Disappointed

Marina Cruise Review to Transatlantic

rdugue

Contributor Level: Third Mate

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 65

Overall rating:

3.7 out of 5

Verified Review

16 Night River Routes & Channel Crossings (Montreal To London)

Sail date: May 18, 2015

Ship: Marina

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 11043

Traveled as: Couple

Reviewed: 9 years ago

Review summary

We have cruised several times on various cruise lines including QEII, a Holyland cruise with Royal Caribbean and several princess cruises. The QE II is incomparable for style and class; the Holy Land, Baltic Sea cruises had far superior excursions for less money than Oceania

The Marina experience was disappointing mainly because of the excursions offered by Oceania. They were expensive and boring and in several cases misleading. For example we went on a 3.5 hour tour of Explore St John City... spent 13 minutes in the city without stopping for even a photo stop after spending two hours riding in a bus to two other sites. Folks were so upset that they exited the bus prior to returning to the pier so that they could see St John.

The stateroom was as described EXCEPT we paid extra for concierge level and never saw or heard from a concierge. When we dialed Concierge on the phone we got housekeeping! We did receive a form letter upon embarkation welcoming us to concierge level. This very annoying.

We did experience unforeseen happenings such as norovirus outbreak, gale winds forcing an itinerary change (did not go to two ports) etc but understand these to be unavoidable and part of cruise life.

The food on Marina was very good with four specialty dining rooms in addition to the main Grand Dining Room. The staff were friendly, helpful and very pleasant to deal with... in every part of the ship. The ship was clean and tastefully decorated.

We were looking forward to this because we had thought that Oceania was a luxury cruise line.... we did not find that to be the case. Would not cruise with them again and if we did recommend would advise not to go unless they had a penthouse suite and did all excursions independent of Oceania, including to and from airport transportation (our coach had an accident by running a car off the road on the way to the airport... no injuries fortunately)

Internet charges for this cruise were ridiculous.