We chose this ship to take in Vietnam, South Korea and China, however, the Ovation of the Seas has 4,000 guests with very inexperienced staff especially when it came to the excursions and getting off at the ports! In Ho Chi Mihn City (Phu My) Vietnam, we were told to go to collect our tour tickets at 7.45am and we actually lined up at 7.30am, only to find that the line was almost to the end of the ship and many many guests were pushing into the line with no staff controlling the queue, so, consequently we actually got down in the Theatre (where every tour was departing from) at 8.30am and finally left 9am. This tour was only a short event so didn't impact us too much!

The experience at Xiamen, China was a disaster!! Our tour was only supposed to be for 3 1/2 - 4hrs - We waited in the queue on the ship again from 10am and finally got down in the ferry terminal at 11.00am and stood in another queue from 11.00 until 12.30pm when we finally boarded our ferry!! We had a very inexperienced guide who gave us no information, just walked and walked and eventually we asked for a "toilet" stop and rest because it was really hot! We visited a couple of different places walking up and down and around in the heat with NO water supplied (fortunately we had one bottle but NO food)! It was a very pretty village but with no information from the guide, it wasn't very enjoyable so we all had had enough and asked to go back to the ship, so, after all our group was together at 3.45pm we headed to catch the ferry back, however, our guide took us to the wrong area and then we had to walk right back around again to the right entrance and then stand for a bit over an hour before we finally got a ferry! All in all, a tour that should have been back early afternoon finally arrived back after 5pm.

Then there were no signs to direct us back to the ship and consequently we all walked the wrong way and had to walk right around the whole building and go through customs again. Read more