Oceania Cruises
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Worst cruise we have ever had
Without going into great detail this is a very short version of our dreadful experience, there is a lot more to write however it would require a couple more pages. There was an outbreak about 5 days after embarkation of a nasty respiratory infection which was totally ignored by Oceania and began infecting healthy guests. Many people had developed a deep wet throaty infectious cough which was highly contagious and spreading quickly unfortunately they were not asked to isolate or kindly wear a mask to protect other guests and crew. The deep wet cough was heard everywhere, in the tenders, coaches, gymnasium, restaurants and around the open food buffet where people were spreading the infection and droplets going over the food. After numerous and continuous complaints the only response Oceania had given was a week prior to disembarkation when they put a note in the daily currents paper and a few announcements to ask guests if they would consider wearing a mask and added a few more sanitiser stations however way too little too late. We felt absolutely helpless because it was just ignored by Oceania whom were meant to pride themselves in health and safety, several guests were taken away by ambulance some of which we knew had the respiratory infection. We met an entertainment couple toward the end of our cruise who said they had never experienced feeling so uncomfortable with hearing continuous infectious coughs whilst performing in the Riviera lounge, they were very concerned about the spread they had been subjected to to and also the lack of response from Oceania. My husband and I boarded in peak health and fitness and got quite sick about 10 days into the cruise and isolated in our stateroom and totally missed Christmas Day and New Year Eve. We even had to ask our butlers to wear a mask whilst cleaning our room to protect themselves and others onboard along with asking them to ensure clean cleaning cloths be used as staterooms either side of us and not to mention all the others had infected guests and wondered why Oceania had not asked this of their crew members, guests should not have had to ask. I wrote several detailed emails to Oceania’s head office informing them of our dreadful experience and extremely disappointed with their reply, our very expensive 32 night cruise from Cape Town to Singapore had been totally ruined due to their lack of protocol. Staff should have been handing out masks and asking guests to kindly use sanitiser as there was an infection onboard instead they just put their heads in the sand and showed lack of concern for the health and safety of passengers, if they had tried to at least contain it in the first instance I doubt many of us would have fallen sick. The onboard medical centre charges were absolutely outrageous so guests were not going but instead waiting until we arrived at ports to obtain antibiotics from over the counter pharmacies, luckily many had packed their own. Our medical bill for COVID. SARS and influenza swabs along with antibiotics and cough lozenges was just under AUD$3,000 and this was an inexpensive visit compared to many. We missed 3 excursions whilst isolating and finally were able to go on our fourth, we went to the Riviera lounge and got our tender ticket for the excursion. Unfortunately there were so many guests coughing that I went up to the destinations staff to ask why they were not handing out masks and expecting healthy guests to mix with infectious guests in such confined space, we were not comfortable and ended up handing our ticket back as we did not want to get reinfected. Shame on you Oceania for not acting promptly with protocols in place for such outbreaks as other cruise lines have. You have apologised to reviewers about not acting promptly however it did nothing for our disastrous cruise experience and you just get away with a simple apology for your mistakes meanwhile we lost thousands on a cruise we could not wait to disembark.