South Pacific Cruise Reviews

This was a great cruise it was somewhere new and a great place to see if you like WW2 things the japs left a bit of stuff behind so a lot to see well worth a look

Very relaxing and beautiful. Surf is my favorite but Spirit comes close. Great food. Incredible scuba trips!! Crew show was a hoot when the ship's doctor sang!! Watersports platform and staff is great!!

The Paul Gauguin is the perfect way to visit French Polynesia.  It allows you to visit many of the islands, and the size of the ship allows you to enter all of the atolls.  The ship is beautiful, decent size rooms, and delicious food in the three dining rooms.  My favorite hang out is at the Piano Bar before dinner, where Rey (my favorite bartender onboard) whips up some great cocktails. 

The Paul Gauguin has a private motu off of Taha'a and this is a really special part of the cruise.  The motu is unbelievable, the best day on the cruise!  It is a private island set up for the cruise with chaise lounges, a floating bar, fresh coconuts, and a delicious island bbq.  

Fakarava & Raingaroa were the two top dive spots, and are even great for snorkeling.  We booked all of our excursions and dives through the PG, and I highly recommend this option, there is not much to do on some of the islands without booking an excursion.  The excursions are reasonable prices and we did not have one that we did not love.

I definitely will be returning to the Paul Gauguin to cruise some of their other itineraries.

My only two complaints would be that the service is good not great on the ship, but you spend most of your time off the ship in the beautiful islands, and the embarkation and disembarkation is so poorly handled. 

For years I had thought of the Paul Gauguin as "top tier" and had longed for the opportunity to sail on her. That opportunity came this year when they offered a tremendous promotion. Given that we got a very good rate, the cruise was acceptable but it would have been disappointing had we paid full fare. The crew was great the first 9 (of 11) days but something must have happened because many definitely had attitudes (that once bordered on surly) the last two days. The ship is immaculately clean and well maintained but food (particularly dinner) did not measure up to luxury ship standards. Entertainment was okay but not compelling. The lack of any female servers in the restaurants and lounges was noted by several guests. For some reason, although we were in mild to medium seas, the ship seemed to have more motion than we have experienced on other ships of similar size in heavier seas. And a final complaint for any ship (PG included) that employs a photographer for revenue purposes: they are intrusive and the constant flashes going off all over the restaurant does little for the ambiance of a romantic meal.

We joined the ship in Papeete, for the 12 days beck to San Diego. We arrived in Papeete at 6am with check in set for 1pm. We decided to go to the ship and hope they would at least take our luggage. To our pleasant surprise they not only took our luggage but allowed us to check in. 

We spent most of our time in the mix, listening to the solo guitarist Chris Bartlett, great talent. The bar staff was fantastic. Justin the Piano man was great too. 

The service and food in the buffet was very good, choices at times not the best. I can not comment on the Main dining room as we did not attend. The Pinnical grill was fantastic, well worth the surgharge. The crew on the ship was fantastic. 

The ship was in good shape.

Our cruise started with finding out we were arriving a day earlier than we had originally expected. Our itinerary given to us online stated our arrival as May 7th but when getting on shipboard we found out that our arrival was May 6th. This ended up costing us an additional $500.

The waters were rough but that wasn't really a problem. The New Zealand stops were good but not great. The 3 French Polynesian ports were great. Loved Bora Bora!! To many days at sea. The Cruise Director was terrible. He did not plan the onboard entertainment well, as far as the music around the ship or the timing of many of the programs. Such as planning a Main Show at 7:45, which meant the 8pm diners could not see the show at all. He planned the Mega-cruisers (emerald,diamond,etc members) event at 7:45pm which was also the same time as one of his 7:45 shows. So we had so skip a good show to go to this. We went and the entertainment was just one of his regular groups that you can see around the ship. A couple of officers came around to meet a few of us. The said hello and chatted a bit. They didn't introduce themselves or ask our names (RUDE). The captain came out, said hello, introduced a crew member who had served 20 yrs and another who had served 5 yrs. He didn't introduce their supervisors who were standing with (RUDE). Then he left. There were drinks and a few snacks. The drinks and snacks were served as you arrived but not brought around after you were seated (NOT GOOD). I have been to others on other Royal Caribbean ships which were much much nicer and had special entertainment such as ballet dancers and they were in the daytime so that you didn't miss any nighttime entertainment. VERY POORLY PLANNED AND EXECUTED!!

Food was good but to many curry dishes and in the buffet it was often the same everyday.

Service was outstanding!!

Room Steward was terrific in every way possible. Always smiling and helpful.

