My sister and I took this cruise together and she lives in Mississippi and I in Texas. From the beginning, Oceania sent everything to me. My sister never received one thing directly from the cruise line. I had to email or mail her everything which was extremely irritating considering how much we paid for the cruise. I have been on several cruises and each time it was with someone who lived in a different town, but all of those line were able to get info to each passenger individually.

We had a terrible time getting to Istanbul - cancelled flights, etc. and we did not arrive at the ship until almost 2:00 a.m. We were completely exhausted when we boarded and the reception didn't give the escort our card keys so we had to wait for her to go back to the front desk and retrieve the key. We had a penthouse level suite and from the pictures on the website, we expected more than we got. The room was not very big and we were definitely disappointed. I thought the bathroom was a decent size as was the bathtub. I loved the size of the verandah, but the panels separating each verandah gave very little privacy and they rattled terribly during windy nights at sea. We called up someone from maintenance and they couldn't eliminate the noise which was very distracting. When we were getting settled in the room, my sister called to get one of the hypo-allergenic pillows that they advertise on their website only to be told that they did not have any. My sister is very allergic to down so we never went to bed that night which was approximately 72 hours without sleep. She was able to get one the next day. The other thing that bothered us was the noise from level 9 (the pool deck) when they moved the chairs around every morning at 5ish. It doesn't seem to be the brightest move to have the suites right under that level.

After reading all of the rave reviews about the food on Oceania, we were so excited about trying the food. I can't say that I thought that it was better than other ships that I have been on. It was fine, but that is about all I can say. The only outstanding meal that I had was in Polo Grill - the rack of lamb was cooked to perfection and it was truly the best lamb that I have ever eaten. Pretty much everything else was mediocre. I did enjoy the pasta of the day prepared at Tapas on the Terrace. One of the guys made it to order each night. The sandwiches at Waves were also very good and the lemonade was excellent. Read more