Oceania Riviera Cruise Ship: Review, Photos & Departure Ports on Cruise Critic
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To start, try the sushi, duck and watermelon salad or summer rolls. For your main, consider the miso-glazed sea bass, lobster pad thai, bulgogi ribeye steak or red curry chicken. You might think dessert is a non-starter, but the caramel tapioca was tasty, and the soft ice cream with Japanese togarashi is a fun mix of sweet and spicy. The Terrace Café is Vista's buffet venue with indoor and outdoor seating. The stunning wall mosaics set the tone for the sophisticated spread you can sample here. Think daily sushi, an array of fine cheeses, made-to-order omelets, pasta and steaks and premium ice cream (including one Humphry Slocombe flavor at lunch and dinner).
Review: Oceania Vista
Toscana is Oceania's long-standing Italian restaurant, but on Vista, it's newly enhanced with dishes created by the ship's godmother, Italian food star Giada De Laurentiis. If you enjoy veal, this is your spot; nearly half of the secondi menu consists of veal dishes (you can also order lamb and roast suckling pig here). While it was perhaps not my favorite dining venue on board, the salmon I ordered was cooked perfectly, so moist and tender that I raved about it for the rest of the cruise. Folks at my table ordered everything from filet mignon to a whole Maine lobster, and everyone was satisfied with their choices. On the opposite end of the spectrum is Polo Grill, Vista's fanciest restaurant, where dinners can take hours.
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It's a good thing most of Vista's sailings are 10 days or longer, so you have ample time to sample all the dining venues and even make repeat visits to your favorites. At 684 passengers, the ship is large enough to have most of the familiar attributes of a cruise ship, but onboard the environment is intimate -- and quiet. Oceania went all-out when designing the cabins aboard Vista, all of which offer private balconies. In fact, even the smallest room is still generously-sized at 261 square feet, and the bulk of cabins onboard hover around 300 square feet, leaving plenty of space to lounge around.
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I saw lots of the same faces playing table tennis, paddle tennis, putting, croquet, bocce and shuffleboard. Pre-dinner, I relished a talented female string quartet playing classical music in the Grand Bar, although the adjacent Martinis lounge was the busiest and buzziest. Post-dinner, I attended a musical show or two starring shipboard singers and dancers in the Riviera Lounge, which were okay, much like those on luxury lines. The casino was sometimes busy when I looked; with many early morning excursions, passengers tend to turn in early, although some head to Horizons for nightcaps and dancing to a live band.
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For example, a cruise that lasts up to 24 days earns one credit, cruises for days receive two credits, and trips longer than 158 days get 15 credits. Every room has a veranda, plus space for storage, rain showers in the bathrooms and upscale furnishings. Those who want to make like Magellan can book the 180-day around-the-world cruise starting at $48,499. A shorter, but still luxurious, 72-day itinerary in Asia starts at $19,599.
Aquamar Spa + Vitality Center is a rather glam and worthwhile destination for its vast array of services, from facials, detox wraps and massages to medi-spa. It offers complimentary fitness classes, like spinning and Pilates. The sauna and steam are open to any guest; no need for a treatment. Aquamar Spa Terrace features a thalassotherapy pool and whirlpools, open post-treatment or to spa-dwellers. The big adjacent fitness center offers the typical TechnoGym equipment like stair climbers, weight machines and treadmills. This spa also offers specific shore excursions dubbed Wellness Discovery Tours, like visiting hammams in port.
Oceania Vista Dining: Restaurants & Food on Cruise Critic - Cruise Critic
Oceania Vista Dining: Restaurants & Food on Cruise Critic.
Posted: Fri, 14 Jul 2023 05:56:29 GMT [source]
Passengers on Riviera are older -- expect most to fall into the 65-plus category, though the age skews younger when itineraries are shorter. Most of them are American, with Canadians, Brits and Australians rounding out the mix, but passengers from many other countries often sail. You'll also find a few families onboard during the summer and around the holidays, when kids are free from the shackles of school. A recent renovation to Riviera updated some of the public areas and suite categories as part of the OceaniaNEXT program during an early 2019 dry-dock in Marseille.
