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First Oceania Cruise


cruzzzinma
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We boarded Riviera in Venice, just after the floods, on Nov 1 and disembarked in Miami earlier this week. 

 

We are long time Celebrity cruisers and have done cruises on Viking and Royal Caribbean. We are looking for a new home and booked 26 days on the Riviera.

 

We’ve cruised in suites on Celebrity for the past three years. Celebrity does suites well with a suite lounge, suite dining room, butlers, and larger cabins. We liked the larger cabins and having more personal space without crowds. At that price point, moving to Oceania was easy.

 

We booked a next to the bottom of the line verandah (B3) on the Riviera with and extended verandah (wahoo!) The negative on verandahs was that we couldn’t order a hot breakfast from room service. Although, no matter what I ordered, I never received a hot breakfast from room service on any other line... 

 

How was our experience on Riviera? Really, really good!

 

Riviera is beautiful. Colors are subtle and calming, there is no bang-bang music, the baristas make wonderful espresso, shows and casinos are not important to us, and the food was very good. I didn’t miss the butler, suite lounge, or suite dining room. We are not good butler users and we felt like the ship wasn’t crowded (as in there is NO PLACE TO SIT ANYWHERE) so suite access was not as important.

 

The service was very good all over the ship, although I would say the same about all other lines sailed on. I thought there were too many announcements. We were used to one per day on Celebrity. The only time I heard an extra announcement on Celebrity when the Captain made the decision to miss a port because of weather.

 

The passengers were very nice, although there was some bad buffet behavior and the chair hogs were ever-present. Long-time Oceania cruisers always wanted to know what we thought and were always willing to share seating in Martinis. Nothing ever felt over-crowded to us. Room service was fast with coffee in the morning and honored our requests for extra large juices.

 

We didn’t do any Oceania excursions. We booked all our excursions with people on our roll call. Some excursions were amazing and some were good. We learned a lot about ourselves and excursions on this trip - we like small and we like to have a guide. We met a lot of people from our roll call and enjoyed all of them. We toured with them, had dinner with some of them, and drinks with others. 

 

Daytime sea-day activities were similar to other lines. Trivia, pool games, speakers (one good, one really bad), and spa sponsored events designed to sell things.

 

The bathrooms were larger than verandahs on other cruise lines we’ve sailed. The bathroom had a small shower with a fantastic shower head and a tub that provided a larger shower space without the amazing shower head. I used the tub to shower when I need to rinse hand washed clothes.

 

Loved, loved the ability to do self-laundry. Some people hate it. We travel with 22 inch carry-ons and don’t pack as much as others so self-laundry is a plus. I kinda missed our Celebrity laundry benefits.

 

We liked the country club casual dress without chic, formal, and black tie nights. Unfortunately, we can also say the medical center was really, really good, but that is a story for another day.

 

We did suffer from ship-lag with three consecutive days of time changes on the transatlantic leg. Seriously, why would anyone think that is a good idea over eight sea days??? It was a tough time in Baristas on those days...

 

Internet was so-so. Maybe not as good as other lines but not a lot worse.

 

We opted for the OLife Beverage Package and upgraded onboard to the prestige package. I am not sure it was worth it because all the non alcoholic beverages were free. It did make it easy.

 

Would we do it again? Not the way we did it this time. We did a b2b - 13 day Med cruise and a 13 day transatlantic. There were 37 port days on the 13 day Med leg - too many for us!!!!

 

Did we book a future cruise? Yep! Unfortunately not till 2020 because we are booked for next year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Thanks for your report. You tend to have a similar outlook toward cruising as my wife and I do. 

 

I am amazed though that Oceania was able to fit in 37 port days on a 13 day trip. Maybe they're making up for those ports they've missed on other itineraries. 🤣

 

 

Edited by ORV
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It's good to read your report on the Riviera, as we are "newbies" to Oceania, with two cruises on two ships in Jan./ Feb.   We will sail on Riviera, visiting the Caribbean, (Cuba), and will sail first on Nautica, in South Africa.  Most of our cruises have been on HAL, so we are looking forward to these new experiences.  

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It just seemed like 37 ports... we were really tired because we tried to do all of them. I think there were 11 ports over 13 days. We had been to a few but not most. We had an overnight in Venice and one sea day.

 

Obviously, I have not figured out the quote thing!

Edited by cruzzzinma
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8 hours ago, bobpatj said:

It's good to read your report on the Riviera, as we are "newbies" to Oceania, with two cruises on two ships in Jan./ Feb.  

 

I think you will love it! We did.

 

If you plan to do your own laundry, bring dryer sheets...