Main Dining Room was wonderful and the staff was Awesome!! Food there was great!!

We will never go on another 18 day cruise because it is simply to long and to many days at sea for us.

We left Sydney, and had 11 days on the ship, before getting off in Bora Bora.  (the cruise continued another 7 days to Hawaii).  The weather wasn't good, which couldn't be helped. The food was very good and we made friends with some really nice people.  The staff was wonderful, but there wasn't enough to do on the ship.  There is a theater which held a couple of hundred, but there are 2500 people on the ship, so you couldn't get in.  They would have a dance party that would end in 30 minutes, just when everyone was having fun. It seemed most activities were centered around selling you something. We felt nickled and dimed constantly. One other thing...We were sold adjoining balconies with our friends.... Bait and switch.  Our rooms were next door, but didn't receive the balconies we were promised upon purchasing.  Our friends had an obstruction right in their balcony view, which we had made sure none of us would have before booking....again bait and switch!!  All the cruise line could say is "I'm sorry".  Bottom line, "I'm sorry"...we will not be cruising on this cruise line again. 

Having been on three other Cruise Lines celebrity is by far the best

First cruise around New Zealand from Brisbane return. This ship could do with a refit & 24 hr cafe same as he sister ship. All in all it was a good cruise with great weather apart from Milford sounds.

B

From start to finish, SUPERB! Excellent,professional in every way! Would recommend without reservation! CLASSY! The staff make it! Organize your own tours at each port, on board to expensive! You can make your own itinerary .

While I do like to cruise, I will be more discerning on our next cruise. The ship was fine, the crew were great, the captain was a true professional and did an excellent job keeping us out of Cyclone alley. Where the problem lay was the 'extras.'  Used to be that when you cruised a 'small' upcharge could grant you access to the special dining rooms, now that charge is substantial. In addition, if you did pre-book the special dining, it is quite irritating to see the dining packages 'discounted' onboard. One dining venue was a la carte - after you were seated you got to see the prices (but they do not tell you this when you book it online.) Drink packages were obscenely overpriced, but then so were the drinks. We drank lots of water. We noticed that the once filled lounges were sparsely visited and the casino was empty most of the time. Many other passengers on our cruise said they abhorred the nickel and diming and in protest did not buy drinks or gamble - it showed. There was lots of confusion over the Wine packages, which were unavailable just weeks prior to the cruise suddenly and then being sold at check in. We are not big drinkers, but we just could not see spending that kind of money on drinks we could never drink in a day. The people I really felt sorry for were the wait staff, it was not their fault a glass of wine was $12-19 per glass, but they bore the brunt of the non-drinking because as a result they got no tips.

Trivia games were popular as were the cultural talks and the art classes. Many of the 'games' were not geared to our group's age and the music, oh and sometimes the music drove us to our rooms - again probably an age thing, but most of us would have much preferred classical, country or what is now referred to a classical rock. We hated the rap and other 90's noise. We did find good music sometimes, but you never knew. We did have some fun, we met some wonderful new friends onboard. The Chef's Table was a great experience; the food and wines were wonderful.

The odd choice of stopping in an industrial port was interesting - if you wanted to see ore dug from the ground I guess it was OK. Most of the ship seemed to be Australians which was fine by us. With the political unrest and recent troubles in Indonesia we chose not to disembark at Bali, where the ocean waters were filthy with trash. The highlights were the stops at Airlie Beach, Brisbane, Darwin, Port Geraldton, and Perth. More excursion choices would have been nice.

I wonder if too many passengers knew that the room stewards gets paid ONLY the gratuities per room - no hourly wage and they share that with all the other non-seen crew. Our room steward told us that they work every day for seven months with no day off.  I left with a bad taste in my mouth for Royal Caribbean. If you knew that you will be spending an extra $2000 or so onboard maybe it would have helped me in my planning.

One trip & one issue changes our view of Princess.  We have been on several Princess trips and are members of the Captains Club.  Now we intend to vote with our pocket book and not use Princess or any of the Carnival lines.

In short an issue arose (with out credit card number) and the Diamond Princess staff failed to properly notify us, and then tried to make excuses and cover up the issue.  Finally a Supervisor called, admitted the problems was theirs, and wanted to end it by saying we are sorry.

My wife & I felt this was far to easy a way out for the service blunders that had occurred.  Princess wanted us to make an offer as to what it would take to  satisfy us.  My reply was that ball was in Princess court and we were not out to exploit the situation. 

From that point on we did not hear from Princess except to fill out their automated on-line review.

Sorry to say that one of the other non Carnival lines will now be used. 

