Ovation of the Seas Cruise Reviews - Reviews

To put it mildly.....We really need a vacation after this Cruise! We ~hesitantly booked this cruise with 7 other family members from around the US. There were 3 Seniors with our party..one of them a "Diamond" member. We aren't typically cruise people, but we wanted to participate with this one for the aging members of the family. Yes, the Ovation is a sparkly new ship. The balcony stateroom was adequate, the staff were quite nice. That's all the positive energy I can put into this review. The biggest disappointment..BY FAR...was that THIS Alaskan Cruise did not get to see the glacier we had on the itinerary...This ship is TOO BIG to get to the glacier!! So I'll bet no one will ever see the glacier if you take this ship! The 3 other ships that sailed with us all went to the glacier. Also, the same cruise the week ahead of us didn't go to the glacier either. Safety aside..this was THE hallmark of the trip. If they couldn't do it, they should've told us ahead of time. Right off the bat, they want your individual picture! Not because it's " A time to Remember" ...it's all about facial recognition. Don't believe it's true? Think again! For beginners, the embarkation was total chaos, stress and disorganization from Seattle. The seniors were exhausted and so were we. The dining experience.... Some of our family were staying in Junior Suites...They ate at a separate dining room every night. We were not allowed to attend that dining room. So unless we wanted to pay upcharge for specialty dining venue we never ate dinner together....NOT ONCE! So we did lunch together instead. Here is where we ate meals and our thoughts.... Where are the fantastic Buffets? The ice sculptures? The shrimp towers? The chocolate fountains? Not on this ship! None of it.... We ordered coffee/Juice & danish from room service each morning..free with a tip. OK Windjammer is like a hospital cafeteria. Food was Eh... Cafe Two70 another hospital cafeteria. Food was Eh... Cafe Promenade 24hr coffee/ stale pastry & Sandwich shop is the size of a kiosk at the mall. Nothing special here. Chic MDR dining where we ate dinner was ok, staff was very attentive. Average food, nothing special, didn't leave hungry. Solarium Bistro Breakfast to order was a hidden gem in the mornings and decent. Solarium Bistro Dinner...not that great. Eh... Lunch in the The Grand was ok, good place to gather if you are with a group. The smoking/vaping sections of the ship. If you are a smoker, vaper or enjoy a cigar...Beware! There are only 3 places on ship to indulge in your stress-reducing cigarette. #1 The 5th Floor patio near Vintages Wine bar- the quietest place and most difficult place to find (but closed many times for cleaning?, without any cleaning going on?) #2 The 14th Floor open air hallway between the Solarium and Splashaway Bay. This is quite a hike from most staterooms. Not a favorite place to go. #3 The back left section of Casino Royale if you want to be out of the weather & wind. Another not-so-favorite place to go, but nice at 6:30 am if you'd like a little peace & quiet. Night time activities were mediocre at best. We usually ended up in the Music Hall for a silly game or two and some music...not as good as my local bar. Schooners had some nice piano music. We never did see any of the shows. They were booked up from day #1. We did the Skagway train excursion, which was nice. We booked that several months in advance. The " Refreshment package" was expensive, but covered all of our bottled water & Virgin Mary drinks & Mocktails. We also used it for other mixers because we purchased a few "Royal Gift" packages of Absolute Vodka for our room so we could mix our own drinks. We also brought on 2 bottles of wine from port on embarkation day. The others with us hardly got their money's worth from the alcohol packages they spent almost $1,000 on. Most of the bars were closed during days in port. FYI... The PUSH to SPEND MORE ! OMG!!! The constant push to spend more money blew my mind! As if you haven't spent ENOUGH already!!!! Every activity is put in place to help you spend more money. From the "Smokey-Eye" Demo (to purchase Urban Decay Makeup Pallets) to the Seminars. They want you spending..spending...spending! Even the TV stations...non-existent so you are out spending instead of watching tv. VOOM Experience..=...DOOM Experience...need I say more...totally NOT worth it. Even in an emergency. Formal nights....FWIW what is the point? Nothing special...No fancy dinners here or reduced drink prices...Just more opportunity for pictures to sell you later. The Captains Reception....Hahahaha....reception? I though most receptions came with a drink and a small bite? My mistake. Ports..Interesting tourist traps...bought a few things, saw a few things, drank a beer, ate a lunch....maybe did an excursion....got back on ship Perspective...If you're a cruiser, you'll always be a cruiser...it's your thing. No offense, but I just don't see how this is a relaxing or pampering way to vacation. I would not classify this as a Luxury Cruise. When the bills roll in and begin to hover near the $8,000 mark and we have nothing special to say about this vacation, that's just sad. I can put a much better vacation together with 1/4 of the money we spent and say.."I have had a vacation"...Ahhhhh.

