Ovation of the Seas Review

4.5 / 5.0
757 reviews

I won't be sailing on Ovation again.. NO WAY...Give me P&O or Princess Cruises a

Review for Australia & New Zealand Cruise on Ovation of the Seas
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Beatriz_Imre
10+ Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: Dec 2019
Cabin: Interior with Virtual Balcony

Well to start with too many people not enough shops, lines to get on the dodgem cars and the free flying we couldn't even use.it was totally booked out.the food was good. The desserts not. Joffe the mc was funny, but gave out wrong times to get to eg.breakfast on the last day as he announced it will open at 5 a.m. so we get there at 5 a.m. and there's a sign saying 6:30 opens fantastic. Found when we were freezing when on the tender, when we asked the officer to pleaze shut the plastic doors a flat no was given.but the nice crew member pulled it at least more than half way for us.very disorganised when it came to getting events right.the popular bar near the photo shop should have more setting and made bigger as whenever we went it was always full.found the Romania girl in the guess shop,sour and not happy at all. The only person on the shop that helped everyone and was very customer focused was the Canadian lady Cassandra she was fantastic. When I asked one of the crew members at the pursers office who was Caribbean or Jamaican he was in an officers dark blue suit but I didn't take note of his name for some help didn't want to help virtually Shrugged me away and had the attitude, don't ask me. very bad customer service that one. The crew members in the dining were wonderful they are always happy and bubbly but the thing that annoyed me was they wouldn't stop asking you consistently how the food was, you were consistently bothered while you're trying to have dinner at the dining table.I had to talk to my partner all the time so that the head maitre d wouldn't bother us. and asking us at least three times in a row on three nights in a row if we wanted to buy a 5 course meal it was ridiculous we told them already no. and being asked every single night to buy the dinners, as on the menu there are free dinners but there's also dinners that you can purchase we had to consistently say no that we don't want to do that I never found this on any of the P&O cruise ships because we like fine dining and never had that problem .Also with the cruise I had an incident that happened to me when I was in the theatre on our 3rd last night. I was hit on the head by a person behind me because he wasn't happy that I was taking shots with my phone and as you're allowed to take photos with your iPhone there's no reason for him to strike me which I put in incident report and don't even know what happened after that it was like 3 days to go on the cruise and believe you me it took away everything from even attending to any theatres or anywhere I didn't feel safe the crew members did not come to find out about me to see if I was ok I was actually traumatised by that. As it's a salt it's abuse and this person should have been removed and put in the brig for what he did. There was no feedback to me on what he had said and why he did this but I reported this because I was worried that he would do this to someone else he also screamed at me by telling me to put my phone down were there was a lady next to me and her husband was scared and made her put her phone down I couldn't sit in my chair after that so I said to her no I'm not taking this I'm going to report him but they did not get back to me with his name nothing nothing was given to me and there was no apology written at all I wasn't given the option to follow this up as they did not come to my cabin to see if I was ok, on top of that we were all traumatised by The White Island incident which the captain did not even let us know any information hardly anything was said so we had to go to our cabin to find out all the issues with this from Sky News they told us everything. There was no service on board for any of the people that died and of course we didn't go to Dunedin or the sounds which as being a very expensive cruise we were only given back compensation of $100 each some people only got $30 back in Australian currency the other thing I found everything was in American currency and when you take your 35% off for example your bags guess you gotta add 30% on with the Australian dollars. And being not leather I can actually get cheaper in Australia when I go to the sales and buy leather so I didn't buy any of the goods. Some of the staff didn't want to help u with this. With being the majority of people on this cruise were all Australian as they did say there was only 395 Americans on board I can't remember how many Chinese or others' minority was on board but if it's going to be based in Australia they should start to think about the Australian currency. The lifts were a nightmare you found that majority of the time you had to wait so long for the lift to come so we actually use the stairs a lot especially running down as we were on the 12th floor. Also we weren't given any information of what was going to be on the criteria for certain nights as we only found out when we were on there that there was a Hawaiian night I actually rang the cruise line before we sailed they told me there was going to be a white night but there wasn't but they didn't tell me that there was going to be a Hawaiian night which there was so heads up on that also I've cruised all my life I've done at least 30 cruises and can I say this was the worst cruise I've ever been on and won't be going back on ovation of the Seas at all very disappointed with the treatment the organisation the non supportiveness of me with an incident such as being hit on my head by somebody that I don't even know, who does that very dangerous and very unacceptable, he should have been put in the brig shows me that this person has violent Tendencies that's for sure if he has the guts to do that to a woman that he doesn't even know while she's sitting in the chair in front of him he also waited for my partner to leave before he did that as my partner left to go and get seating in another venue as you had to get there early to get seats as there's 5000 people on this cruise at this time very very disappointed also we found that with the announcements of what the chefs where cooking as they made a cake for the last night they announced it was a cheesecake massive cake but no it wasn't it was a sponge and butter cream cake quite funny actually but these are things that happened consistently. the only best desserts that we had was the ones that we bought from a coffee shop on the promenade deck. There is a part of the ship which you won't hear the announcements by the way it is the solarium area. We called that the quiet zone so you didn't have anybody in there under the age of 18. I also found that the toilet doors near the theatre the show areas they wouldn't lock so used to just go to one toilet as was the only one that had a lock that worked that was a bit funny as well for such an incredible ship I thought it was refurbished but looks like they missed the door handles on the toilets in the public areas. We were told that we would get a survey to fill in it's been a month and we still haven't received one this is why I'm writting it here. No matter what, if you choose to go on this ship good luck as I've given you a heads up,we certainly won't be going back on it.

Cabin Review

Interior with Virtual Balcony

The cabin was nice very comfortable bed I can't say anything bad about our cabin I really did like our cabin and the bathroom was lovely no complaints at all it was kept beautifully by the stuff that cleaned it I was very happy with our cabin.

Port Reviews

Auckland

Auckland is a beautiful city it was quite cool as you know you get many different types of weather in one day it poured rain was sunny afterwards windy it was wonderful though and I love the city I had a great time on the city tour bus I think that was worth it but I wouldn't take any other tools as it wasn't cheap it cost us both $95 to go on a tour bus it's called the hop-on hop-off bus go on the yellow one it actually comes quicker than the red one and you need more time to see everything but Auckland we did love very much

Tauranga

It is one of the most beautiful places along with the Bay of Islands which we found was absolutely stunning and lucky we didn't take any of the tools we found them way way overpriced and very dangerous there's no way I would ever go on a volcano that is about to go off

Picton

Picton is beautiful and picturesque not much there but very pretty and great for you to walk around for the day feed the ducks we got off very early 7:30 we were off we went back on the ship for lunch and we got back off and went for another walk very pretty and lovely people the markets were fantastic really like that a lot

Bay of Islands

Wedding take an excursion know we just caught the free bus that took us into the city there's two little areas and that was great we just walked around did our own thing bought some beautiful locally grown cherries absolutely beautiful the flavour you could really taste the cherries nothing like that that I've tasted in Sydney or in Queensland great people very friendly very helpful really enjoyed just being in the city

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