Had cruised with PG cruises before and had a wonderful experience.  Decided to take family on "Familymoon" as we recently got married.  Planned trip months in advance.  Checked weather and found nothing of concern.  Avoya Travel and PG Cruises said nothing about it being the "rainy season".  On the flight from LAX, much to our surprise, a flight attendant informed us it is the "rainy season" in French Polynesia.  It was raining when we got there and rained the entire time causing very rough seas, much seasickness and a greatly modified itinerary.  Captain sailed out of Papeete at 2AM in the morning, sailed for 6 hours in very rough seas to Moorea which is 30 minutes away.  Cannot get an answer from PG Corporate as to why he did this!  Result was much seasickness.  This was the pattern the entire cruise.  Modified itinerary, all scuba cancelled as well as many other shore excursions.  Could not wait to get off this ship!

We recently cruised on the Marina from Santiago to Tahiti.  The cruise was nice, the food was very good, and the service excellent as we would expect from a 5.5 star cruise line.    BUT

We were aware that Oceana’s wine and beverage prices were always higher than other cruise lines and—

Your wine package of “…a personally selected 7 bottle special selection of wines…” for $297.50 ($42.50 per bottle) looked OK.  I did not recognize many of the wines so before purchasing I looked them up on e “Wine Searcher.com” - probably the standard for wine research, reviews pricing and availability.  We wanted all red wines and looked up those we thought we might like.

OUCH – We looked up 12 wines and discovered retail prices ranging from $6 to $14.  The average price of the wines was $9.94 (your cost about $6.40 per bottle).  The wine ratings from multiple reviews ranged from 81 to 88 points with an average of 84.3 points.  This is pretty poor for “specially selected wines”

It takes a large amount of courage, or a pre-planned decision to gouge your customers, to mark up the average wine from $6.50 cost to $42.50, that’s over 650%.  How can you justify this ??

We took the Nautica Black Sea Cruise in Aug2013. We spent 2 weeks driving through Turkey including Selcuk (Ephesus) before embarking in Athens.  Oceana’s small group full day tour of Ephesus (12 persons max) was over $250 pp.  We took the same Ephesus tour in Turkey for $65 pp using the same tour supplier.  On our Marina  cruise, in Easter Island, we took a professionally led small group 2 day tour for the same price as the half day tour by Oceana.

So much for our warm and fuzzy feelings about Oceana’s pricing tactics.

positives crew, facilities,itinerary

negatives, organization, hygiene, administration, food , drink quality, health, activities. tours.

summary, treated like cattle, come back new !!! not likely, low quality at high prices.

Next time we will fly to the US and go on a modern ship.

This was our 3rd Time on the Solstice - and I have to say it's showing a bit of wear paint etc -but still a fine ship. Very Very Clean. Great Crew. First time doing Aqua Class- loved the restaurant and staff and food - wish they were open for lunch. Love the affordable all inclusive drink packages - which is why we sail with Celebrity. This was a great itinerary. Enjoyed the cruise. Unfortunately we had terrible weather most sea days which is when we like to relax outside. It was too windy and too cold and many times raining. Not Celebrity's fault - but I felt there wasn't a lot of creative things to do inside for our age group. Had we had affordable internet - we could have spent some creative time sharing photos from ports etc. Really in this day and age - the internet should be faster and cheaper.

Disembarkation was inconvenient. We walked about a few hundred meter with our luggage in order to gat to the nearest taxi. The taxi should be allowed to the same place as during embarkation.

Previously known for its food it is now only a small step above Carnival and RCCL offerings. No outstanding foods stood out (soup was absolutely horrible, green mold on cheese chunks) Many of the amenities taken away by these 2 cruise lines, still remain-offers of water, hot chocolate when returning from shore excursions, small bottles of shampoo, lotion, bar soap, use of umbrellas and waffle weave robes in cabins. Excellent handling of getting people to their shore excursions.

We thoroughly enjoyed our cruise. We did mostly water based activities, and this is what you should be wanting to do in this area. We liked out land tour on Moorea, with William and found his prices in his pearl shop to be reasonable. We didn't do a land or water tour in Nuku Hiva, and should have, so we found it boring here, although the scenery was lovely. The drift snorkel in Raiatea and the snorkel/shark/rays in Bora Bora were well worth doing. Fr. Polynesia itself is incredibly expensive with $25 to $30 for hamburgers/sodas/fries for two

Well designed, well maintained and easy to get around. Unless you are a snorkeller / ocean swimmer, the land destinations were of limited appeal. The most appealing tour (to the coral reef in Noumea) was canceled for lack of participants, a MAJOR downer.