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Oceania Cruises Pros And Cons Of Cruising With Them
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Jan 28, 2025
What are the pros and cons of cruising with Oceania Cruises? I explore what the line does best, well and also what things to watch out for and consider when choosing an Oceania Cruise. Finding the right cruise line for you is key to having a great cruising vacation. This should hopefully help you decide if Oceania is right for you. I explore the type of cruise experience, ships, dining options, fare inclusions and exclusions, type of cruise passenger best for and more. SUPPORT THE CHANNEL BY: Buying my Cruise T-shirts: http://bit.ly/TFTStore Booking your next cruise with CRUISEDIRECT.COM: http://bit.ly/TFTBookCruise WATCH THESE POPULAR RECENT VIDEOS: 10 Cabins to Avoid: https://youtu.be/PgTGLma919A European River Cruise Watch-Outs: https://youtu.be/oqhz54wStyk 5 Cruises To Avoid: https://youtu.be/CNiPzK4IRWA Alaska Cruise Need-to-Knows: https://youtu.be/Tn7dpNw5kSI Things Cruise Lines Don’t Want You to Know: https://youtu.be/cs5UKha9ALc Rules Passengers Break Most: https://youtu.be/djZLZ3XV_f0 Things You Can’t Do On A Cruise Any More: https://youtu.be/zas6F4wMD0Q Should You Pay Cruise Gratuities: https://youtu.be/QBYzqxXjEXQ Gary Bembridge's Tips For Travellers aims to help you make more of your precious travel time and money on land and when cruising the oceans or rivers of the world. To help you, in every video I draw on my first-hand tips and advice from travelling every month for over 20 years and 60+ cruises. Follow Tips For Travellers on:
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What are the pros and the cons of cruising with Oceania cruises
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I'm Gary Bembridge, this is another of my tips for travelers. I'm just back of another Oceania cruise and I thought it's a great time to share with you
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what I think the pros and the cons of cruising with them are
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So let's start first of all by taking a look at the pros
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For me, one of the biggest pros is that they have small to medium sized ships and I really like
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that in a cruise line. So they have altogether at the time of recording, although they do have more
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on order, six ships. Four of those are what are known as the R-class ships. These were originally
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built for Renaissance cruises and bought by Oceania when they went bankrupt. So they have four ships
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and these ships hold 698 passengers, so just under 700 passengers. The ships are the regatta
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the nautica, the insignia and the serenna. They then do have two purpose-built ships specifically for them and these carry 1,250 passengers and those
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are the Riviera and the Marina. All of the ships have gone through a big program which is called
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Oceania Next. They spent a hundred million dollars revamping and redoing all the ships to get them
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up to a more luxurious and more contemporary look and feel and they certainly did a great job
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with what I saw on my most recent cruise on insignia. So Oceania small to mid-sized ships and that for me is a
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really big plus. The two new ships are going to be about the same size as the existing slightly
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larger ships. It's going to have 1,200 guests and they're coming into service over the next
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couple of years. The second big pro for me is the fact that they provide a luxury premium experience
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but it's not very stuffy. So the whole experience is pretty relaxed, but it is definitely operating
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the luxury premium area. So they probably compete with brands like Asamara, I would say
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so it's not the ultra luxury level, it's the more premium side but smaller ships
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So it is pretty relaxed. So the dress code is fairly relaxed. They have country casual as their
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overall umbrella thing in the evening, but in practice I found people do tend to dress
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fairly relaxed and certainly up in the buffet you can go in shorts and wear your baseball cap
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if you want to in the evenings. So it's pretty informal from that perspective. Some people of course
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do get dressed up particularly on the captain's welcome farewell party. But overall the dress
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code is pretty relaxed. So if you're one of those people that like to really get glitzed and dressed up
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you can, but you're probably going to be more of the exception. The service is very personal
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it's very friendly, it's not very formal and stuff like some of the luxury lines and premium lines
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can be. It's fairly informal. They get to know your name. And so the whole ambiance, the people
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on board, it's quite relaxed. So it's luxury, it's premium, but it's relaxed. So if you're
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looking for a slightly more relaxed experience, then definitely Oceania, I would say, is a pro
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for you. Most people would say that the biggest provostiania, and I certainly think they believe it's their
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biggest pro based on the amount of effort they put against it, is food in the whole culinary experience
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So, for example, they've actually trademarked the line finest cuisine at sea. So that's how strongly
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they believe in it. They also, and I think this is true, certainly all the research I did seems to
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confirm it. They spend the most on food per passenger, certainly in the category. So there is
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That's a real big focus around food. The food, they have a relationship and a partnership with a celebrity chef who's actually
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French but now based in the US. He used to actually be the chef for two or three of the French presidents and his name is
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Jacques Pepin. On some of the biggest ships they have a whole culinary center They also have culinary focused excursions They have food and wine excursions And during the course of the cruise they also have special pairing dinners They have various tastings of different
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types of drinks. So there's a really big focus around food and drinks. Certainly in the main
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dining room, the menu is enormous menu. It's mind-boggling huge. The quality of the food
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I would say, in the buffet restaurant is amongst the highest. The quality is really in the
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ingredients. So certainly if you are really into food and that really turns you on and it's
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important to your cruicitical with Oceania because bear in mind they are on the premium luxury end
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so they are not as expensive as some of the ultra luxury lines, but you're going to get a great
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experience. And certainly that's one of the things they would win most awards are in the area of