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Its dining system doesn't work so well on weeklong cruises, forcing passengers to miss out on the much-touted specialty restaurants or eat rather late. While we enjoyed every meal and loved the variety, we weren't always blown away by main courses (though some are standouts), and desserts were lacking. Spa treatments and shore excursions seem overpriced for the industry, and service is not as proactive as one might expect on so small and nice a ship. Many on our cruise complained about long waits for service for food and drink.
A wider variation of cultures can be found on world cruises, and a slightly younger crowd sails the Caribbean itineraries. To that end, Vista sports a magnificent Library on Deck 14 that is divided into three sections -- all of which are just steps away from the nearby Baristas coffee bar and the brand-new onboard Bakery. Hundreds of titles are present, from modern fiction to classics, and with a generous selection of nonfiction books covering a plethora of topics -- including maritime history, for those interested. On all ships, Oceania Cruises offers Go Green Tours, where cruisers engage with residents and businesses on conserving and sustaining surrounding environments.
The newest Oceania ships are the Vista, which set sail in 2023, and the Allura, which is scheduled to sail in 2025. Both of these are on the larger end of its fleet, with a capacity for 1,210 passengers. Depending on how long you want to sail and where you’re going, you can find itineraries as short as seven days and longs as a whopping 200 days. It goes against our guidelines to offer incentives for reviews. People who write reviews have ownership to edit or delete them at any time, and they’ll be displayed as long as an account is active. My request to cancel a cruise was dealt with efficiently and sympathetically.
Months later, I can still taste the illy crema, a frozen blend primarily of espresso and cream, at Baristas. I currently crave Waves Grill’s fragrant vanilla-forward milkshakes, and Wagyu burgers, their juices dripping down my hands. I see the tall chef in a tall toque expertly carving a crackling-skinned whole suckling pig at lunchtime in the Terrace Café.
Riviera hits the sweet spot for food and wine devotees, delivering exceptional cuisine, wine pairing extravaganzas, and culinary and vintner-driven shore excursions. Pickleball devotees will be happy to know there is an outdoor court; golf putting greens, shuffleboard, and lawn games like cornhole line the top deck, too. The resort-like pool is a popular space to hang, and at night, guests can visit the casino, the adjacent Founder's Bar (where drinks come smoking, scented, and otherwise made to be photographed), the theater, and the piano bar.
Oceania offers a great middle ground in terms of experience and offerings—both grand and cozy, with a wider range of fare options than luxury lines, since it’s not all-inclusive. Go for excellent food and beverage, unique ports, good service, and a comfortable space you’ll be happy to come back to at the end of busy days on land. Vista is not an all-inclusive ship, but it's more inclusive than lines such as Celebrity Cruises or Holland America. Its fares cover all dining (except for private, wine-paired dinners), fitness classes, nonalcoholic beverages and in-port shuttles.
Polo Grill steakhouse’s bacon rolls were insane; don’t do as I did, which is eat the entire breadbasket before the big beefy main event. If Asian-fusion Red Ginger ever loses the lobster pad Thai, I think passengers (including me) would revolt. I often revisited Toscana, for its hand-fashioned pastas and rolling olive oil cart. What’s better than dipping fresh-baked focaccia into markedly different olive oils? I barely went to the beautiful afternoon teas but when I did, the flaky scones made me swoon.
I fall into the latter category, so I loved that I could eat at a different restaurant each night of my cruise on Vista. Even a three-week cruise earns just one credit, which means it can take some time to reach the first elite tier — Bronze, which requires five credits. Even though they’re part of the same holding company, you won’t earn Oceania credits when sailing with Norwegian or Regent Seven Seas. Oceania Cruises is a high-end cruise line with a reputation for excellent dining and the ability to visit a wider variety of ports because its ships aren’t as large as the typical cruise liner.
The line's Culinary Center has been dramatically expanded aboard Vista, and features interactive cooking stations with induction ranges next to an adjacent classroom for demonstrations and presentations. Everything about Vista feels, well, la dolce vita -- for a fraction of the price. If there's an immediate con of the ship, it's that ceilings in general in several public spaces feel rather low compared with other vessels. If you're over six foot two, you might have to watch your step. Travelers tend to fall into the older age ranges (50 and up), are well traveled (and often avid cruisers) and hail mostly from the U.S. and Canada, with Brits and Australians making up the balance. On our school break sailing, we did see a handful of kids and younger adult travelers.
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