten since a lunch we had out on a tour and wanted to see Sorrento at night so we came back at around 10pm and had a great couple of dishes delivered to our stateroom. It’s kind of nice not to see the waste of those silly midnight buffets anymore. Needless to say, after 14 days of eating like this, it’s time to give the body a break!!

 

 

 

One more thing about food/drink. The $20.00 corkage fee for bringing in your own wine is absolutely CRIMINAL. I think $10.00 should be tops ($5.00 for that matter) to open a bottle of wine. The wine steward Nikolay, while a nice man, will try to snooker you into higher priced wines. Be wary of this and shut him down early in the cruise or you will have to take out a second mortgage to pay your bar bill. And he pours the wine briskly throughout dinner so before you know it, you’ve gone through 2 or 3 bottles real quickly. When we want our own wine, we pour it in our room in a glass and bring it to dinner. Call it cheap or whatever you want, but this stuff adds up in a 14-day cruise. We went to both wine tastings throughout the cruise and got to taste some fine wines at a reasonable price. Some people had final bills stuck in their doors that looked like thick novels on the last day of the cruise.

 

 

 

THE ITINERARY

 

 

 

My wife and I traveled with her parents on this cruise mainly to see Italy where my mother-in-law’s family is from originally and her dad’s family is also from Slovenia so the Dubrovnik port was also a highlight. We pretty much saw most of what there is to see in Italy on this cruise and had a few nice private shore excursions with Claudio Caponera (http://www.limoinrome.com) in both Florence and Rome and also Salvatore Lucibello (*****). Excellent tours!! Since Claudio was already booked by another family for Rome, he provided Carlo, his associate – just as good if not better qualified (and easier to understand; sorry Claudio) as Claudio to show us Roma. Excellent tours and I highly recommend them in these bigger and more popular cities. It’s the ONLY way to see everything. People say you can’t see Rome in a day; we saw everything we wanted to see in Rome in one day – and more. I also highly recommend adding the Vatican Museum to your Rome tour. We talked to some people who had booked the Florence/Pisa tour off the ship and all they saw of Pisa was the tower as it went by the window. They couldn’t even get out of the bus!!! Claudio dropped us off in Pisa and we could walk around for a half hour (all you need) and take that classic fixing-the-tower’s-lean picture that is so overdone.

 

 

 

Salvatore took us not only to Pompeii, Naples and along the Amalfi Drive, but he also took us to my mother-in-law’s fathers birthplace of Caserta just outside of Naples and was the perfect gentleman and waited for us to have lunch at a family-run restaurant frequented by the locals. It was great not to have any other tourists in town for this excursion and some great homemade pasta for lunch. Amalfi was a big disappointment to some passengers who were planning on this port in the itinerary. The captain decided to go to Naples instead of tendering in Amalfi the day after Sorrento. Naples isn’t the jewel city of Italy, believe me, but it turned out great for us because we could just walk right over to the ticket office in Naples and we picked up ferry tickets to the island of Capri. We wouldn’t have been able to do this had we tendered in Amalfi as we used up the entire day in Sorrento on a private tour. However, this changing of itineraries promotes absolutely ZERO goodwill on the part of Oceania. Many people planned this cruise BECAUSE of some of these ports and many were disappointed. The reason given was because of wind over at Amalfi and tender safety. However, friends of ours who went on Salvatore’s tour the next day from Naples confirmed the fact that there was absolutely NO wind over there that day, but another cruise ship tendering instead.

 

 

 

This concerns me for my future cruise plans with Oceania. I mean can they really be trusted with not changing future itineraries on the fly like that?

 

 

 

Anyway, we can’t complain too much about the weather, though. Our cruise experienced almost 100% perfect weather and the only time it rained was in the morning in Corfu. Other than that, there was absolutely no weather except great weather.

 

 

 

SHORE EXCURSIONS

 

 

 

Not much to say here. Like mentioned previously, we had 3 private tours and 5 off-ship tours. The off-ship tours were adequate as we didn’t do most of the full-day ones. I don’t like sitting in a bus for most of the day and we like to use half the port stay for an excursion and the other half to explore on our own. I would have liked to have more knowledgeable information for some of the ports. The so-called expert information guides that board the ship in the ports in the morning were mostly clueless when you asked them a question. In Venice for example, a little more explanation would have been nice on how to best use the Vaporettos for getting around the city. I mean once you figure them out, it’s a snap, but it would have saved some time. Also in Venice they didn’t dock where they promised they would dock so it cost more to get to Piazza San Marco than it normally would have. They claimed that the dock was damaged, but it looked like a vessel was docked alongside San Basilio anyway as we passed it to head to the Stazione Maritima.

 

 

 

Anyway, time to get back to bed to bank that long-lost sleep from yesterday. Enjoy your cruises……

 

 

 

And Catherine, Elaine, Tatyana, Bob, Nancy, and Bill and others I’ve forgotten to mention, it was a fun coupla weeks!!!

 

 

 

Harry, Karla, Yolanda, John

[meow!]

