Oceania Marina Baltic Cruise Review

Oceania Marina Baltic Cruise Second-Rate Despite Fine Itinerary

 The Oceania Marina is a fine new ship, in service since 2011, with little signs of wear to its fixtures.  Our stateroom, as mentioned previously, was first-rate and so are most of the public areas. But after completing our Oceania Marina Baltic Cruise, we won’t book Oceania for another sailing.

Even considering our lengthy history with the cruise line going back to the R-Ships, breaking up is not that hard to do. We decided never to sail Oceania again in the finals days of our Baltic cruise. It was a surprise decision, something we never imagined. Oceania was the cruise line we’d always told others was “our favorite.”  We tell them a different story now.  It’s not as good as it was, that they can sail most of the same itineraries for far less.

What did we find so unsatisfactory we won’t sail Oceania again?  Based on our expensive experience, Oceania has become a second-rate, lower quality version of its former self.  Oceania wasn’t operating like an upper premium  cruise line should. (This link suddenly no longer works. Why? Answer at  the end.) Perhaps the most obvious example of its decline is our blog describing how our cruise began in Stockholm, Sweden.  The Marina was the only cruise ship not docked near a terminal and the Marina did not offer any sort of shelter for its arriving travelers. As a result, a good number of passengers were forced to stand in the rain, waiting in line to board. Not the kind of treatment you would expect from an upper premium class cruise line, (Thankfully, we were lucky enough to board before it rained.)

This blog will deal more with day-to-day concerns. And it should be pointed out we were not the only ones dissatisfied with Oceania last summer.

Oceania Marina Main Dining RoomOceania Main Dining Room meals are as subdued as the decor

The travel agent who booked our cruise is with one of the country’s largest agencies. After we returned home,  he asked about our experience on the Oceania Marina. We told him how much the dining had deteriorated. He wasn’t surprised, saying “Other passengers had said the same thing, that the food had declined and that they were cutting back on quality.”

Our poor Oceania experience was not out of the ordinary.

Marina  Dining Hit and Miss   

Dining is one of the most important aspects of any cruise, but particularly on one like Oceania which touts “The Finest Cuisine at Sea.”   

That was not our overall experience in the main dining room or Terrace Café. While we were served numerous picturesque dishes, many were bland, tasteless and totally forgettable. Imagine being trapped on a ship dedicated to the current cuisine fad favoring presentation over flavor, of feeding the eyes and ignoring one’s taste buds. Such frou-frou sometimes resulted in unappetizing combinations. One night in the main dining room, I couldn’t find an appealing appetizer or salad.  That was a remarkable kitchen accomplishment.

Some other passengers avoided the main dining room for a different reason. One Canadian woman explained once there was enough for her because  “It’s just too pretentious.”  Pretentious is a term you don’t often hear, so I was surprised to hear the same term from several American couples at separate times about the pompous attitude in general of the cruise staff and particularly at public functions. Grandiosity definitely did flow at the cocktail party for past Oceania passengers, but that silliness  didn’t really concern us.

The poor dining did.  For breakfast, the only place we visited was the Terrace Café because service in the main dining room was sometimes slow. The waiters there did their best but it was obvious they were understaffed, especially in the evenings.  With the Marina visiting a new port almost every day, we didn’t want to waste time waiting to be served breakfast. Although the dining room might offer more variety than the buffet, in our experience most cruise lines vary their breakfast buffet from day-to-day to prevent monotonous selections.

Same Food, Always Lukewarm

Breakfast in the Terrace Café, however, varied little. It did become too repetitive.  A single new egg dish might appear every other day while pancakes and waffles  were infrequent. What also never changed was how the buffet warming pans were poorly heated. The way to avoid lukewarm/chilly eggs was forego the buffet pans for the Terrace grill where they could be freshly prepared. A similar option for heating other “warm” buffet items did not exist. Too bad there wasn’t a microwave available. As for breakfast pastries, they were nothing to look forward to. Many were unusually dry, somewhat crumbly and with negligible taste. Bread was the safest bet.

Oceania Marina Jacques French Bistro Specialty RestaurantJacques French Bistro was sometimes open for lunch

For lunch, you will not go wrong at the outdoor Waves Grill. Wonderful sandwiches made fresh to order with no effort to dumb down their taste. The selection was large enough for a new sandwich every day for a week.  The Waves Grill was a viable lunchtime option for the Terrace Café which started out strong but gradually deteriorated.

