Impressions of our first Oceania cruise

[WAshgirl]

Hi yall! I posted a review of Riviera in the review section of this website. In a nutshell, we enjoyed the cruise very much! Highs were the amazing itinerary, beautiful ship and amazing crew! It wasn’t a perfect trip, but it was close! The only thing we would probably do differently next time is to go with independent tour operators versus the cruise sponsored excursions. We felt a more personalized smaller group experience would have suited us better. All in all, we loved Oceania and plan to take another cruise in 2025. I am happy to answer any questions. 

[halfapair]

Hi @WAshgirl - I am also in WA...we might be neighbors🙂

 

I'm glad to hear you enjoyed your cruise. We've cruised with O twice, and booked our next cruise with them while onboard the Insignia. Some of our best experiences have been through private operators for shore excursions. Just as long as they get you back to the ship on time!

[GeezerCouple]

8 hours ago, WAshgirl said:

Hi yall! I posted a review of Riviera in the review section of this website. In a nutshell, we enjoyed the cruise very much! Highs were the amazing itinerary, beautiful ship and amazing crew! It wasn’t a perfect trip, but it was close! The only thing we would probably do differently next time is to go with independent tour operators versus the cruise sponsored excursions. We felt a more personalized smaller group experience would have suited us better. All in all, we loved Oceania and plan to take another cruise in 2025. I am happy to answer any questions. 

 

Glad you liked the cruise so much!

We fell in love with Oceania almost immediately on our first cruise on the Riviera.  (We do still go on other lines, due to specific itineraries, but we feel "at home" on the Riviera.  That particular ship has a lot that appeals to us!)

 

For those smaller, independent tours, do make sure to sign up for the Roll Call for your specific cruise, here in CC.  That's where we've organized a few private tours and asked if others wanted to join us.  For example, we charted a big catamaran, and instead of having something like 20-24 (not sure what the max is for "public" tours), we had something like 10 or 12.  We did that again another time, with about the same number.

So you know, we just contacted one of the tour operators that "looked good", asked a bunch of questions, and then asked about chartering the entire afternoon (or full day).  In one case it was with a tour operator we had used a few times before, after learning about them here on CC some years ago.

 

Or you can just find your own "private" tour the same way, without including others.  We've done that, too, and had excursions with just the two of us.  That way, we can plan *our* itinerary, and also *our* speed (and occasional rests), and also spend more time at A and less time at B if we prefer that, etc.  Just handle that in advance with the tour operator by email.

 

GC

[Classiccruiser777]

O shore excursions are very expensive.

 

[mauibabes]

Classic,

I guess I am used to the Oceania excursion pricing and do not find it excessive when taken in total. We book a combination of Private and Oceania tours, we take the O Life Free Excursion option so we can book tours up to $199 and pay the equivalent of $100 for them, and we book enough tours to qualify for the YW 25% discount. 
On a Southampton to Reykjavik to NYC trip I think we got our average cost per excursion down to $77 per tour and we did about 14 tours and some were 5-7 hours and none shorter than 4.
 

Yes, on the surface they do seem pricy but that is an ala carte price so you have to do some work to make your excursion experience more cost effective. We have found since resuming sailing post Covid, tours are a challenge for the Operators and Oceania and inflation has driven up touring a lot. I know we complain a LOT about gas prices but we have yet to be in a country that has gas prices cheaper than we do.   Many tours have been cancelled or become non existent.  Guides have left the business and countries have levied new requirements on the existing companies. Gee, does this sound familiar to jobs in the USA and the Government?  
 

Enjoy your travels, however you take them.

Mauibabes

[WAshgirl]

We did not have an issue with the price of the Oceania excursions. We just did not feel they are our style for having only a limited time at each port. There were several times that our excursions were shortened by an hour or more or changed by Oceania with very short notice. We just did not feel that the way they are organized worked well for us. Once our cruise was under way, we found out that our Amalfi/Positano excursion would NOT in fact go to Positano at all due to an issue with the pier. This was a huge disappointment. Had we known this, we would not have booked that excursion as the substitute to Cetera was in a word, LAME. Next time, we will take the shipboard credit in lieu of Oceania excursions. Overall, we loved our trip and for this reason, we will sail with Oceania again.

[pinotlover]

We have no Oceania shore tours booked on our upcoming Vista cruise. All private tours . Our private tours from the Marina, in March, were both far superior in content and saved us hundreds of dollars compared to O tours. We primarily use O tours when other options don’t exist. Use your Roll Call, you’ll be richly rewarded.

Edited May 5, 2023 by pinotlover

[Woofa]

Glad you had a great cruise.

But next time why not think of skipping olife completely.  If you don't take the excursions and don't plan to drink, shipboard credit has nothing to offer as it is just you giving O your money to hold onto and if by chance you don't use it all, you lose the remainder.

Remember, O confuses the issue but Olife has nothing to do with flights or the internet.  Cruise only and you can keep the flights or remove that as well and lower your fare by DIY air.  See what works better for you and each cruise can change what makes the most sense.

 

[WAshgirl]

2 minutes ago, Woofa said:

Glad you had a great cruise.

But next time why not think of skipping olife completely.  If you don't take the excursions and don't plan to drink, shipboard credit has nothing to offer as it is just you giving O your money to hold onto and if by chance you don't use it all, you lose the remainder.

Remember, O confuses the issue but Olife has nothing to do with flights or the internet.  Cruise only and you can keep the flights or remove that as well and lower your fare by DIY air.  See what works better for you and each cruise can change what makes the most sense.

 

Yes, we definitely need to look at what will give us the best value. We are waiting for more itineraries to be be released for 2025. For the cruise we took last month, we booked our own airfare, got 3 excursions, and a bit of OBC, which we easily spent. Looking forward to seeing what kind of pricing we will get for 2025. Love our travel agent who we will use again for 2025 booking. 

[halfapair]

We do a combination of shore excursions. For instance, we will be on the Vista in 2024, Haifa, Israel to Istanbul. It's an 18 day cruise, with a port every day. Some ports are more important to us than others. We got an OLife package that includes 10 shore excursions (5 for each of us).

 

We plan to use the included shore excursions at the ports that are "less important" to us. We'll stop twice in Kusadasi/Ephesus which is very important to me, so we'll do private excursions there both times. But a stop like Marmaris is less important, so we'll use our OLife excursions there.

 

We did a Baltic cruise back in 2018 which stopped for two nights (3 days of sightseeing) in St. Petersburg, Russia. I hired a private guide & driver there, and we saw every top sight in SP. In a few ports we did our own thing - no guide (Estonia, Helsinki, Gdansk, Copenhagen), then in some ports we did Oceania excursions.