Thank you so much for such an informative and revealing review. We had been on that exact itinerary in April last year, and it is a pleasure to read on others' experience, account and insight, a good refreshment of our own memories as well. Besides, this is the kind of report that deserves attention form Oceania's management.

 

By the way, it is interesting to know that Oceania has now "practised" such "stratification" between the categories which was not noticed when we cruised. So perhaps paying the premium for concierge service has become in a sense a "need". As I have commented eight months ago, when the "concierge service" was introduced, that it would not be possible to give "priority" to the majority of the ship (there are more cabins in A and above than in B and below). By definition, priority is special treatment you give to a select minority. When the majority gets "priority", it actually means that the remaining minority gets only what remains!

[digby]

Sounds like the Concierge performs some of the same services that the Butler did for the suites. Do the people in the suites get to use both?

[PK227]

We were on the same cruise and I basically agree....except....I liked Polo a lot. One big complaint, however, is that unless you take one of their tours....Oceania does not provide any shuttles while in port. They also don't tell you the temperature outside. I also agree that the menu in the dining room was odd. We often ate in the Tapas Buffet (which is also where the Captain dines). The wine Stewards in every dining room were pushing people to purchase bottles of wine instead of wine by the glass to the point of being annoying. Don't know what that was all about. We had a group of 14 on this trip, however, and there were no serious complaints about anything from anybody. A standing ovation for Oceania. Our first Oceania cruise and I would recommend it to anybody who enjoys stopping at a lot of interesting ports.

[Hapster22]

Were we on the same cruise???

 

To their credit, Oceania DID have a shuttle to/from the ship in Venice. And having it return passengers to the ship from Piazzale Roma -- a good kilometer or so away -- was a nice touch. However, it would have been nice to have the shuttle run past 7:30 p.m. I mean sunset wasn't till 8:30 p.m. I'll bet we were some -- if not the only -- passengers to cruise down the beautifully lit Grand Canal after the sun went down, but it was like pulling teeth to get a cab to come to the end of the pier. Three cheers for Bruno for pressing the issue on our behalf on that one. They also had a shuttle I believe in Sorrento taking people to the plaza at the top of the hill instead of climbing all the steps -- which we did, anyway. All that food MUST be worked off somehow.

 

Oceania ALSO had a shuttle for passengers from the ship to the port terminal in Corfu, Greece-dock. One can't expect a cruise line to have a shuttle take you any further than the terminal if the ship is docked some distance away.

 

Just out of curiosity, where would you have wanted to have a shuttle at other ports, anyway? The only other ports we docked at were Naples (no shuttle needed), Livorno-dock and Civittavechia(Rome)-dock -- (tour-intensive ports; i.e., if you didn't have a private or ship tour at either of these ports, you missed the whole reason for the port); Monaco-tender(ok, that one could have used one -- however, where really could it have taken you anyway? Bonifacio, Corsica-tender: the tender pier was maybe a 5-minute walk to the quaint little port area.

 

That's about it and in my opinion, there wasn't any lacking of transportation when needed.

[Petoonya]

Very much enjoyed your review Hapster, almost as much as introducing myself as Petuniafish at the party!

 

In acute withdrawal too from that glorious cruise- we enjoyed every moment...the dining, the days in port, the sea days, la dolce vita. The one thing I wanted to add about the change of itinerary and dropping Amalfi for that hellhole Naples, is the story we heard from several crew members be it true or not.

 

The current off the coast was running in such a way as to create 'dangerous conditions for the tenders' according to the crew. They said that the captain had decided not to risk potential damage to the ship or injury to passengers by proceeding to Amalfi. It sounded plausible. I can't imagine that he would choose Naples over Amalfi given the choice- it had to be a safety factor. But then again who knows for sure. I have visited Amalfi once before at a time when a small cruise ship that was expecting to dock offshore at Amalfi wasn't able to do so- it had to tie up in Sorrento instead because of rough seas.

 

I was out by the pool on the last day of the cruise and a woman walked by and said "I think you have had the best time of anyone on this cruise. I never see you when you are not smiling." It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. But it was true. I never did stop smiling those 14 days.

 

Thanks Hapster- that was a beautiful review!

[wack001]

Can someone please tell me about the night life on board, please go into detail, my wife loves to dance and I enjoy singing(Karokee) is anything offered,

Thanks

[Hapster22]

Night life on board isn't like the night life on board on most cruises we've ever been on. Oceania doesn't concentrate on evening entertainment much. They had a live nightly show about every 3rd night or so, some singing/dancing type shows or a magician/wife team, and also some comedy guy with I believe a violin. Also some of the singers also doubled as cruise director crew. The other nights in the lounge a movie was shown -- movies are also played all week long on your in-cabin TV system.

 

To tell you the truth, since ours was a 14-day cruise with only 2 sea days, we were pretty damn tired after touring all day and just basically hit the rack after dinner, a cognac, and 10 bucks into the slot machine. The port-intensive cruises can wipe you out early. We just simply didn't have much energy to go to a show. I believe they did have karaoke one night up in the Horizons lounge, but I only remember it from seeing it in the daily Currents. Didn't attend personally.