This will be a realitively quick review. Let me start by saying this is not the "fantastic" cruise line that everybody on Cruise Critic raved about prior to our signing up. We sailed on March 15th from Miami bound for Azores, Cadiz, Spain and Lisbon, Portugal. By the way, all airfare and transfer arrangements were part of the package deal with Oceania Cruise Lines. We were met at the Miami airport by reps from Oceonia (from Las Vegas)and were quickly escorted to a bus to the ship. No problems there and no problems boarding.
We were escorted to our veranda cabin by a very nice young lady and settled in. Our cabin was nice but not much different in size than any other veranda cabin we've sailed on other cruise lines. The pillows, sheets and covers were nice but no big deal. We sailed that night around 6 PM looking towards 7 straight days and nights at sea before we hit our first port at the Azores, Portugal.
The main dining room, Grand Dining room is very nice but only holds around 370 passengers. (the ship on this sailing had about 680 passengers). All restaurants have open seating (except the two "gourmet" restaurants, Polo Grill and Toscana where reservations are required and you are told that you can only make two advance reservations for both of these restaurants when you board in their newsletter). I forget whether it was the first or second night but when my wife and I arrived for dinner at the Grand Dining Room at about 8:30 (the Grand Dining Room is open for dinner between 6:30 and 9:30 PM), we were told that we would have to wait 45 minutes before we could be seated. We've been on approximately 20 cruises before this Regatta cruise and we've never had to wait 45 minutes for dinner. In all fairness, all the other cruises we've been on all had pre-assigned seating arrangements with two seatings, early and late. The Regatta has only one seating, open seating served between the dinners hours mentioned above. We decided not to wait and went to the Tapas on the Grill restaurant on the 10th deck and had a very nice buffet type meal. (We ate most of our meals in this restaurant. It's called the Terrace Cafe for breakfast and lunch and converts to Tapas for dinner. We were told that the reason for the 45 minute wait at the Grand Dining room this particular night was because it was a Captain's dinner and lobster tails and caviar were on the menu. We had a similar waiting time one other night when King Crab legs were on the menu.