Oceania Cruise Review

Dear editor,

Thank you for your time. We travel several times a year and have been

on over a dozen cruises. This past July we cruised with Oceania aboard

Nautica in the Eastern Mediterranean. It turned into our most

disappointing travel experience. Simply put Oceania is very overrated.

I would preface that through it all Oceania staff never took any

responsibility and devoutly towed the company line. Although patient

and diligent we were never able to get anyone at any level to respond

to our complaints and concerns. It was the worst case of passing the

buck we've ever encountered. It concluded with our presenting the ships

manager with two written pages of notes and when we thought we detected

a note of sympathy and responsibility he quickly stopped and added,

"I'm not apologizing for anything. I'm just saying I'm sorry that these

things happened."

It started with us trying to add a few days to either end of the trip.

Our travel agent of thirty years and ourselves were unable to get any

help or answers from Oceania about the booking until just a week before

the flight. It was always someone else's department or issue. As a

result we ended up with terrible seats for 16 hours. We could hear

everything from next door and the light from their cabin would shine in

to ours from around the edges of the wall. We had brown water coming

from all the faucets for several days and the shower was the smallest

one we've ever had. We raised these issues immediately and repeatedly

only to eventually be offered an "upgrade" for several hundred dollars.

We got terrible food poisoning. (I owned restaurants and am a

California Certified Food Handler who still works occasionally in the

business). Oceania steadfastly refused to hear it even though it

happened the evening we were at sea all day. When we tried to do the

responsible thing and report it to the ships doctor they charged us

$150.00 for the visit which was nothing more than a conversation. She

insisted that we gave "it" to each other and recoiled from us asking us

not to touch anything. When we tried to us the hand sanitizer there it

didn't work. When we pointed out the irony of that she grabbed it, took

it to another room, and said it was there to protect them not us! The

food on the whole was very inconstant. We had similar and better meals

aboard Princess.

The tendering and disembarking was ridiculous. If you didn't book a

tour through Oceania you were left totally on your own. Tenders broke

down. They were a half hour apart. It took over an hour and a half in

some ports to get off a small ship! In Athens we were over a mile walk

from any taxi or train. There were no signs or help back. We did find

attendants from other cruise lines posted to help their passengers and

they were kind enough to assist us. The bus AC in Taormina broke down

and it was 110 degrees inside. People were getting sick. Newer did

Oceania offer an apology or even a free bottle of water.

Additionally the ships design is flawed. Although a smaller vessel with

a hight crew to passenger ratio the public areas like the pool are very

impacted. The pool was a jammed watering hole with no seats to be

found. The gym was crowed and funky. If you didn't book into the spa

within the first hours of the cruise - good luck. Simply put the

activities schedule was so dated and limited that you ended up with

nearly all 600 passengers moving en masse towards the resources and

crowding was the result.

There were many other issues like a crew suggestion that we should

bribe our way into the nicer restaurant since passengers like us could

only access it once in 14 days. Suffice it to say we would strongly

recommend that anyone should either save their money and go with a

reasonable midlevel cruise line or spend a little more and travel with

a true luxury line. Oceania is a pretender. They should change their

motto to "Your money, Our way."

Thank you,

William M. Vinci

650-365-5918

Redwood City CA 94062