First ever cruise - I enjoyed it but some very rude fellow passengers. We also did Klaksvik!
Oriana Cruise Review
Contributor Level:
Second Mate
Cruises: 1 cruise (first)
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 30
Ireland, Iceland and Faroe Islands
Sail date: July 05, 2019
Ship: Oriana
Traveled as: Couple
Reviewed: 5 years ago
Review summary
Enjoyed it, first cruise, have booked another.Embarkation
Dropped car off, my luggage disappeared, from handing over my car keys to stepping on board it was under 15 minutes.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Couldn’t fault the quality and variety. Spent most of the time in the smash n grab. The bars were running out of various bits in the last 48 hours.
Onboard Activities
Pools quiet, didn’t expect a library (remember first time cruise), shops were lacking in you were a man, stayed away from shuffle board and group stuff. Plenty of places to escape. Got busy inside if it rained with not much to do but read.
My fellow passengers were older (I’m 40 and was very much at the younger end of the age profile) and some were downright rude. There’s some one-up-man-ship going on all over (oh I did this, I’m on my x cruise how many have you done), there was controversy and storming out over a game of bingo, some take activities very seriously. At breakfast I simply asked the next person in the queue if they’d like me to leave the lid off the porridge, I got a look of disdain and a reply of “oh no, we’d only ever eat that at home”. A simple “no thanks” would have done.
Entertainment
Didn’t do much apart from go and see Maurice Grumbleweed who was good. Entertainment manager wasn’t great, he’d do an announcement with a really bad joke at the end, I mean really bad, maybe playing to the audience I don’t know. He didn’t seem to do much at all. That said I knew I wouldn’t do much, not my bag really.
Service and Staff
Entertainment manager wasn’t very good. Shore experience staff atrocious, whale watching in Akureyri was bad, no rep, two groups merged into one, some turned away, we got on an absolutely wedged boat.
Bar staff excellent, smash n grab staff excellent, very attentive and some made you feel special.
Room steward seems ever present but not in your face.
Shop assistants were bad, took five attempts to get someone to show me Pandora over the course of a day.
Ship Quality
Erm... first time cruise so didn’t know what to expect. it was good once you knew which stairway got you to where and which you couldn’t use to certain floors as something was in the way to block you off.
Cabin / Stateroom
Clean, queen sized bed, small but knew it would be. You could spend time in there easily. Point knocked off for not cleaning my window in any port.
Ship tip
There is only on plug socket in your cabin...
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
Town walkable. Whale watching excursions bad. Arrived late due to another med-evac so the morning whale watching tour was merged into the afternoon and that made for a very busy boat, so busy they turned some people away. Saw no whales but not the fault of P&O. No rep at whale watching to help sort it out.
Free shuttle bus to a shuttle bus to town (yes really!). Met a tour host who knew a lot about pseudo craters, went to the Blue Lagoon which was lovely and pricey but wanted to do it. Arrived early too due to med-evac required so they organised some evening tours which got me out of black tie night.
Stunning. Tender operation very efficient and easy to use, no queues. Small town, bought a cake and some Pepsi. Takes an hour to wander round. Lager £6 a pint, premium lager £8.13.
Lovely town, station right outside and IE put on additional trains so there were two an hour to Cork. Very good. Has a SuperMacs too :)
Disembarkation
Our disembarkation time was was 09:50 and at 09:50 I was driving past Winchester. Bit of a farce getting turfed out the room at 08:00 but having a 09:50 time to get off the boat and told to “explore the ship”.