Alaska 12 day Riviera cruise … I’m giving this a 4, but potentially a lower score in some areas. Alaska in places is stunning that is undeniably true. We were lucky with the weather & there was plenty of space on the boat. Overwhelmingly we thought the restaurant staff and room stewards were very good. Some were excellent. The food was overall very good; a few things were dreadful like pasta, risotto and croque monsieur. Mainly due to the number of people the restaurant was catering for. The service and food in the speciality restaurants was on occasions exceptional. They do well with US favourites like burgers and steak. We didn’t bother with the entertainment because it wasn’t our sort of thing, think bingo, amateur cabaret and musical theatre. We found the cruise director and his entourage irritating and loud in the Polo restaurant & his daily ‘celebrity’ sign off, “if you do nothing else today, be kind to one another”? I can feel my hackles rising just at memory of it. Our biggest grievance, however, was the extortionate cost of the excursions. Literally 2-3 times the cost you could get them independently. I raised this with customer services and was told how they’d quality assured them and that they were consistently of a good standard. Not so. The cruise stops in some weird and pointless places in Alaska (Klawock, why?) where nothing happens. When all they have is 1000 people and some totem poles there is nothing to see and no infrastructure. Another gripe on our particular trip was that the boat did not adequately manage the high levels of disability amongst the passengers. In particular the tender and self serve restaurant could be disastrous. On some occasions this led to aggressive interactions between angry very old people. Some sea days the only restaurant open at lunch was self service & it was horrendously busy. The staff were unable to manage the level of disability they had to deal with. One woman, for example, suggested my husband should go and get her food for her in the self service terrace restaurant. Yeah we aren’t staffing the luxury boat because aspects of mismanagement left disabled people unable to use the restaurants. I guess they could have got room service but that’s not Oceania charge you for is it?
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Oceania Cruises is a premium cruise line based in Miami, Florida, that operates six premium cruise ships on worldwide itineraries.