The Terrace Cafe at both lunch and dinner was consistently reliable for its sushi and its salads, especially the individual Caesar salads made to order quickly. In the evening, its  grill also was dependable for steak and  lobster. Adjacent to the grill you could have a freshly prepared different Asian wok dish most nights; those were usually excellent. Regardless of the quality of its specialty stations,  the Terrace Café’s primary flaws remained at all meals: semi-warm/cool  bland buffet foods that too often wouldn’t match a Golden Corral all-you-can-eat restaurant.

The Terrace Cafe will be remembered for the worst lasagna Linda ever tasted.  And the slice of semi-petrified apple pie with dehydrated  fillings that must have been in a freezer for a long, long time. Should have taken a photo of that.  But the dehydrated pie also explained why the breakfast pastries were so dry as well as cookies in the concierge lounge. They’d all been trapped in the same freezer.

Room Service Poor & Limited 

Room service was available virtually anytime. With the exception of its breakfast options, the menu was small, basic and never varied during the cruise. We didn’t dare request breakfast room service after making our one and only order for a simple late lunch: sandwiches and salads.  The sandwiches,  made of unusually dry bread and minimal, flavorless ingredients were left mostly uneaten.  The salads weren’t quite as bad but hardly up to Terrace Café standards. Both  sandwiches and salads tasted as if they were made days before and then shoved into a refrigerator. A good hotel would never dare offer such lousy room service fare.

Yet operating a superb room service is not beyond the ability of other cruise lines. Some gladly deliver anything from the ship’s  lunch and dinner menus while the main dining room actively serves those meals. Not on Oceania.

We cannot imagine an extended cruise on the Oceania Marina. We once spent 35 days on Holland America’s Maasdam and found the dining not only varied but exceptionally good. After 12 days on the Oceania Marina, we were eager to eat elsewhere.

Linda and I are foodies.  See our posts on cruise dining aboard the  Maasdam and  National Geographic Endeavour.  Those who praise Oceania for its  fine dining may  base it on the specialty restaurants–which, regretfully, are not open for three meals a day.  And are not representative of Oceania’s  ordinary dining venues.  

The Exceptional Specialty Restaurants

The saving grace at dinner was the four specialty restaurants: Jacques (French), Toscana (Italian), Red Ginger (Asian) and Polo
Grill .

Our meals matched  the high standards we recalled from previous cruises.  All of the Marina’s specialty restaurants do offer some of the “finest cuisine at sea.”  Unfortunately, a shortage of  dining room waiters sometimes spoiled an otherwise perfect evening.

Oceania’s no extra-charge specialty restaurants are much sought-after by passengers ravenous for quality cuisine. Except for Jacques, open for lunch on occasion, the specialty restaurants serve dinner only and require  advance reservations, which limits their access.

The specialty restaurants demonstrated the Marina could serve flavorful meals. When it chose to.

Oceania Marina Red Ginger Specialty RestaurantRed Ginger’s flavors are as pronounced as its colors

The most popular restaurant on our cruise seemed to be Red Ginger with its spicy Asian menu.   Red Ginger lives up its name. so if you don’t appreciate a pronounced ginger flavor, this isn’t the restaurant for you. We dined there twice, when all reservations were booked. Yet we noticed quite a few tables without place settings when other passengers wanted to be there. Were the restaurant’s three cooks working in view at the back of the room unable to accommodate any more diners?  Or did the vacant tables reflect a lack of servers? Or more cutting back?

Our favorite of the four restaurants was long reliable Polo Grill featuring high-grade steaks, lobster, chicken, pork and lamb. The only time we could book this restaurant was for the last night of the cruise.  This will sound exaggerated but it’s true. When I tasted the garlic mashed potatoes accompanying my entree, it was a jolt to my system. I realized how starved I was for garlic and every other flavor. This was the first and only time on the 12-day cruise I tasted any distinctive seasoning except at Red Ginger.

Our long-awaited Polo Grill evening turned into a disaster due to understaffing.  Thirty minutes after receiving our dessert menus we still were unable to order. A group of eight had arrived just as we were handed our dessert list. Our waiter and his helper were so busy attending to the new group they didn’t take time to scribble down our short order.

Tired of waiting, we left our table. We mentioned our situation to the manager, who consulted the table chart showing the tables our server was assigned. He said, “But he’s only serving 12 people. I don’t understand how this could happen.” Maybe because the arrival of eight was monopolizing his time?

Although the restaurant manager wasn’t doing anything in particular, he didn’t call for anyone to assist us or even consider helping us.  Perhaps he missed the memo about providing  “upper premium class” service?

