Review - Vista transatlantic cruise. 27/3 - 11/4

[Harters]

This was our third Oceania cruise and the first on Vista (previous ones on Marina and Nautica). It was also our first transatlantic and we were really looking forward to all those sea days – we knew it would be a much more relaxing holiday than O’s usual port intensive cruises.

 

We’d flown from our local airport to London, on the Sunday, staying overnight at Heathrow, then on to Miami the next day. We spent a couple of nights at Miami Beach. Flights and Miami hotel had been arranged by our cruise travel agency, meaning the whole deal gave us protection under consumer law as a “package holiday”, protecting us should the agency, Oceania or British Airways go bust. Unlikely in the latter two cases but good to know that we were covered.

 

Oceania had given us a check-in time of 13.30 at the cruise port. So, what to do between our hotel check-out of 11.00 and then? Well, we wondered about just turning up early and see what happened. The worst might be that we were denied entry to the terminal and had to hang about there. My partner asked for advice on an Oceania Facebook group and received the consistent reply that they would be no problem going early. So we did. Unfortunately, so did everyone else. We joined a long and slow moving queue but, in due course, we were on board and heading for the Terrace Café for lunch. It wasn’t that long till it was announced we could go to our cabin.

 

We were in 9063 – a A2 Concierge cabin. It’s a good size, well designed with a comfy, firm bed, enough storage space for the fortnight’s trip, decent shower cubicle, etc. We experienced none of the issues of noise from adjacent cabins that have been extensively mentioned on Cruise Critic (although we did hear of others who did have problems – so this is a real issue). In the latter part of the cruise, I developed a bad cough as, seemingly, did quite a number of other passengers. I can only hope the noise from that didn’t annoy the neighbours. I’m sorry if it did but there was nothing I could do about it. The cabin attendant kept the place spotless and was really helpful. In fact, “spotless” is a word you could generally use about the whole ship. As you walked about, there were always folk cleaning.

 

Thought and money has gone into the design of the public areas. There’s a considerable amount of artworks – wall hangings, sculpture, ceramics, etc. The mosaic “floral pictures” on the Terrace Café wall must have cost a small fortune in themselves.

 

As for the food, I suppose the first question must be is this “the finest cuisine at sea”. Well, with only Oceania experience to call on in recent decades, I’ve nothing to compare that marketing slogan against. But, I do know the food was pretty good and when you think that this is mass catering, probably better than “pretty good”. With North Americans representing about 1000 of the 1200 on board, it’s no surprise that the food is rightly geared to their tastes. A particular disappointment was that almost every dish where you expect the vibrancy from spices seemed dumbed down and generally quite bland. There was one negative of note and it applied in the Grand Dining Room and the specialities. And that was the amount of time we regularly sat there with menus in our hands, waiting for someone to take our order. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a land based restaurant and it really isn’t acceptable here. But, once your order is in the system, everyone is generally fine. The sommeliers (they are not really sommeliers in the usual sense of the word) are generally on the ball, regularly offering second and third pours. . Our booking was under the Simply More arrangements which got us included booze at lunch and dinner. This was nice, although I don’t drink alcohol and my partner only sparingly. I do enjoy the occasional alcohol free beer or wine, so was able to take advantage of this (although the alcohol free Merlot is very thin on flavour and I couldn’t really recommend it – better than nowt, I suppose.

 

Some brief comments on the various restaurant venues:-

 

Grand Dining Room – we ate here most nights. Always found something we wanted to eat and the food was good quality. We also had a few breakfasts and lunches. It was nice to be served a “proper” breakfast and the lunchtime French bistro classics were also good.

 

Terrace Café - good for breakfast and lunch. Lots of choice. Nice to sit on the open terrace on good weather days. We had dinner once when the buffet was given over to a “Spanish Market”menu. , which was excellent, both in the variety of choice and the use of traditional flavours. I felt myself whisked back to Mallorca with the sobrasada on toast and suckling pig. 

