When I went to visit my Mom a few months ago she mentioned she was going on an Alaskan cruise and asked if I wanted to come. Two factors were big for me to answer that question and they were cost and time. Cost goes without saying although ultimately since I was tagging along on her cruise I got a great deal but time was an even bigger factor. One of the things about staying in one place is I now really need my vacation and a 12 day cruise was stretching things. Yes I have three weeks, but Lee and I want to do things also so after a ton of research I determined I could go as long as I could work four of the port days. This would reduce the vacation time I would need and I thought it would be an interesting experiment about working remotely.

Now let me stop right here and say I absolutely loved the time with my Mom and the cruise with her was great. That being said as a reader of this blog she knows how I review things so my review of the experience will be more objective. But to be clear: Mom I had a great time!!

Let’s start with the itinerary because that matters. We are lucky here in LA to have ships leaving from LA, San Diego, and Los Angeles and a flight to Seattle was definitely on the cheaper side. Plus for a change I didn’t have to lose a whole day to travel which was a definite plus. Originally I was going to fly in the same day, but after a Cyber attack hit the airports out here and caused delays I backed it up a day. That meant I got in around 1pm which left me plenty of time to visit the Chihuly Garden and Glass. On a side note I checked three major bucket list items on this trip and Chihuly was the first of them.

Anyways, I was super nervous about working on a sea day and turns out that was a good call. Despite extensive research and the fact they might have Starlink it felt too risky and man am I glad I made that call. This particular ship wasn’t on Starlink yet and although we had some level of internet most of the time, it definitely wasn’t strong enough for Microsoft Team video calls on sea days. Instead I looked at my schedule and their schedule and determined the best work days were Juno, Sitka, Nanaimo, and British Columbia. I mention this now because I will be talking about the working throughout the subsequent blog posts.

I also made the decision to go easy on the excursions. A couple of reasons. I was trying to keep my costs down and only one port had an evening excursion on my work days. Secondly after our cruise experience last Christmas I was really curious to see what it was like to visit a port on my own. I also wanted to learn about being on a smaller ship (this one has a 680 guest capacity versus 4000 on Royal). I should say that I am no means a cruise expert having only been on 4 in my life and since the first two ( Princess and Carnival) were pre Covid I can really only compare this experience to Royal.

So let’s dive in.

We set sail on the Oceania Regatta which is one of the cruise lines smaller ships. It is also the exact type of ship my Mom sailed on her around the world cruise and we were even in the exact same type of room. Getting on and off the smaller ship was definitely easier with shorter lines and easier transition. They even had us watch a safety video at home and then talk to someone briefly when we came on board so we could skip the initial briefing.

We couldn’t go to the room right away so we wandered around and toured the ship which really didn’t take that long. It was pretty and super clean but the communal spaces were certainly smaller than our last experience. Makes sense though since there were so many less people and honestly it all seemed generally proportional to the smaller group of people.

Despite the buffet being smaller there was as much variety they only put out smaller batches and refilled them quickly. The cruise had two specialty restaurants (Italian and Steak) and only a jewelry store and one small shop. Less options didn’t really bother me to be honest except for the small gift shop. Because of the small space they changed out the merchandise daily, which was fun but the sundry area for personal products and snacks was woefully small. One of the best rooms was the library which was huge and had a great selection of modern, multiple genre books.

The spa and gym although smaller were actually less crowded than on the bigger ship and they had multiple wellness classes each day which were all included in the base price. I got a massage the second day and the service and price was somewhat comparable. On of my favorite things was afternoon tea which was free (versus a cost) on Oceania and had a small string section playing everyday with yummy deserts and sandwiches. I had never done afternoon tea in my life and it was pretty fun. We went most days.

They also had a free barrista all day (versus pay Starbucks) and a poolside restaurant with burgers etc that was again free. I hated feeling nickle and dimed to death on the previous cruise and I definitely didn’t feel that way on this one. In all fairness the price point for the base cruise was much higher but it feels like a wash between things being included and paying ad hoc. It was just nice not to get hit with a huge bill at the end of the cruise.

Although everything else was smaller the rooms certainly were not. They were good sized and ours had a small table and chairs and a nice desk area for me to work at. One of the best things was room service was 24/7 and included which was awesome for me especially on work days. Our room steward Anand was absolutely fantastic, so great in fact I ended up tipping him an extra $100 at the end of the cruise and wish I could have done more. In general I would say that although the service was good on both ships I would definitely give it to Oceania. Less staff yes but with less passengers people really started to recognize you and we saw the same people over and over again. One thing about the small ship was everyone was muti tasked and your waiter one night would be your barrista in the morning. (True story). I also liked how ethnically diverse the staff was and enjoyed talking to many people from different countries.

So let’s talk about the food. I had heard the the food was Oceania’s claim to fame and in general I would say the food was better. It still wasn’t to the level I experienced with Princess in the pre-covid days but it was pretty good. In particular they had a custom homemade sorbet everyday and the bread was AWESOME. I gained 5 pounds on this vacation and I think most of it came from bread. If you think I am kidding the bread below came with EVERY meal.

My real disappointment was the specialty restaurants. Don’t get me wrong the company was great and the service was also special. But the food was just not as good as the Royal specialty restaurants and I actually had to send back my over cooked ribeye on our Polo steakhouse night. They had all the bells and whistles including table side deboning of fish which I have never seen but the food itself was just so-so. But as I said the company and service were great and I really enjoyed my birthday dinner the first night on the cruise with Mom. She even got a birthday cake sent to our room which was really nice.

So the tradeoffs between a larger ship and smaller ship seemed like a wash but this particular ship the biggest disappointment was the entertainment. Royal Caribbean entertainment was fantastic and they had multiple venues and two shows a night. Oceania by contrast had a much smaller group and the show every night was at 9:30. Even if I wasn’t working in the morning 9:30 is pretty late for me and after a 6:30 dinner (the earliest seating they had) I wasn’t up for staying up that late. Since the average age on the cruise appeared to be early 70’s I was kind of surprised the entertainment was so late and unfortunately I only got to see one 5:30pm show on the next to last night. It was a fun show in an intimate venue but I really felt like I missed out on some cool stuff because of the late hours.

One last thing I will mention in this post was how old school everything was. There was no app but rather we received a printed newsletter every morning and there was a 10 minute “TV show” byt the cruise director every morning talking about the day. At first I missed the Royal app to keep me organized but honestly I found the morning talk show and newsletter charming and I enjoyed how much information was available via the TV. When they had a thank you moment for the staff I was surprised by how many people from the staff I recognized including the captain who I spoke to on several occasions.

It’s all a matter of taste I suppose and I can certainly see the appeal. I felt totally relaxed and taken care of the entire trip in a way I never felt on Royal. I am going to leave it here and get into more details in the subsequent posts. Looking forward to sharing the adventure with you.

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