Spectacular and will do it again! Panoramic vistas that will take your breath away.

Cruise was great. Alaska was beautiful. Wish we could have seen dawes glacier, otherwise was a great trip. The crew was great, ship was perfect for this trip. Food was bland but perfect for wife who doesn’t like spice or pepper. We enjoyed windjammer more than the main dinning room. Jr suite was awesome.

This was the most amazing cruise 🚢 we have been on so far!! The views were incredible and worth the cold on deck for a couple of days. This is a vacation you have to do again and again! These ports will never get tiring simply breathtaking.

Amazing ship! My favorite so far out of five including holland, carnival, and Norwegian. My tips are on my photos that I posted. I would just add that booking excursions via the ship is very beneficial. I booked whale watch salmon bake combo in Juneau through this app and it got complicated when the ship was a few hours late to port. The girl on dock had no idea what was going on. She kept getting people confused. On the phone they said be at this place by 130 or the tour will leave. That became 145 then 2... finally they kept us waiting in the sun for an hour! My kids were going nuts. Save yourself the grief and book with the ship.

Have a look at my pictures and please appreciate. https://spark.adobe.com/page/0Kiu6EpRaaPwo/

Besides the view from the balcony, loved the cruise. Wish Royal would offer the 11 night again.

Enjoyed the cruise overall even with the itinerary changes. We understand and expect changes due to unforeseen circumstances which has occurred previously. Unfortunately, our opinion, our first experience with RCCL making excuses instead of addressing the problem to get to the resolution. We did not see one commanding officer during disembarkation to take control of the debacle...felt sorry for the employees in the luggage area who had no answers to why our luggage was did not start to come down until after 8:00 am. Keep in mind they expect us to have our luggage in the hallways the night before by 10:00 pm and we were alaready at the port. There was only excuses and no one accepted responsibility.

A little disappointed overall due to itinerary changes (didn't really feel like the HAWAIIAN cruise we originally signed up for), main dining room quality of food, and felt lack of organization related to The Key benefits, photo pre-purchase, and tendering. At the end of the day, any vacation is a good vacation, but it didn't quite live up to our expectations based on previous Royal Caribbean experiences.

Loved this beautiful ship. Very well designed and very accommodating for mobility challenged. The adult area Solarium is the best of all ships we have sailed aboard. Complete with its own bistro and bar. Perfect! Be sure to stay a few days in Honolulu before embarking.

Went on the 11 night transpacific from Hawaii to Vancouver as well. This is my favorite class ship now, hopefully the other quantum class are the same. I felt like it was a great in between size of oasis and freedom class. My family felt that ALL the workers always went above and beyond every single time. It's great in other rc cruises but they took it up a level this time. Overall, food was better than other rc ships, though some felt the same. Breakfast at two70 was our favorite, lunch in the dining room and a secret for dinner is solarium bistro. Reservations recommended but it's complimentary... Ate there 4 nights. A few minor things. Only had an issue with crowds one morning in the Windjammer when it was the only place opened. Guest services had to try multiple times to correct inadvertent charges. Tender service from Maui was tough but it was expected with our size ship. It doesn't feel like a lot of people when there are.