 

Waves – went for lunch a few times. Good sandwiches. In the evening, it becomes a pizzeria. We went once – pizza was fine. Think good quality supermarket pizza, rather than it being as good as your favourite place at home.

 

Aquamar Kitchen – we went for lunch a couple of times. This is the ship’s “healthy option”, which is probably why we weren’t keen. Nice enough salads, poke bowls and the like. Small portions – we went to Baristas afterwards for coffee and got pastries from the Bakery, as still hungry..

 

As for the four specialities, we enjoyed the variety. It’s a plus point for O’s larger ships, over the two on the smaller ships. We liked Ember. The food was excellent but it was the space that really made it. It’s a very modern design and the open kitchen is always going to add excitement to a restaurant. Polo Grill and Toscana both did their jobs well – plenty of choice on the menus and cooking is to a high standard. Red Ginger, however, was a disappointment, as it had been on our Marina cruise. For “Asian Fusion”, read dumbed down food. We complained about one dish (the only complaint about anything on board). That was the beef rendang and were told it was prepared and flavoured as it should be. Happens to be a dish we know well and this was just wrong on several levels. But, that aside, the specialities were fine and made for a good balance with the other options. None would meet our “Holiday Restaurant” test – if it was a restaurant at home, would we become regulars. Polo and Toscana are the best two but neither are as good as the steakhouse and Italian that we go to regularly.

 

 

Baristas is good for daytime coffee. My partner, who is a tea drinker, says it’s the only place on board where the water is hot enough to make a proper cup of tea (I’m sure she could do a full ten minute rant about the tea in Horizons at afternoon tea time). . The Bakery attached to the space is excellent for the likes of quiche, beignets and other sweet treats. In the evening, it becomes Baristas Aperitivo – a lovely bright cocktail venue that seems to be ignored by the vast majority of passengers. Nope, I don’t understand why. Not least as Martinis is so cold that we found it actively unpleasant to sit there.

 

No-one’s going on an Oceania cruise for the entertainment. I mean, it’s OK but not really better than OK. It’s a larger performance company than on Nautica but, truth be told, we found the quality of performance to be not as good. On other nights, there were “guest performers”. Danny Buckler did a good comedy magic routine. Vocalist Nik Page was OK, if a bit shouty. We’d seen Duo Esencias on Nautica last year. Seeing them once was enough. We didn’t go to the shows after Day 9.

And, yes, comments by others about the design of the Vista Lounge are all true. It’s easy to find your view of the stage blocked by someone in the row in front. So you do regularly see folk shuffling around to new seats.

 

With regard to excursions, on our previous cruises we’ve always taken the “free” excursion perk, as consistently recommended on the Cruise Critic forum. We find that the Simply More excursion credit suits us better in that we can spend it on any available trip, rather than being tied to the very basic ones. For example, we booked a more costly gastronomic excursion in Malaga as that part of Andalucia is very well known to us from previous land based holidays. So, with a mix of ports where we planned to do our own thing and three where we’d booked ships excursions, we were looking forward to them. Unfortunately, the three ship’s excursions were all at the end of the cruise. By that time, I’d picked up the bug I mentioned earlier and my COPD had flared up, so we cancelled two of them. And, I’d have to say, the one we did, in Monaco, wasn’t that great. You did learn a bit about the history but you only get to see three major sites – the Cathedral, Prince’s Palace and the Casino. There’s no  feeling of even scratching the surface of Monaco. I think we’d have done better buying a ticket for the hop on, hop off bus and doing our own thing. But we did spot someone famous (or, more accurately, infamous). As we were waiting for the bus back to the ship, Sir Philip Green walked past.

 

So, that’s about it.. We had a really nice time. So nice, that we’ve booked a cruise for next year (same cabin – so fingers crossed the lack of noise issues wasn’t just down to very quiet neighbours). I think Oceania has probably made a good decision in making the pricing more inclusive – the change in excursions and drinks with meals. And, for the next cruise, gratuities will be included in the headline cruise price for British (and other European?) customers, as it has been for the Australia and New Zealand market for some time. It’s in response to O’s discussions with the UK cruise travel agent industry which, I understand, has called for it. Oh, yes – we’ll manage our port days better, treating some as sea days, so we finish our cruise properly rested, rather than having rushed around and feeling the need for another holiday to recuperate.

