Went on two week cruise at the end of January. This was our second time on Ocean Village.

Again the cruise was fantastic and we had a wonderful time.

Only downsides were the standards of cleanliness seemed to have detiororated from the previous year. Possibly due to less staff. On the plus side the food has improved and as last year was excellent this year was even better.

Entertainment is still awful but since that is not the reason we came then it did not concern us.

The biggest downside to the Ocean Village Cruise is quite frankly the other passengers on board. Whilst we go with the knowledge that the cruise is informal, some people take informality to new lows of bad taste and indecency. Quite frankly I never want to see another fat, sweaty man, "eating" his lunch (or perhaps "shovelling food into an open crater" would be a more appropriate description) in a string vest and bulging out of his too tight swimming trunks. Nor do I wish to see passed their prime women flaunting their less than desirable bodies in bikinis with see through wraps at the dining table. Don't these people possess mirrors, can they not see that they look awful and can quite put other people off their food. For god's sake do yourselves and others a favour and cover yourselves up in the dining areas. If you do feel the need to show off your bodies (though god alone knows why some of you would) then there are sun decks where you can do that.

On another point again to do with other people; why oh why can people not wait until the occupants of a lift have got out before trying to force themselves in. The lift won't go anywhere until we have got out so just think, give us a bit of room (we're not fat/obese like so many other passengers and don't need that much space). Let the lift empty and surprise surprise you will even find it easier for yourselves to get in.

THe only other downer was the amount of smokers and their insistance at blowing their foul smelling, polluting and disease inducing smoke all over us non-smokers.

Luckily the majority (just) of passengers do have some sense of decorum in the dining room and a modicum of politeness and since we find it easy to keep to ourselves and not have to mix then we can ignore the truly dreadful and the ill-mannered and unless the standards drop even further we will be back.

First impressions of Ocean Village were good.All areas of ship were very clean.Cabins spacious and well equiped with plenty of wardrobe and drawer space.
We had a balcony which bumps up the price considerably but definately worth it.We thought that having our photo taken with a pirate was a bit tacky and we wondered if this set the tone for the rest of the cruise,we were partly correct.Ocean village was a bit too informal for our liking. Didnt care for the sun deck with music and entertainers going non stop all day!!!Far too noisy.
Every staff member we encountered was unfailingly friendly and polite.
Breakfasts were excellent with a very extensive choice of food.
Bistro was a little more what you would expect on a cruise,very good indeed although there is an extra charge.
Waterfront was not bad. Plantation left a lot to be desired, it also needed refurbishing.
A big minus for us was the fact that the ship did not have a library, you couldnt even buy a magazine.
Trips and taxis are readily available in each port and are cheaper by far than those booked on board.
The islands are beautiful especially Aruba. The sea there looked as though it had been lit from underneath-Magic!
All in all we had a good holiday, it was our first cruise and we are keen to try another but with a different cruise line.

i have just had a fabulous christmas on ocean village and i was also on there at the end of August in the med. both holidays were great. would love to hear any comments from anyone else who travelled on OV this christmas and what they thought of it? i thought the entertainment was great, well should i say the heaven and earth troupe. dont you agree? isn't Choi cho and Jefferson just gorgeous? everybody was so friendly really did have a fantastic christmas would love to go back tomorrow

To continue. The ships food choice was limited compaired to the choices that were offered the previous year. The quality was good, but if you did not like chinese, thai or indian then you would have found it restrictive. Suprisingly ice cream was never offered as a desert choice.
In the brochure it warns that at one location it will be necessary to be taken ashore by tender. However this occured on two occasions.On arrival at tobago we were to be transfered by tender for the third time, however, the sea was declared too rough, and so we sailed away slowly back to barbados. No adequate explanation was given as to why we were not docking at the relevent ports, other ships were. We were offered no compensation of any sort for missing tobago. It seemed that ocean village was the poor relation in the cruise ship pecking order.

(Before I start let me just point out that we are an average middle class working couple.)