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food. Link to that for me, the fourth biggest pro of Oceania is the fact that so much of the dining
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experience is included within your fare. So on many of the other premium or luxury
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lines, you'll find that specialised dining is expensive, but all of that is included within
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your fare on Oceania, which is a real big plus. So let's take a look at what you actually get from a
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food perspective. And again, I'll perhaps use the example of insignia, which I am just most recently
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off. So you have the grand dining room, breakfast, lunch, dinner, most days, massive big menus
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wait-to-service, incredible choice, really good food. You then have the terrace cafe buffet
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which I really like. It's hugely popular. And in the evenings, they'll often have themed evenings
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One of the big pluses is they have fantastic sushi at lunchtime, really, really great sushi, which is again included in the fair
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You then have out on the pool deck, you have wave grill, which has sort of a healthy breakfast, and then actually at lunch
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They have the unhealthy side. So great hamburgers, hot dogs, that kind of stuff at lunchtime
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So again, informal dining. They have afternoon tea about four o'clock every afternoon on Sydney
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It was up in Horizons. This is a great traditional food served at your
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table with a trolley full of scones and cakes and sandwiches and all that kind of stuff
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Again, included within the fair. Room service, completely included within the fair 24 hours a day
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You also have baristas where you get your speciality coffee and snacks during the day. And I really like the fact that you do get speciality coffees and that's all included as a big
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fan of coffee. In terms of speciality restaurants, there are slight differences between the smaller R-class ships like insignia that I was on
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and the bigger ships like Riviera. So for example, on the regatta, insignia, Nautica Serena
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you have Toscana, which is the Italian restaurant, with probably one of the biggest Italian
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menus I've ever seen, really nice Italian food. And then they have Polo Grill, which is the
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steakhouse and the seafood restaurant. That was the one that people absolutely loved
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And as I mentioned, that is included within the fair. Once you get onto the other ships in Marina
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Riviera, you've got Jacques, which is French, you've got Red Ginger, which is Asian, and Tuscan
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which is their steakhouse. So special dining included for me a big pro. Another really big
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pro is unlike even some of the premium and other luxury lines much more is included within
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the fare so that's a really big plus. So they have what's known as O-Life fairs. And what
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O-Life fairs normally include is they can include airfare. Of course you can strip that out if you
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want. You of course get your usual things accommodation and all the dining as I've said. You also get
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Wi-Fi included now it's basic Wi-Fi and you can connect one device per room at a time
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They do have a faster, more streaming service which is available, which costs at the time
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that I was cruising $9.99 a day and certainly it was really good. I was able to do streaming
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I was able to watch things on streaming I was able to do FaceTime with home Also within their life phase you then get to choose one of three things You can either choose to have excursions So there a number of excursions included based on how long your cruise is You choose to have the house beverage package or you can choose to have onboard credit
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All those things are included within the fair. Now there are some big watchouts and probably some cons to some of those things that I'll talk about in the cons section
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But certainly there are much more things included within the fare. What's not included is excursions if you don't take the O-Life package and gratuities are not included
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Those are the two main on costs. And of course, if you haven't taken the beverage package, beverages are on-cost
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So those are the key pros of Oceania. What about the cons? What do I think are the cons
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Those are the downs of the downs of the downs of the downs of the downs of cruising on Oceania that you need to bear in mind as you decide if this is a cruise line for you
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For me, the first key con is actually some of the downsides of the inclusions and the O-Life
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So when you look at booking the fair, you do need to understand there are some limits to what's actually included
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So although it sounds great that you might get excursions or you might get the house beverage package, there are some limitations
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So let me run through those. First of all, the free internet, you can only connect one device at a time
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So if there's two of you in the cabin and you want to be on line at the same time, you do have to buy a second package or you have to keep logging on
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and off. So that's important to bear in mind with the internet. If you buy the beverage package
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it's the basic standard beverage package. So you only get your wines and beers included at
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mealtime, so lunch and dinner. So if you want to drink around the ship at any other time
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you do have to pay for those. You can then upgrade to their more premium package
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which at the time of recording was around about $2025 per person per day. And then you can
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have drinks any time of the day, whatever you want. And it's a pretty big, expansive program
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So bearing that in mind if you're going for the beverage package. If you go for excursions, there are limitations
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So, for example, a nine-day cruise would have four excursions, but that's four excursions in total
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So if there's two of you in a cabin and you're going on an excursion, there's only basically two sets of excursions
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because you're going to use up two of those for one outing for the two of you
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So that is important to bear in mind if you go for the excursion option
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So what do I do? I actually go for the onboard credit option
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because the onboard credit, I think, is pretty generous. I had close to $400 for the cabin that I was in