We did the 11 night Honolulu to Vancouver cruise to test how we feel about longer cruises before we try a transatlantic really long cruise. Originally, it was to have an overnight in Maui, one day in Kona, Napoli coast and volcano sail by and a full day in Victoria. As we got closer to the cruise ( but well past final payment) they announced we were going to lose the day in Kona due to having to stay in Honolulu an extra day for inspections...we also were not going to do the Napoli coast (although they changed that later and skipped the volcano instead) and they also cut Victoria to just a few hours instead of all day to get to Vancouver a day early since they had to time the tides to get under the bridge. So, this was all pretty frustrating, but for us, we were mostly going for the sea days and didn’t mind additional time in Honolulu. Lots of people however, were extremely upset by all of this. RCCL failed in the pre cruise customer service dept. in a big way. But once we were on board, things got much better. We did get the Ultimate dining package since it includes lunch on sea days....sooo glad we did this! You also get discounts on wine at dinner, so we didn’t need to get the drink package at all. For us this was worth it for a heavy sea day cruise, but we probably wouldn’t do it for a port heavy cruise. We aren’t dining room people and the buffet wasn’t to our liking, but we tried all the specialty restaurants and they were amazing! Our favorites were Jaimes and Izumi. The free pizza at Sorrentos was also very good. The cafe at 270 has a super cool feel to it, and was really nice for a sandwich or salads. Our room was a midship, deck 11 balcony and was beautiful with tons of storage. It’s the best cabin and bathroom we have had in our cruise experience thus far. Balcony was large and had comfortable chairs. The major complaint would be the hardness of the bed...I mean rock hard! The bedding and the pillows were really nice, but the bed itself was pretty terrible. We should have asked for a mattress topper, but didn’t really think of that until cruise was almost over (our bad). We loved the layout of the ship! It only felt crowded after shows let out or when people were headed to the dining rooms. We aren’t morning people, so by the time we got out and about, the early morning pool people were headed to lunch. The buffet which we only ate at a few times would get crowded, but there was an abundance of seating areas and we enjoyed the outside seating at the back. My husband did the indoor skydiving (which I reserved pre cruise) and LOVED IT! We also did bumper cars several times...so much fun and the line moves fast so no big deal with that. We didn’t do the surfing and the roller skating times never fit with our schedule...but looked fun. We were able to do the North Star on the last day and it was super cool! No reservations necessary as they can only run it in the right conditions, but again the lines move pretty quickly. Now the shows...we have done NCL and are always blown away by the entertainment. So, we were pretty disappointed with the entertainment here. To be fair, we didn’t see all the shows. We did see their hyped up show called Pixels (which is the only one that requires reservations) and to be honest...it was pretty terrible. We saw the Vegas style show Live Long Legs and it was actually really good. The other shows and the magicians and stuff like that really didn’t interest us. There was a guy singing nightly in the Pub that was good and fun. We enjoyed Pandora’s Box , which was an Aerosmith cover band...that was really fun. And we enjoyed the 70’s theme party. The pool game is high with this ship...great outdoor, indoor and solarium pools! The solarium is unbelievably beautiful and peaceful...especially at night. The service was wonderful and we honestly had one of our best cruise experiences on this beautiful ship. We would definitely sail on her again. One piece of advice, if you sail on a large ship like this, remember to go with the flow and relax. It will take longer for debarkation and tendering. And sometimes, when your at sea, weather can be bad and ports can get canceled. But don’t be one of the constant complainers that we unfortunately ran into many times on this cruise. Life is what you make it and hopefully you will choose to look at changes as adventure instead of annoyances. The Ovation was a dream ship, and I hated to leave her. If you sail her, please give the baby panda bear a special hug from me🤗

Would definitely cruise on Ovation again, lovely ship and a wonderful crew.

I will consider this an interim review because of the following reasons. 1st very large crew turnover due to USA rules preventing regular crew from working in the US. 2nd. The new hotel manager only been onboard 6 weeks. We have sailed on his ships before and he will make big changes on here. Boarding. Quick and easy, but get onboard and no music, no band, and no sail away party. NO ENRGY and a big let down. Excuse used was Sydney noise restrictions. Ship. Squeaky clean. Cleaner then most hospitals I have seek. Love the adults area up front. Main pool was very good but it had to be closed several times due to guests fouling it. Had a number of code Brown's and 1 case of a drunk fool using it as a barf bucket. Felt sorry for the crew. Dining room layout sucked. Without the MDR there was no polish. No.feeling of AWE. STUDIO270. NICE venue but way to crowded and not enough seats. Kids club. No idea, we left the tribe at home. Over all ship had no energy and no life. Almost as bad as a river cruise full of old people who go to bed by 7.30pm. Food. Not up to RCCL standard. 2 many repeat items every day and food didn't stand out like their other ships. Entertainment. Not good. No big show. Lineup of second rate performers with 1 exception. Piano player in the Scooner Bar was great. Go Paul. Room. Our room attendant was well and truly up to RCCL standard. He was great. We are booked back onboard in April next year, but if we had not already booked I would have looked at other options. Right now we can't wait for Voyager n November. RCCL has a lot of work to do to get this ship up to their usual standard. My advise. Pick one of RCCLs other ship classes, unless you are an accountant with no personality and like this type of holiday.

Had a great time. Ship was full so yes there were a lot of people about. Had to arrive early for shows/ events to ensure a seat but managed most times. Food was ok but not special. Staff amazing.

Excellent cruise. A little too many sea days for my liking as a first time cruiser

This was our first cruise, simply loved it all of it. Staff were great and from all over the world. We enjoyed talking to the crew to learn a bit about their part of the world. The ship tour was well worth the time

Great cruise. Could have done with a few more production shows. Craft lessons were brilliant.

The Ovation Of The Seas is a really amazing Cruise Ship. There is so much to do and the food is great quality! On the boat there is a special Suite only restaurant and deck area that are quite good. Overall this is an amazing cruise!

We were overwhelmed by our first cruise from the moment we stepped on the ship and didn’t want to disembark at all.