My wife and I have recently returned from the 2 week Caribbean Christmas and New Year cruise on Ocean Village 21st December 2004 to 4th January 2005. We booked the cruise some 14 months ago to celebrate my wife’s 50th birthday it was our first ever cruise and we were really looking forward to it.

What a disappointment for £3,000 we feel we've been had! People we met on the cruise told us it was not typical and not to be put of cruising, saying that Ocean Village was sub standard to other cruise ships. We have listed our grievances:-

Entertainment

The only decent entertainment to be found was in the ” Marquee” and “Connections” with one show on deck ”Moon” You can’t stop in one place all night to be entertained, you have to move around.

No shows as such, or a line up of entertainers for the whole evening
A usual evening in the “Marquee ” was 8-30 till 9-00 resident singer, followed by tribute artist, 9-00 till 9-30. Theatre then empty for 1-hour till 10-30 then repeat performance ending at 11-30.

“Connections” Bar a typical evening, 8-30 resident singer 9-00 background music 9-00 comedian or quiz 9-30 background music 10-30 comedian 11-00 background music.

We did get the group ” Bucks Fizz” on New Years Eve on deck. What a waste, they were nearly blown away! You couldn’t here them for the wind and the groups equipment was blown over.

All this when the Marquee was closed for the night! Typical bad planning by the entertainment manager, by the way his policy for the resident singers is only music from the 70 ‘s onwards! That means no rock and roll or popular 60’s stuff like Beatles Drifters, Monkees etc.

The karaoke is a joke, with hardly any choice of songs and its only set up 3 times a week for 1 hour. This is in the Bayside club, which is also the disco (crèche!)

Food.

The Plantation and Waterfront restaurants are both practically the same, apart from the fact that the plantation restaurant was near to the open deck and had more flies.

They were both buffet self-service style with plenty of variety, the only drawback was the fact that the food was not freshly prepared and was usually luke warm.

Part of the breakfast was scrambled or fried eggs, the scrambled eggs were usually congealed and the fried eggs were “rubbery” for me these should have been cooked fresh, to ones own preference.

The windows were filthy and not cleaned during our cruise. (Unlike other cruise ships we saw whilst docked, which had their windows cleaned)
The décor was dingy and stained, thanks mainly to people coming to dine covered in sun cream.

Hygiene left a lot to be desired and on one occasion in the Plantation restaurant my wife found a hair in her meal. This was duly reported and taken away for investigation, but no feedback was forthcoming.

Bistro & La Luna:

We did not visit these as we thought £3,000 was sufficient payment to warrant decent meals, without having to pay an extra £30 supplement (£390 over 13 nights)

General

On arrival we were told we had been upgraded, what we were not told was that we would have to find our own luggage!

When 2 strange cases appeared outside our cabin we rang reception to tell them and asked them to check to see if our luggage had gone to our initially designated cabin. We were informed that they were very busy and it would be 2 to 3 hours before they could spare anybody. We therefore had to go and collect our own cases

New years eve we ordered a round of drinks at 11-15 it was 12-10 before they arrived. How bad is that, no drinks to toast the New Year with. This was down to the fact that there were only 4 waiters in Connections bar! We pointed this out to the DJ who radioed for extra staff. The next evening we counted 10 waiters. (Horse and gate spring to mind)

Around about 8 o’clock every morning we were rudely awaken with “bing bong this is your captain speaking we have now docked etc” (shades of Hi de Hi ?) it’s not funny if you want a lie-in! I tried to disconnect the loud speaker in our cabin, but to no avail my wife reported the noise to the enquiry desk, pointing out that not everybody wanted to be up at the crack of dawn to go on trips etc. For the next 2 days we were allowed a lie-in but after that it was back to normal “bing bong”

The public toilets smelled strongly of urine, as did some of the corridors. This seemed to get worse as the cruise progressed.

