We booked this cruise primarily to experience the ship tech and for me to unwind. The size of the Ovation of the Seas is very impressive as is the technology that drives and operates her. My son and i flew from Canberra to Adelaide to begin our "high sea" adventure on board this high tech vessel. Our Cruise was organized through Mary Rossi Travel in Sydney, acting on our behalf and arranging all aspects of our travel.
Embarkation went without issue, luggage was tagged and arrived safely outside our cabin. We entered the ship and were met with merchants selling us drink packs. As we are not consumers of alcohol, we opted for a refreshment pack each (2 x $120). We expected that we would be able to have fresh juices and "mock-tails", this was not to be as the only juices they had were highly sugared fruit drinks from cardboard boxes. We ended up drinking mainly water and cranberry with soda water for the rest of the trip. the purchase of these drink packs were a rip-off. That night, my son and I had dinner at the Silk restaurant, the meal was terrible as the lobster tasted old and rubbery. The meat tasted like it was frozen, warmed in a microwave then placed on the grill for a few minutes before serving - very few fresh vegetables. I got food poisoning the morning of the third day (i suspect it was the smoked salmon) and spent the rest of that day and most of the forth day in my stateroom.
Dinner on 4th night was at the Grand, nice layout but again the food was dissapointing I had to send it back as my pasta sauce was far too sweet - I ended up having two plates of Greek salad which were themselves barely passable. I had no coffee as the milk used comes from a plastic bag (i expect it was re-constituted). Fruit was also unripe and tasteless (grapes were ok).
Loved it. Cabin was better than what i expected