The Moody Marina  

With the exception of The Polo Grill manager, the cruise staff always was helpful and acted friendly yet something felt off, not quite  right. Linda and I can’t put our finger on precisely what it is. We think back to other cruises.

“These people don’t seem happy.”

Indeed, they didn’t. Waiters did not joke with or act especially friendly toward passengers they saw every day. We noticed very few of the staff going out of their way to interact with passengers. Exceptions were the cruise director (he does his job well), all of the room stewards on our floor and the concierge lounge staff. They couldn’t have been nicer or more efficient.

Otherwise, whenever passengers were not gathered together, the Oceania Marina often felt like an abandoned ship.

Oceania Cruises Sold To NCL

The very day we disembark the Marina, it was announced that Prestige Cruise Holdings– parent company of Oceania Cruises and Regent Seven Seas Cruises—had sold both cruise lines to Norwegian Cruise Line. No wonder Oceania crew members were unhappy. They had to be wondering their futures under new ownership since rumors of the impending sale must have been well known.

Reading the NCL press release confirmed our impression that the dining had deteriorated noticeably.  As our travel agent later pointed out, Oceania probably cut back on dining quality in order to increase its profit line before completing the sale to NCL. Cutting costs would also account for the chronic understaffing we encountered..

The PR release also stated NCL would pay Oceania’s parent company “a cash consideration of up to $50 million to Prestige shareholders would be payable upon achievement of certain 2015 performance metrics.”

Oceania Cruises performance metrics should place customer satisfaction near the top.  Our Oceania dining experience lowered our satisfaction with Oceania from 10 to 3 or 4. Whatever happens with NCL/Oceania in the future, for better or worse, we won’t be back to find out.  It would be too costly a gamble and, frankly, there are too many other good cruise lines to choose from less pretentious, less expensive and more dependable.  We know not to care about Oceania anymore.

This is the slowest blog in history because we  never wanted to get to where we shout “the king has no clothes!”  Ironically, Oceania’s recently updated website lacks any previous claims (dead link above)  of   its “upper premium class” status  that I can find.   New owner,  new  reality?  The latest corporate description of Oceania is of a comfortable, upscale cruise. Yet the prices remain premium class.    

Evading The Peterhof Curse, Part 3

Finding My Tour Group: Time Runs Out

(In case you’re coming in at the end of this three-part tale, it  begins at the end of this post, continues in the next one and now concludes here.)

Continuing to search for my Oceania Marina tour group, I  leave Peterhof’s Lower Gardens and go to the one spot where we should meet at some point. The overlook above Peterhof’s famous Grand Cascade with its 64 different fountains, and more than 200 bronze statues and other decorative objects. This iconic spot is a place any decent tour group should visit. It also turns out to be both a good observation post for overseeing the Lower Gardens sidewalks as well as nicely situated near Peterhof’s main exit on the right side of the palace.

I stay there, glued to the Grand Cascade overlook, never going anywhere else for photos. Yet never a glimpse of Linda or our group. I estimate the bus will depart around 12:45 p.m. since the tour is supposed to be back at the Marina at 1:30 p.m. When the group fails to appear by 12:45, I decide to search the parked rows of tour buses lining the roads behind the palace.  No Oceania bus and not a single bus driver who speaks English! It doesn’t look good for getting back with the others. At least there’s no worry about the Marina sailing without me. It’s only the first of our three days in St. Petersburg.  Still, I’ll pay dearly for getting separated; it’s bound to be an exorbitant taxi ride to the Oceania Marina.

Peterhof Grand Cascade, St. Petersburg, RussiaThe famous Grand Cascade. So much to see but not today.

At 1 p.m., I play my last option, visiting the information booth next to the main exit. Thankfully, the woman there speaks English. I explain my predicament, that undoubtedly the bus has left without me. (although deep down inside I’d really like that bus magically to appear). I explain I need to inform the Marina—and for them to let Linda know–that everything is fine despite my disappearance.  I’ll be there as soon as I can find a cab.

The woman closes the information kiosk and leads me to a large building adjacent to the main Palace. She suggests I take a chair and then walks behind closed doors into what I presume is an office area.  I sit and watch Russians talking and sometimes laughing as they come and go through the entrance hall.