[Hambagahle]

Thank you for this informative review.  

May I ask a question?  For your flight(s) to MIA - did Regent UK arrange those or did you do them yourself.  Getting a one way trans-Atlantic flight is very very expensive (we are Swiss) and although we have been faithful clients of an excellent agency in the US for years they cannot do our flights.  We love TA cruises...and would like to do another before we leave the planet but the flight cost is very very expensive.

[Harters]

Flights were arranged by our UK travel agency. It included Manchester-Heathrow, Heathrow-Miami, Rome-Manchester. I don't know the individual pricing as it was all rolled up with the cruise price and other ancilliaries. I tried to work it out, knowing how much the headline price of the cruise was, and could only conclude the TA had access to British Airways prices that I couldnt match on BA's website. FWIW, the best transatlantic price I could find was with Aer Lingus via Dublin. It would have worked out slightly cheaper than the TAs offer but it was more convenient to keep everything in one place. 

[Techno123]

@Harters. We find that living 'up north' definitely restricts our access to the cruise included flights. On the August cruise, flying into Nice and out of Athens from Manchester we would need to fly via Amsterdam or Paris with all the possibilities of our luggage not joining us. As it's Europe we've done our own thing with Sleazy and booked private transfers but, as you mentioned, we lose the abta bonding.

[Harters]

Yeah, Sleazy or Ryanair will get you to most European destinations from Manc. 

[Techno123]

13 hours ago, Harters said:

Yeah, Sleazy or Ryanair will get you to most European destinations from Manc. 

I've never yet risked Ryanair 😂😂

[Harters]

We've only used Ryanair once. It was fine and ontime. There's also Jet2 which was our flight home last Thursday from Rome. 

[Steelydad2021]

21 hours ago, Harters said:

This was our third Oceania cruise and the first on Vista (previous ones on Marina and Nautica). It was also our first transatlantic and we were really looking forward to all those sea days – we knew it would be a much more relaxing holiday than O’s usual port intensive cruises.

 

We’d flown from our local airport to London, on the Sunday, staying overnight at Heathrow, then on to Miami the next day. We spent a couple of nights at Miami Beach. Flights and Miami hotel had been arranged by our cruise travel agency, meaning the whole deal gave us protection under consumer law as a “package holiday”, protecting us should the agency, Oceania or British Airways go bust. Unlikely in the latter two cases but good to know that we were covered.

 

Oceania had given us a check-in time of 13.30 at the cruise port. So, what to do between our hotel check-out of 11.00 and then? Well, we wondered about just turning up early and see what happened. The worst might be that we were denied entry to the terminal and had to hang about there. My partner asked for advice on an Oceania Facebook group and received the consistent reply that they would be no problem going early. So we did. Unfortunately, so did everyone else. We joined a long and slow moving queue but, in due course, we were on board and heading for the Terrace Café for lunch. It wasn’t that long till it was announced we could go to our cabin.

 

We were in 9063 – a A2 Concierge cabin. It’s a good size, well designed with a comfy, firm bed, enough storage space for the fortnight’s trip, decent shower cubicle, etc. We experienced none of the issues of noise from adjacent cabins that have been extensively mentioned on Cruise Critic (although we did hear of others who did have problems – so this is a real issue). In the latter part of the cruise, I developed a bad cough as, seemingly, did quite a number of other passengers. I can only hope the noise from that didn’t annoy the neighbours. I’m sorry if it did but there was nothing I could do about it. The cabin attendant kept the place spotless and was really helpful. In fact, “spotless” is a word you could generally use about the whole ship. As you walked about, there were always folk cleaning.

 

Thought and money has gone into the design of the public areas. There’s a considerable amount of artworks – wall hangings, sculpture, ceramics, etc. The mosaic “floral pictures” on the Terrace Café wall must have cost a small fortune in themselves.

