I read the subscriber’s letter praising Oceania Cruises’ “Sun-Splashed Holiday” (May ’11, pg. 27). I was a passenger on the same sailing of the Regatta, Dec. 22, 2010-Jan. 2, 2011, cruising from Miami through the Caribbean. I have taken this holiday cruise every year for the past five years.
The subscriber wrote, “The brochure plainly states, ‘Oceania Cruises… are designed for adults and do not provide for the care, entertainment or supervision of children’.”*
On this cruise, however, for the first time in my experience with the company, Oceania did provide entertainment for children. As part of the “Junior Cruisers” program, there were six events per day, including golf putting contests, Ping-Pong, scavenger hunts, kids’ trivia and disco dances.
All of these events were led by the ship’s staff. Oceania touts a high ratio of staff to guests. Any time spent by the staff with children is time the staff is not spending with adults.
More than once during this cruise, I was socializing with a staff member and some kid butted right in.
Additionally, parents would go on shore and leave the kids to run around the ship. There were no checks in place to monitor where those kids were or who was watching them.
I pay a large price to go on a “premium line” (and, in order to have a single room, pay 200% of the per-person, double-occupancy price). I do not expect to be run off the staircase by hordes of kids or have them play the piano during dinner in the Grand Dining Room. (I complained; they were removed.)
I wrote a letter to Oceania regarding all this and received two replies. The first was a fairly generic response saying they would look into my concerns. The second was very polite; however, the bottom line was that because it was the holidays, they had more kids than they might otherwise have had. Therefore, it was at their discretion that they would provide programs for the children.
There did not appear, to me, to be more kids on the cruise this time than in prior years.
I am pretty disgusted over this issue. It is clearly contrary to their stated policy. If I had wanted to travel on a ship with kids’ activities, I would go on a Disney or Carnival cruise. If Oceania continues its policy of entertaining kids, there is a lot of cruise line competition out there to choose from.
KAREN CALDICOTT
San Diego, CA
*Oceania Cruises’ website states this within the Passenger Ticket Contract: “Children: Carrier requires that Guests under the age of 21 must be accompanied by and occupy the same accommodations as a parent or other responsible adult 21 years or older who shall remain responsible for the conduct of such children at all times during the Cruise or CruiseTour. We do not provide services for the care, entertainment or supervision of children. Each adult Guest hereby agrees and warrants that he/she will supervise any accompanying children at all times to ensure these policies, along with all other rules of the Carrier and Ship, are strictly adhered to.”
ITN sent copies of Ms. Caldicott’s letter to Oceania Cruises (8300 NW 33rd St., Ste. 308, Miami, FL 33122) in May 2011 and received no reply. In a follow-up, on June 12, 2011, Ms. Caldicott e-mailed, “I just came back from a 12-day Oceania cruise aboard the ‘Regatta,’ San Francisco-Alaska-Vancouver. There were about 540 passengers on board, including, as expected, a few children. There were NO special activities for the children, as I had hoped. This was not a holiday sailing. I will be sailing with Oceania again, on the new ‘Marina,’ over the holidays.”
Ms. Caldicott then wrote to ITN about her cruise aboard “Marina.” She took the West Indies “Tropical Holiday” cruise out of Miami, Dec. 22, 2011-Jan. 3, 2012, and provided the following report.
On board Marina there were about 1,250 passengers, of which perhaps 65 to 85 were children. Although, according to its literature, Marina has the same policy as Regatta regarding children, once again Oceania provided a Junior Cruisers program of events, though some of the port days did not have any Junior Cruisers activities. The event one day was making paper airplanes and tossing them through the lobby.
On this cruise, I saw kids in the hot tub (where signage states users “must be 18”), eating food while in the hot tub and in the pool, throwing each other around in the pool and running around the pool deck.
There was a one-year-old in a raft in the pool who was not wearing plastic diaper pants. I complained to the concierge about a possible e-coli problem; they wouldn’t do anything.
Kids also were goofing around with the elevators, and at an evening show in the lounge, children ran around the stage (two laps), but no one did anything.
My cabin was next to some grandparents whose grandchildren ran up and down the hallway to visit them.
My complaints to staff and the concierge fell on deaf ears. I spoke with the Cruise Ambassador. She claimed that the families were coming out of Miami. She ‘gets it’ but said, “Oceania doesn’t know what to do about the kids.”
To me, the bottom line is that Oceania’s Miami-to-Miami “Tropical Holiday” cruise is a family cruise. I had signed up for the 2012-2013 Miami-to-Miami sailing but canceled it and booked their Los Angeles-to-Miami cruise instead.
Oceania is choosing to entertain kids. In doing this, they are sacrificing their target market.
KAREN CALDICOTT
In February 2012 ITN again wrote to Oceania Cruise with copies of Ms. Caldicott’s cruise appraisals plus related materials. The following was received in a reply.
Thank you for giving Oceania Cruises the opportunity to respond to the letters ITN received from our valued guest Karen Caldicott.
The vast majority of guest feedback regarding misbehaved children on our ships is limited to the Holiday Season, when families travel together. While we do advertise that we will not formally create a children’s program, we have found it helpful to organize activities for children during these cruises so that they do not entertain themselves at the expense of other guests on board. Call it a “Containment Strategy.”
Additionally, going forward, we will be making it more explicit in our contract that Oceania Cruises reserves the right to disembark any child, and accompanying parent or guardian, who is detrimental to the comfort, enjoyment or safety of other guests.
GARY GERBINO, Vice President, Corporate Communications, Prestige Cruise Holdings (for Oceania Cruises), Miami, FL 33122