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And then you can then allocate that between drinks or excursions or cover gratuities if you want to use it for that
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But certainly everyone I spoke to there really liked and spoke about the O-Life fairs
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where you have a choice of what you want to include or exclude based on your preferences
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So there's some cons to it, but there's, of course, some big pros to it
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The second con is really a function of the fact that it's a much smaller ship with less people
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But I would say you don't go on an ocean a cruise for the entertainment
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You go on for other things, the experience, the smaller ships, the food, the more casual
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environment. Entertainment is fine. There's not a huge amount of entertainment. So they do
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have the lounge where they will have something on in the evenings. So they have a small
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troop of singers who will perform various review type shows. They will have some guest artists
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on board. But there's not a big, you know, you don't have big glitzy production shows
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and it's definitely much lower key. Certainly they were extremely well attended
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Maybe that's a function of the fact that's not lots of entertainment on board, but the evening shows were packed out because I guess there's less options
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The daily program is not a massive big daily program. There's normally going to be activities on
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but again, it's fairly low key, so you might have table tennis competitions or deck games
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or crazy golf games You might have the odd quiz going on but there not jam packed full of activities They do have a library on board so you can go and get books up if you want to but it is definitely a much lower key thing So I would say if you the sort of person that likes lots of entertainment and wants to be entertained rather than entertain yourself definitely Oceania is more of a con from that perspective
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On some of the biggest ships, they do have a culinary center where you can go on cooking classes and you will, of course, have various cooking demonstrations on all of the ships at various times
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One of the other things that they do have on the cruise in terms of entertainment is enrichment
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So they had, for example, on the cruise I was on, they had Elektra, who is very popular on board Oceania
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and she gave talks pretty much every single day. And again, they were packed out
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They're really busy, partly because I think people go on board are interested in enrichment
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and again, also maybe because there's not lots of other choices I think to do, so people gravitate towards those sort of things
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Possibly another con of cruising on Oceania is the dress code. The dress code is much more unpredictable
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So on the cruise I was on, I found the level of dress code was probably a little bit on the smart
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other side although it was casual. Other people who've been on the cruise before to me said it was much more you know casual overall. So if you are the sort of person that is really likes to get
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doled up and dressed up, bear in mind you are not necessarily going to be surrounded by other people
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So if you go on other cruise lines which have much stricter dress codes then you're going to find
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that you know the style of dress is very different. So I put that as a con because I know some
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people really like the dressing up some people don't like the dressing up. So it depends on where
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you're coming from. So for some people it's a con for other people it's a massive big plus
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The other con area or watcher that I want to talk about is who I think Oceania is for because I think
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it is for a very specific type of person. So let me explain that in more detail. Most of the people
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you're going to find in Oceania are couples. They will largely sort of be 50, 60s and above
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although you will find a good spattering of ages. So on my cruise, for example
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and when I've been on Oceania before, there have been perhaps a multi-generational family with kids
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traveling probably in their early 20s. On my cruise there was a couple of couples who were
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probably late 20s, early 30s. So it does get a diverse range but the bulk of people are
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going to be 50s 60 70s. Lots of Americans, it's a very popular American line, but on the
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cruise I was on there was something like 20 different nationalities. So we had lots of Germans, we had some, lots of Danish, we had some UK, some Australians. So it is
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quite diverse leaning a little bit more towards American. If you're a solo traveler, they
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don't have solar cabs. I actually went on my cruise as a solo traveler but I was paying for
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effectively for dual occupancy of the caverns. They don't have solar cabins. They do have
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some solo meetups but it's not massively geared towards the solar travelers. So if you're
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very comfortable with that paying that premium and you like the idea of what ocean
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offer with food, certainly I was made to feel very welcome on board by both the passengers
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and the crew. If you're a family, I don't think ocean is for you. They don't have kids
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clubs, they don't have programs for kids and it's not really geared towards kids at all
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They do have some cabins where you can sleep three people but it's not geared towards kids
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There is one key exception and that's in Alaska. So when the Oceania ships head to Alaska
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they do have a Alaska Explorer youth program which is targeted at kids between the ages of
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sort of five and 12. So that's the only key exception. But I don't think Oceania is really for families
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and facilities and actually I don't think the passengers are looking for kids on board because
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it's a much more adult experience. Oceania cruises. I loved my time on Oceania Cruises had a great time
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I like the mix of high quality being a little bit more relaxed, particularly as I was doing
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in the Caribbean. I have loads more tips, videos about Oceania, the Caribbean and cruising in
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general. So why don't you watch another one of those right now
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