 

As for the food, I suppose the first question must be is this “the finest cuisine at sea”. Well, with only Oceania experience to call on in recent decades, I’ve nothing to compare that marketing slogan against. But, I do know the food was pretty good and when you think that this is mass catering, probably better than “pretty good”. With North Americans representing about 1000 of the 1200 on board, it’s no surprise that the food is rightly geared to their tastes. A particular disappointment was that almost every dish where you expect the vibrancy from spices seemed dumbed down and generally quite bland. There was one negative of note and it applied in the Grand Dining Room and the specialities. And that was the amount of time we regularly sat there with menus in our hands, waiting for someone to take our order. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a land based restaurant and it really isn’t acceptable here. But, once your order is in the system, everyone is generally fine. The sommeliers (they are not really sommeliers in the usual sense of the word) are generally on the ball, regularly offering second and third pours. . Our booking was under the Simply More arrangements which got us included booze at lunch and dinner. This was nice, although I don’t drink alcohol and my partner only sparingly. I do enjoy the occasional alcohol free beer or wine, so was able to take advantage of this (although the alcohol free Merlot is very thin on flavour and I couldn’t really recommend it – better than nowt, I suppose.

 

Some brief comments on the various restaurant venues:-

 

Grand Dining Room – we ate here most nights. Always found something we wanted to eat and the food was good quality. We also had a few breakfasts and lunches. It was nice to be served a “proper” breakfast and the lunchtime French bistro classics were also good.

 

Terrace Café - good for breakfast and lunch. Lots of choice. Nice to sit on the open terrace on good weather days. We had dinner once when the buffet was given over to a “Spanish Market”menu. , which was excellent, both in the variety of choice and the use of traditional flavours. I felt myself whisked back to Mallorca with the sobrasada on toast and suckling pig. 

 

Waves – went for lunch a few times. Good sandwiches. In the evening, it becomes a pizzeria. We went once – pizza was fine. Think good quality supermarket pizza, rather than it being as good as your favourite place at home.

 

Aquamar Kitchen – we went for lunch a couple of times. This is the ship’s “healthy option”, which is probably why we weren’t keen. Nice enough salads, poke bowls and the like. Small portions – we went to Baristas afterwards for coffee and got pastries from the Bakery, as still hungry..

 

As for the four specialities, we enjoyed the variety. It’s a plus point for O’s larger ships, over the two on the smaller ships. We liked Ember. The food was excellent but it was the space that really made it. It’s a very modern design and the open kitchen is always going to add excitement to a restaurant. Polo Grill and Toscana both did their jobs well – plenty of choice on the menus and cooking is to a high standard. Red Ginger, however, was a disappointment, as it had been on our Marina cruise. For “Asian Fusion”, read dumbed down food. We complained about one dish (the only complaint about anything on board). That was the beef rendang and were told it was prepared and flavoured as it should be. Happens to be a dish we know well and this was just wrong on several levels. But, that aside, the specialities were fine and made for a good balance with the other options. None would meet our “Holiday Restaurant” test – if it was a restaurant at home, would we become regulars. Polo and Toscana are the best two but neither are as good as the steakhouse and Italian that we go to regularly.

 

 

Baristas is good for daytime coffee. My partner, who is a tea drinker, says it’s the only place on board where the water is hot enough to make a proper cup of tea (I’m sure she could do a full ten minute rant about the tea in Horizons at afternoon tea time). . The Bakery attached to the space is excellent for the likes of quiche, beignets and other sweet treats. In the evening, it becomes Baristas Aperitivo – a lovely bright cocktail venue that seems to be ignored by the vast majority of passengers. Nope, I don’t understand why. Not least as Martinis is so cold that we found it actively unpleasant to sit there.

 

No-one’s going on an Oceania cruise for the entertainment. I mean, it’s OK but not really better than OK. It’s a larger performance company than on Nautica but, truth be told, we found the quality of performance to be not as good. On other nights, there were “guest performers”. Danny Buckler did a good comedy magic routine. Vocalist Nik Page was OK, if a bit shouty. We’d seen Duo Esencias on Nautica last year. Seeing them once was enough. We didn’t go to the shows after Day 9.

