Just back from Oasis - disappointed this time

[CruisingNole]

Did you witness this "cutting"?

 

 

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Not firsthand, but the high just wasn't the same.

[Merion_Mom]

Did you witness this "cutting"?

 

 

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Quoted the wrong post. My apologies.

 

 

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[Merion_Mom]

They actually cut the real eggs with powdered eggs for the scrambled eggs.

 

 

 

Did you witness this "cutting"?

 

 

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[CruisingNole]

Did you witness this "cutting"?

 

 

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It was a tongue in cheek joke. :D

[starrcards]

Just walked off the Oasis three hours ago and everything was fine. Had a wonderful cruise!

 

 

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Us too! Only complaint was lackadaisical service in MDR Food was fine but ask for savory bites or escargots a night they are not on the menu, prepare for the firing squad.

[time4u2go]

When a ship has 6,000 people on it, and (after a quick skim of this thread) at most 5 people from various sailing dates have major issues, I do consider that fraction of a percentage of passengers to be merely a handful.

 

In no way am I trying to discredit what you claimed happened on your sailing, it all sounds very plausible. The point I was trying to make is that considering rescheduling an entire cruise based on one thread from a message board is a little extreme.

 

From what I have noticed, as a reader, is that many recent complaints seem to be about Royal cutbacks across the board. A lot of these "incidents" don't appear to be isolated by ship.

It's completely bogus to presume how many people have had major issues with a ship based on how many people have posted complaints on this thread. For starters, it's a small percentage of cruisers that even know about Cruise Critic. Of those that know about Cruise Critic, only some of them ever post anything. Of those that ever post anything, only some of them would go to the trouble of posting their complaints. Of those, only some of them would post to this thread.

[CruisingNole]

It's completely bogus to presume how many people have had major issues with a ship based on how many people have posted complaints on this thread. For starters, it's a small percentage of cruisers that even know about Cruise Critic. Of those that know about Cruise Critic, only some of them ever post anything. Of those that ever post anything, only some of them would go to the trouble of posting their complaints. Of those, only some of them would post to this thread.

 

Using that logic, that means pretty much every review for any ship on this website should be taken with a grain of salt because it's such a small sample.

 

I don't disagree.

[CRUISEFAN0001]

I think you need to replace your cheerleader pom-poms, the're getting a bit warn out

How sad that naysayers have to find fault in everything, criticize for the sake of hearing their own noise, and then insult those who simply don't buy into their phony fodder. Such is life...habitual excessive complaining is in some folks DNA.

[dadilus]

We just got off the Oasis yesterday, our room was 8172 and the steward's name was Julius. He also covered room 8170. Not sure if they change stewards from week to week, but he was excellent. Any extra requests we had were always fulfilled and the room was always made up nicely. We had no problems and did tip him extra. As for towel animals - we saw 5 in the 7 days. :):D

Maybe someone at RC listened! Julius was nice enough, Just not very motivated. We tipped him after the first week and things did improve. I got the impression that the floor managers were on his case a lot!

[nfall2010]

This was our first cruise on an Oasis class ship - we were on 2/25/18 sailing. We had been happy with RCI cruises in the past (all on Brilliance of the Seas) but wanted to try the big ship experience. We think maybe we are not mega ship cruisers. But, I will echo some of the points the original poster made about their experience a couple weeks before ours.

 

Although we had read things like "although it's a big ship, you never know there are over 5000 passengers" that was not our experience. We knew it all the time. I will say that the worst lines for us were getting through security on embarkation day.

 

Although we were fortunate enough to have reservations for all of the shows onboard (we booked our reservations on Cruise Planner basically on the day that they opened reservations for our sailing - 90-120 days ahead) we still arrived at every venue at least 45-60 minutes ahead of time, to ensure that we got (good) seats.

 

In general, we usually like the Solarium (adults only) pool area, but we found all of the pool areas on this ship a bit weird - no large pool anywhere - lots of smaller pools. Didn't even seem like a pool in the Solarium, but it was - just very small. And, because we didn't get up to the Solarium at the crack of dawn, we were never able to have 2 chairs together there. It always seemed crowded to me.

 

On the second formal night, although we had booked on Cruise Planner a reservation for My Time Dining, when we went the previous day to the MDR on 3 to confirm the reservation time, the host suggested that they might be very busy on formal night, and we might prefer to eat in the Solarium Bistro that night for dinner - he said they would have lobster tail and prime rib (the featured items). We had not eaten there, and it didn't matter to us, so we said fine. As it turned out that evening, in the Solarium Bistro, they have sort of a Greek inspired menu, and it is also serve yourself buffet for apps, sides, and desserts. We didn't know this ahead of time. Yes, in addition to the standard Bistro menu, for formal night we could order either prime rib or lobster tail or both, but as it turned out, the lobster tail was barely warm by the time it got to us (not sure where it was prepared, upstairs or in MDR kitchens), and my lobster tail was tough. The salmon I ordered to go with it from the Bistro menu was so dry and tasteless that I didn't eat it. I didn't even see a dessert I was interested in trying up there, so we skipped dessert. We were really disappointed with our formal night dinner up there, and would not recommend it to others, unless you really like the Solarium Bistro dinner menu and format.