 

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We were on the same trip out of Venice (disembarked in Barcelona) and like you were first time Oceania. We booked a PH1. Also like you could not find fault with Riviera and the crew. The ship is beautiful, tastefully decorated and very stylish. The crew were amazing and we can only sing their praises in regards to friendliness and service from the butler to housekeeping to food & beverage staff, even the maintenance team painting around the ship were always pleasant and chatty.

I'm glad you mentioned some of the behaviour at the buffet. We found a lot of very rude and arrogant people in here, pushing in front of you, speaking over the top of you when you were been served and frankly extremely rude the way they treated and spoke to the friendly staff serving them food. In fact it put us off eating in there several times !! 

Overall I can't fault our first Oceania. 

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Thanks for the review. We go on our first Oceania cruise next April. We've done 20+ cruises on the "mainstream" lines, but was wondering how you compared Oceania with Viking? We haven't been on Viking either, as they fill fast, but its on our to try list.

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5 hours ago, ano said:

Thanks for the review. We go on our first Oceania cruise next April. We've done 20+ cruises on the "mainstream" lines, but was wondering how you compared Oceania with Viking? We haven't been on Viking either, as they fill fast, but its on our to try list.

We love Viking, too. They have fantastic bathrooms in the veranda cabins and the showers are huge. Storage is more limited in the Viking verandahs. Service is about the same. Food is close, but, I think better on Oceania. Wine, beer, and soda are included at lunch and dinner time. They have free laundries on each deck. There are no butlers on Viking. Viking includes an excursion in each port but they are often “big bus” drive-by tours.

 

We are booked on the Viking Sky in Mar 2019. Here is my review on our first Viking Cruise: 

 

 

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18 hours ago, ano said:

Thanks for the review. We go on our first Oceania cruise next April. We've done 20+ cruises on the "mainstream" lines, but was wondering how you compared Oceania with Viking? We haven't been on Viking either, as they fill fast, but its on our to try list.

 

After 13 cruises on Oceania we tried and LOVED Crystal and Viking. We thought we would miss having a butler on Viking but our two room attendants more than made up for any butler. Suites are large modern and very very comfortable and  Bathrooms are beyond excellent. We ate mainly in the two specialties and the World Cafe . The main dining room was great for breakfast and longer meals as well. The food was very close to what we have had on Oceania which we found slipping some on our last cruise with them.

 

Free tours in each port are included and from what we heard varied from very good to fair. We do not take bus tours so cannot comment.

 

We definitely highly recommend both Crystal and Viking as very good alternatives to Oceania.Both lines have more frequent and excellent speakers and activities and very fine classical musicians.

 

The main selling point for Viking was the amazing staff and very friendly fellow passengers. We are booked again on both lines in 2019-2020 .

Edited by orchestrapal
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24 minutes ago, orchestrapal said:

 

 

 

Free tours in each port are included and from what we heard varied from very good to fair. We do not take bus tours so cannot comment.

 

 

This is my hangup with Viking.

We don't do bus tours either...so I have a mental block paying for them because I see them by no means as 'free'.

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19 minutes ago, Shawnino said:

 

This is my hangup with Viking.

We don't do bus tours either...so I have a mental block paying for them because I see them by no means as 'free'.

 

same goes  for wine with lunch & dinner

we rarely drink  at lunch or I would be flat on my face the rest of the day 😉

 

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3 hours ago, DeeniEncinitas said:

Thank you for the post too! Looking forward to our first cruise on Riviera doing a TA in 2020. 

Denise😊

Hello, Denise. We are also sailing on the Riviera TA in 2020, and posting on the Roll Cal. You are right to look forward to .it. We did the TA in the other direction on Riviera, as serious fans of TAs. Ending in Rome is a plus.

Mary

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On 12/4/2018 at 10:08 AM, Shawnino said:

 

This is my hangup with Viking.

We don't do bus tours either...so I have a mental block paying for them because I see them by no means as 'free'.


Right.

 

They aren't "free".  They are "included in the cruise price", without any additional charge.

 

Same for the "free" (i.e., "included") excursions.

 

IF a cruise line was willing to take away these "free" offers/amenities/"included" features, but was nevertheless willing to make the *same* profit, the prices would be lower.

(I'm obviously assuming that the liquor distributors and the excursion vendors aren't offering their goods/services as some sort of semi-permanent loss leader!)


GC

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For those not in the industry, they can’t fathom the prices the Ocean liner companies pay for large bulk rates of wines and beer negotiated directly from the wineries or breweries, not intermediate third parties. Over the entire demographics of a ship, on a ten day cruise, if all alcoholic beverages were pulled from their cruise price, the savings might be $20. 

 

You might gasp gasp at that, but those that do really have no clue of often non taxed large bulk rate spirits pricing. 

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