This review covers the 12 nighter Southampton to Fort Lauderdale transatlantic cruise, along with the following back-to-back 5 nighter to Nassau and Cozumel. We booked a year ago as we wanted to experience the novelty of this one-off cruise departing from home waters on 'the biggest cruise ship in the world'.
Oasis usually operates 7 night cruises from Fort Lauderdale to the sunny Caribbean week in, week out. As someone observed, 'as if it's on rails'. Unfortunately, we found that if this routine is changed, it comes off the rails in a number of important aspects.
However there is no denying that Oasis is amazing in terms of its sheer size and unique facilities. The “neighbourhoods” are truly impressive. The ship is a celebration of naval architecture. But this is not to say that it is perfect, because its size and design bring unique problems eg the facilities and layout are geared to good weather cruising (the public rooms are smaller than you might expect – a fact repeatedly made by the Cruise Director) and unfortunately on this cruise the weather was hit and miss. Hence venues struggled to cope with the numbers.