My Very Strange Day

Several things about today seem odd.  Despite Linda’s usual quiet manner,  I would expect her to create a memorable disturbance to have me found. She and I are out of touch because we didn’t bring our cell phones on this trip. With unlimited internet on the ship, we didn’t think we’d need them. Worst of all, we left behind our small walkie talkies for staying in contact aboard ship. Those walkie talkies have a range of five miles, perfect for this situation.

The woman from the information booth reappears with a colleague who asks me a series of questions in Russian. Those  are translated into English for me and my answers converted into Russian for her. What easily could be a complicated dialogue is efficient and brief.  My interview over, the two women disappear back behind the office door.  I glance at my watch: 1:15 p.m. That Oceania bus definitely is long gone.

The other thing that seems odd about today: our guide does carry a cell phone and yet no one at this main office has been notified about a wandering American tourist now MIA for more than two hours. Losing a tourist used to be a very bad thing for a Russian guide to do. Maybe not so much anymore?

The office door abruptly swings open again and the two women reappear with a colleague. In fluent English, the newcomer says “Your bus is waiting. It’s just around the corner. Come with me.”  The relief I experience is hard to describe. I ask her how she can possibly know where the bus is. Or know who I am? As we briskly walk to the left of the palace– the exact opposite side of where I searched–from our conversation I come to realize this woman essentially is the-boss-of-all-guides. And Marie only has just phoned in that I am missing. The big boss does not look pleased.  Is she upset with me or Marie?

An Unexpected Outcome

After perhaps two minutes of walking, we reach a row of craft shops, turn left at a corner and standing there are Linda and Marie, with our bus parked behind them. I profusely thank the woman who reunited all of us, clamber up the bus stairs and immediately apologize to the group for making them wait so long. They probably have waited for at least 30 minutes yet no one seems upset. Relieved and thankful. I plop into my seat beside Linda. I tell her I’ve searched everywhere for the bus but where we are now is so far from the main exit—I had no idea this small out-of-the-way area even existed.

She updates me about her day. “We only got on the bus 5 minutes ago,” she says. “I let Marie know you were missing as soon as we lost you this morning. But she never did anything.  When we found the bus and you still hadn’t shown up, I told her this bus wasn’t going anywhere without you. Some of the others felt the same way. Only then did she start making phone calls.”

How did everyone disappear so quickly this morning? Turns out the prolonged restroom search consumed most all of the group’s time. From the Chessboard Fountain where I’d lost everyone, Marie marched the group a short distance before taking a sharp right to walk away from the Lower Gardens and into a forest with thick tree cover.

Marie’s promised 5-minute stroll instead took around 20 minutes before reaching a remote area with little for tourists to see but trees. No wonder the restrooms there were guaranteed empty. From the time we boarded the train tram until everyone used  a restroom must have been over an hour.  If I’d been on Linda’s expedition and had an urgent need I’d have watered the forest. 

Linda says that from the restrooms Marie retraced their route until reaching a bridge over the canal flowing between the palace and the Gulf of Finland. Everyone crossed to the other side, then continued plodding through a wilderness of trees. Once they reached Peterhof’s open Lower Gardens and fountains, the group ascended the stairs beside the Grand Cascade, never pausing long enough for Linda to take any video.

Instead of taking the group to the Grand Cascade overlook, Marie immediately exited everyone through an out-of-the-way turnstile far from the main exit. Then she gave everyone time for craft shopping near the bus. “You saw a lot more of Peterhof  than we did because we saw hardly anything,” Linda says. While being lost wasn’t the best of times, it was better than being part of her ridiculous trek.

Riding back to the ship, I reflect on my decades-long curse at Peterhof. Was it active yet again today? My cameras may have worked well but I don’t get to use them much because I spent most of my time at the Grand Cascade overlook. Having my radio receiver cut out was strange yet fortunate. The malfunction allowed me to avoid joining Linda’s pointless walking tour.  At least I got some photos, a first for here. Yet they don’t compare to what I normally take on such a perfect sunny day.

One thing is certain. This is my last time at Peterhof.  For whatever reason, I seem forever jinxed there. It is a place of bad juju for me. This is my forever farewell to it.

 

 

Settling in on Oceania Marina Baltic Cruise

As much as we ‘d like to sleep through the first hours of our Oceania Marina Baltic Cruise, the call to the lifeboat drill interrupts our nap. Aftertwards we start to unpack before grabbing something to eat and sacking out again.  Finding places to store clothing takes longer than normal since the drawers are not placed near the closet but scattered throughout the stateroom. 

The hunt-and-seek for storage may reflect the imaginative design needed to squeeze both a bathtub and shower stall into our 282-square-foot stateroom. The computer desk,located near the veranda is.an unexpected storehouse  It has several side shelves and nice deep drawers.

