Excellent cruise, super food, great bridge instructor and games, superior service by cabin attendants (Mia and Liane), and a great opportunity to meet like-minded travelers. The size of the ship (~600 guests) makes for pleasant opportunities for making acquaintances. This cruise was ideal for us in that we much prefer sea days to port calls and this cruise had ten sea days out of a total of eighteen days for the entire cruise. The food was superb and the entire ship's crew were wonderful. Our cabin was as advertised and our steward (Min) and stewardess (Liane) were outstanding. We did feel, however, the ship's excursions were excessively overpriced. (For example, on Kauai, we booked a helicopter excursion privately that was ten minutes longer than the ship's arranged helicopter tour and for less than one-half the price of the Oceania's helicopter excursion.)

We cannot give this cruise a five-star rating, however, because of the absolutely uncaring, unprofessional, and seemingly disinterested performance of Oceania's air arrangements department. Both legs of our trip involved ten hour layovers in one of the world's worst airports (LAX). Our trip to Papeete was 23 three hours long and we arrived at the ship 15 minutes before it left port. When I tried to talk to the airline arrangement people, weeks before the trip, about the poor arrangements they would not talk to me personally but insisted they could only talk to my agent. I was also informed any deviation, such as arriving a day or two-early would cast us $350 plus any difference in flight pricing. Also, the airlines did not receive any of the dietary restriction information we gave to Oceania. (The cruise itself did, however, have all the correct information.) Finally, the airline lost our luggage which we did not receive until three days into the cruise. (This could easily have been avoided if Oceania had flown us to Papeete a few days early as we initially requested.) The airline department certainly is a blight on Oceania's otherwise sterling reputation.