And, yes, comments by others about the design of the Vista Lounge are all true. It’s easy to find your view of the stage blocked by someone in the row in front. So you do regularly see folk shuffling around to new seats.

 

With regard to excursions, on our previous cruises we’ve always taken the “free” excursion perk, as consistently recommended on the Cruise Critic forum. We find that the Simply More excursion credit suits us better in that we can spend it on any available trip, rather than being tied to the very basic ones. For example, we booked a more costly gastronomic excursion in Malaga as that part of Andalucia is very well known to us from previous land based holidays. So, with a mix of ports where we planned to do our own thing and three where we’d booked ships excursions, we were looking forward to them. Unfortunately, the three ship’s excursions were all at the end of the cruise. By that time, I’d picked up the bug I mentioned earlier and my COPD had flared up, so we cancelled two of them. And, I’d have to say, the one we did, in Monaco, wasn’t that great. You did learn a bit about the history but you only get to see three major sites – the Cathedral, Prince’s Palace and the Casino. There’s no  feeling of even scratching the surface of Monaco. I think we’d have done better buying a ticket for the hop on, hop off bus and doing our own thing. But we did spot someone famous (or, more accurately, infamous). As we were waiting for the bus back to the ship, Sir Philip Green walked past.

 

So, that’s about it.. We had a really nice time. So nice, that we’ve booked a cruise for next year (same cabin – so fingers crossed the lack of noise issues wasn’t just down to very quiet neighbours). I think Oceania has probably made a good decision in making the pricing more inclusive – the change in excursions and drinks with meals. And, for the next cruise, gratuities will be included in the headline cruise price for British (and other European?) customers, as it has been for the Australia and New Zealand market for some time. It’s in response to O’s discussions with the UK cruise travel agent industry which, I understand, has called for it. Oh, yes – we’ll manage our port days better, treating some as sea days, so we finish our cruise properly rested, rather than having rushed around and feeling the need for another holiday to recuperate.

Tre helpful and useful info Harters b/c after our Vista sail last month we are sort of on the fence on an O go again.

 

It would help a lot if they fixed the noise issue although it was rare to hear the next doors, when we did, it sounded like they were in our room.

 

Your review of the restaurants is spot on.

 

If we do it again, kick off our high heel sneakers and spend that last piaster for O, it will because of the vibe, the feel, the mood, the formula. 

 

O tries.  The restaurants are the draw and fun, even had a great meal in the main dinning room with a memorable pear dessert (the smell of prickly pear mmmm). 

 

Not expecting perfection - only a fool would say that but O's got the right rhythm, not too tony a tone and a fine feel.

 

 

 

[Harters]

A quick related matter, Our travel agent had booked us a transfer from the port to Rome airport. It failed to turn up - in spite of speaking to the company once and the driver three times. First time, he said he was there (he wasnnt). Second time he said he'd be there in 5 minutes (he wasnt). Third time , he just shouted "taxi, taxi, taxi" (which we decided he meant he couldn't be arsed doing the job he'd been paid for and we should get a cab). So we did. It cost just under €200 on the cab meter. We had just enough cash to pay.

 

On the plus side, we've spoken to our TA today, who was very apologetic and is arranging a refund to us of the cab money.

 

Company to avoid - Samarcanda 

[Iamthesea]

In the evening, it becomes Baristas Aperitivo – a lovely bright cocktail venue that seems to be ignored by the vast majority of passengers. Nope, I don’t understand why. Not least as Martinis is so cold that we found it actively unpleasant to sit there.

 

Had no idea!  We were on her last month.  Regularly went to Baristas in the morning, however.

 

We did enjoy Martini's.  Just wish it were a little larger.  Hard to find seats.

[DENIE]

Thank you for a wonderful review!  We really enjoyed Vista in January (out of Miami) and have a November 2025 transatlantic (Barcelona to Miami) booked on her.  Looking forward to the sea days!