Terrace Cafe Offers Nightly Lobster, Steak, Sushi

The Terrace Café is our choice for dinner.  Serving ourselves should be faster than any other dining option including room service. The Terrace Café is surprisingly empty, perhaps because most passengers have gone to sleep, are seated in the main dining room or sampling one of the Marina’s five specialty restaurants.

Stockholm archipelago Finland      Cruising through the Stockholm archipelago

With so few people present, we easily find a window table for two. It has a good view of the Marina’s passage through the Stockholm archipelago, a cluster of  islands and rocks  leading to the Baltic Sea. The larger landfalls, popular summer vacation spots, contain not cottages but sizable homes.

At the buffet, Linda is elated to find fresh sushi and sashimi in the salad bar.  I’m more interested in the cafe’s grill that prepares cooked-to-order steaks and lobster tails.  Since the Terrace Café serves many of the items on the main dining room, it becomes a favorite dining spot.  The café is more relaxing than the main dining room with its harried waiters and sometimes long waits between courses. Besides, in the cafe it’s easy to combine several entrees or quickly replace a disappointing one and not disrupt the pace of anyone else’s meal.

Back in our cabin, a card placed on a bed pillow contains the unwelcome news that we’ll lose an hour of sleep tonight when the ship moves into a new time zone.  How much sleep we’re likely to get is debatable. Jet lag is bound to play havoc with us. It was a mistake to take a nap before the boat drill. Better to stay awake until afterwards, order room service and then call it a day without much unpacking.  Sleep, wonderful sleep, so taken for granted.

Marina Concierge Lounge Sparse, Disappointing, 

Not unexpectedly I awake the next morning  at 6 a.m., four hours before we arrive in Helsinki. I decide to check out the concierge lounge before breakfast. The lounge is accessible 24 hours but not staffed until around 8 a.m.  The lounge is about the size of two inside cabins. with a desk near the entrance door and a computer for any passenger on the concierge deck to use.

On this trip, that computer isn’t likely to be in much demand considering the free internet in the cabins. Next to the computer is a small stack of  Helsinki maps. These same maps are  available downstairs when we disembark.  At almost all other Baltic ports, the concierge lounge contains better, more detailed city maps than any brought aboard by local tourist boards. Oceania Marina Concierge Lounge                                             Oceania Marina Concierge Lounge   

Overall ,the lounge resembles a mini-library with a reading room. Full size copies of today’s major newspaper from the U.S., Canadian and British are displayed on a table beneath a large flat screen TV. Behind the TV is a long counter  stocked with chilled juice dispensers, coffee, tea, pastries and cookies.  

Although various web sites claim the concierge lounge serves daytime sandwiches and evening canapés, it offers only cookies and pastries during our trip. Unlike the concierge lounges on some other ships, wine and beer are not served in the evening.  Unless you want to read a newspaper or consult with the concierge staff about what to see in port. there is little reason to visit. For concierge class, the lounge isn’t much of a perk .

I glance at my watch. Time for Linda to get up and for us to go to breakfast before arriving in Helsinki.

Oceania Marina Lacks Stockholm Terminal Berth

Never a second chance to make a good first impression

Deplaning in Stockholm, we move through immigration and customs amazingly quickly. No serious concerns about terrorism here. At the luggage carousel, we meet an Oceania representative collecting luggage for passengers taking a bus tour of Stockholm before boarding the Marina. We tell him we’d just like to go to the passenger terminal and nap in a chair before the ship is ready for boarding. He assures us the Marina’s terminal not only offers a comfortable seating area but also a café. Sounds perfect. Little did we know that of all the cruise ships in port, Oceania Marina lacks a berth at the Stockholm terminal.

Our 28-mile taxi ride to the terminal may be lengthy but we see mostly highways and only a small bit of Sweden. The small bit of Stockholm we view reminds Linda of Stieg Larsson’s famous Millennium series, a best-selling trilogy starting with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. She imagines heroine Lisbeth Salander walking the streets we pass. Her vision of Lisbeth looks like Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who starred in the original movie.

Our taxi driver is an interesting man. An immigrant from Iraq, he says he abandoned Baghdad in 2005 after his two supermarkets were set on fire a second time. He says he has no plans ever to return despite close family still living there. His family reunions aleays take place in a European country..