 

In general, we felt at all of the meals in the MDR, but especially at dinner, it seemed like the waitstaff were always rushing - they must be understaffed, although there were so many servers, just too many guests, I guess. As soon as someone left their table, they were there in an instant to reset the table for the next guests to be seated. And, I really don't like the idea of the waiter taking your full dinner order (app, entree, and dessert) all at the beginning of the meal. Again, that seems like a subtle way to rush you through your meal.

 

We ate at Giovanni's the first night (First Night Done Right deal) and the grilled shrimp that were advertised by the server as the size of prawns were really medium sized shrimp and so unsatisfactory that my husband ended up ordering a steak after he ate the 5 or so shrimp - it was more like an app size entree! I requested my steak be medium well, but it was more like well done. But, I actually liked the cut/preparation of that steak better than the steak we had later in the cruise in Chops. BUT, I will say that the service and food quality in Chops was the best on the whole ship. THAT was more like what we were used to on Brilliance. We were able to have some conversation with the server; the shrimp cocktail app really had shrimp the size of prawns - and tender! The steak there was also good, and the chocolate lava cake dessert was amazing. It was really an outstanding evening at Chops.

 

We did have a problem with the Old and New San Juan tour that we took in P.R. - we ended up leaving the tour early and walking around on our own, and got more out of it. In our case, when we went to the Shore Excursions desk the next day to discuss it, they were very fair in their treatment of the situation, and we were satisfied with their resolution for us.

 

We, too, did not receive our Meet & Mingle invite in our stateroom, so we missed that party. I later heard it wasn't much, but still didn't like that we were overlooked, as we had signed up months in advance.

 

Our stateroom attendant either had too many rooms to take care of, or just always seemed to get to our room last. In the past, on various cruises, it seemed to us like we could be out of the room just for a short time, and somehow the steward knew it, and had it all cleaned up by the time we returned. That never happened for us this time. It seemed more like the steward worked their way up one side of the hall, and back down the other side, in order, and we happened to be last on the list. Also, as the original poster mentioned, in the past, we've always had a rapport with our steward, and consequently have always left an additional cash gratuity for them at the end of the cruise. Not this time. The attendant got off on the wrong foot when we got to our room around 1:15 on embarkation day, and she wasn't done cleaning our room from the prior guests, and didn't look too happy about our arrival, either. When we asked for wine glasses, it seemed like it would be a problem, or just another thing they had to do, so they indicated we could order them ourselves from room service. On other cruises, an attendant would have fallen all over themselves to do that task - not recommended that the guest take care of it themselves. I did end up calling room service, and was on hold for 8 minutes before they picked up the phone...again, not a good start to the cruise on day 1.

 

My husband hit the nail on the head when he said he just didn't feel "pampered" on this ship - there's too many people for that. It felt to us more like fighting our way through Disney World crowds than being on a cruise...

 

To end on a positive note - we thought the entertainment and all of the shows onboard were excellent - even the comedians. We would highly recommend dinner at Chops Grille - especially if you can get it for free/reduced price (ours was a perk from our travel agent). AND, we found an excellent bartender in the Schooner Bar - ask for Franz. He will take good care of you!

[CruisingNole]

 

 

 

My husband hit the nail on the head when he said he just didn't feel "pampered" on this ship - there's too many people for that. It felt to us more like fighting our way through Disney World

 

 

I think folks need to keep in mind that RC is a budget cruiseline. They are on the same level as Carnival and NCL in terms of service and price. That being said, unless you're in a suite, it's a bit much to expect to be "pampered" at the price point charged on Oasis. That would be like expecting a hot towel on Southwest Airlines.

[nfall2010]

As I said, we have been on Brilliance of the Seas 3 times, and really enjoyed our cruises on there. We got to know both our dining staff and our cabin steward very well, and even had them more than once on different sailings (asked to sit in the same waiter's section on different cruises, etc.).

 

In my opinion, I think, for us, it was more about the size of the ship than the cruise line - there is a big difference between 1800 passengers and 5600 passengers, and I think that's what we were feeling.

 

Pampered is probably the wrong word choice - we felt more like a number on Oasis, vs. on Brilliance, we got to know and recognize the staff/crew, which we happen to like (the personal interaction/conversations).

 

I agree, on the Oasis, I think of it more as a "mass market" customer - but we didn't happen to feel that way on Brilliance - just our experience.