Arriving at the cruise port, we find the Marina is not at the Vartahamnen 523, the terminal address provided by Oceania. The port section, known as Vartahamnen South, has five quays  but they are all dedicated to ferry service.  Our driver takes us to the northern port section and soon locates a Holland America ship with a Celebrity vessel docked behind it. The Marina is located opposite them, easily identified at a distance by its white smoke stack with a big “O.”

                           Oceania Marina’s absent Stockholm berth–why? 

Instead of the promised cruise terminal, we discover a curiously long column of Oceania passengers just outside the fence gate leading to our ship. As our taxi draws up, several passengers quickly approach our driver to secure a ride back to the airport. It’s 8:45 a.m., which seems late for so many people still to be disembarking. We pay our fare with a credit card  and grab our luggage. Our cab driver greets his new passengers with energy and pleasure. He is surprised to pick up a new fare so quickly.

Still early, the temperature is chilly and the overcast sky has the look and feel of rain. We ask the way to the terminal building. Terminal?  There isn’t one for Marina passengers. The only terminal is located at the pier opposite us where Celebrity and Holland America ships are berthed.  We are advised to wait outside the fence gate.  Fortunately there is a tiny gift shop there with only five plastic chairs  and a  large wooden deck already occupied by others waiting to board. We sit on the deck edge which  feels as hard as the plane seats we had flying over. With hours to wait before we can board the Marina, we pass the time people watching and getting to know our new shipmates.

Disembarking passengers have formed a taxi line of 40 to 50 people..With new people taking the place of those able to depart, the line doesn’t shorten for more than hour. Taxis, slow in coming, depart sporadically with handfuls of people.  It’s almost 90 minutes before the last person to catches a ride. I’ve never witnessed such a haphazard disembarkation procedure. 

Oceania-Stateroom-Bed-1.jpg
After a sleepless SAS flight, this bed is what we seek most.

Oceania cruise staff have no explanation for the lack of a cruise terminal or the lack of any facilities; nor do they seem to care. Their attitude and the situation don’t reflect well on Oceania’s claim to offer a “luxury experience.” Nor does it match our previous Oceania experiences.. Makes us wonder what to expect once on board. Will it be better or worse?  Can’t believe we’re questioning our wisdom about booking Oceania for this cruise. Fortunately the darkening sky still only threatens rain.Around 11 a.m. a large truck arrives with baggage from the airport. Once the truck unloads, we add our luggage to the pile to be taken aboard.

About 20 minutes later, wonderful news! A large canopy is erected at the ship’s gangplank and officials assemble under it so we can begin boarding. As expected, no staterooms are ready yet but we learn that a full lunch buffet lunch is waiting at the Terrace Café on deck 12. Finally stepping inside the ship, Linda and I agree the Marina’s interior is classy but décor is hardly foremost in our minds. Where are the restrooms?

Terrace Cafe best part of the day

At the Terrace Café, the buffet reassures us how good dining on Oceania can be. Although Linda limits herself to soup and a salad, I graze the hot courses. It will be the next day, when I’m more awake, that I discover I can have a fresh, personally prepared Caesar salad at the salad bar for lunch or dinner. Claiming a table near a  window, we have a birds-eye view of those still waiting to board. The weather has changed. Anyone standing outside the canopy leading to  the ship is standing in a light rain. Strangely, there are no umbrellas being passed out by the crew.. 

After lunch, we remain at our table to talk with another couple as everyone waits for an announcement that rooms are ready. The couple, from the northeast, was on our SAS flight, also in SAS Premium Plus. We compare note on our experiences. They didn’t sleep much on the flight, either, due to SAS’ hard seats.  It is 1 o’clock when the first rooms are ready for occupancy. They are the ones in  the top category: the suites. At 1:30 our concierge category is announced. The bulk of the rooms are ready just before 3 p.m.

As planned, our room is just a few decks below the Terrace Café and convenient to elevators.  Our stateroom is impressive. Nice and spacious. A laptop computer with unlimited internet is on a small desk for our use. A bottle of champagne chills in an ice bucket. Our bathroom is expansive, offering both a large tub and a sizeable shower stall. Unexpectedly, we find we have a mini-fridge stocked with an assortment of soft drinks (no charge). Also two impressively large bottles of water that will be replaced every day. This is going to be very nice.

Our luggage soon arrives but we leave it unpacked. One more thing to test: the comfort of the bed.  It must have been suitable since we instantly fall asleep, only to be jolted awake two hours later by a blaring announcement to prepare for the lifeboat drill.

Abruptly, normal shipboard life begins .