Most of the ports of call were fabulous and well worth a visit.
The exception being Trinidad, because it was Boxing Day and a Sunday everything was closed. After walking for only 5 minutes my wife felt very uncomfortable with the beggars and dropouts we had to walk past, so we returned to the ship. Why were we not told about this? Several passengers were upset by what they saw, even dead dogs by the side of the road. (Fortunately we didn’t go on that tour)

Summing up:

Whilst in general most of the staff are pleasant and polite it seems to me that the management, in particular catering and entertainment, don’t know what they are doing and need to re trained or replaced

Catering faults

1. Food not fresh and hot
2. Waiter service not equally distributed
3. Plantation restaurant full of flies
4. General cleanliness very poor
5. Selling wine at the door





Entertainment faults

1. No “proper” shows booked
2. Allow 50’s & 60 ‘s music (people like it!)
3. Buy some karaoke discs and extend karaoke availability.

I would love to know how many people have complained about Ocean Village. The company stated that 80% of people recommend Ocean Village to their friends I would love to see a random selection of the questionnaireson from our cruise.

More than 90 % of the people we talked to have legitimate complaints and said that they would not be returning or recommending Ocean Village.
Typical comments were” Ocean Village council cruise “and “Butlins afloat!"

As a postscript to my earlier report j&m pyecroft said

We have now recieved a reply,after 9 weeks and 2 letters from ourselves, the last being recorded,
From ms.nicola martin passenger relations officer at ocean village.i will submit various paragraphs.

"we plan our entertainment guide to provide passengers with a wide range of choices,which may appeal to the different interests and preferences.passenger's appreciation of the evening and daytime entertainment does depend on personal preferences.
The gaps between performances have been schedueled because of the free style of entertainment we offer.there are shows taking place in other areas of the ship during the free time in the marquee for example,alternately many passengers take this time to socialise with other passengers.this is also a good timr to dine."
This just emphasises our point that you have to move around to be entertained!
If you want to stay in the same place we are advised to make our own entertainment ie. Socialising with other guests,or go and dine.
"passenger satisfaction during your 2 week cruise have scored highly compared to other lines.
51.8% of passengers during the first week said they would recommend ocean village to their family or friends."
If they call just over 50% good then i'm afraid their standards are set way too low!
What about the other 50%? Does it not matter that they've paid £3.000 for a commodity they've not received?
"you have mentioned a number of issues,which affected your enjoyment during the cruise, and i would wish to assure you that we pay great attention to the feedback we recieve from passengers.your comments have been most helpful.i regret that i am unable to acede to your request for compensation."

This reply enforces my poor opinion of some of the ocean village staff ms.martin has not replied to our comments regarding;-
Our lost luggage,the inadequate karaoke,the warm food,general cleanlines in particular the dirty windows,poor waiter service on new years eve and the smelly urinals.
In conclusion very! Very! Disappointing ocean village

Could not fault anything on board at all, staff great, food brilliant. Only bad part was the stop in Trinidad, packs of wild dogs roaming around, poor things half starved. Obviously their government does nothing about this problem, it would be kinder to cull them all as they are breeding at a fast rate. If I had anything to do with the visit to this island I would remove it from the iteniary as it really upset me to be confronted with this and other people were quite disgusted by it.

This was the second time i had been on this ship the first was in november 2003 the caribean.It was great this time it was the same would recomend it everytime. food is very good

staff very good, entertainment very good robbie williams fab ,connextions comedians excellent

looking forward to the next trip.

My husband and I chose a two week cruise for our honeymoon although we had never cruised before. We decided on OV because it is advertised as being informal. What a fantastic experience! Embarkation was a breeze, the ship is beautiful- maintained by a lot of hard working staff who all seemed happy in their jobs. Everything was so hygenic and spotless. Iggy scrubbed & hoovered our suite every day and always had a smile on his face. The food was yummy & there was always masses of choice. The chefs and waiting on staff always looked pristine and were sooo polite & friendly, we can't praise them enough. We loved the midnight snacks- just the right time to scoff a chicken burger or two. Entertainment staff were fun and had a lot of energy. Connexions bar had some good comedians but there were never enough seats for people. The marquee had some great shows & tribute acts. Robbie, Elton & Rod Stewart were fab. The team of dancers, singers, jugglers & acrobats really helped to make our holiday and the moon show on top deck under the stars was amazing. I did think day time entertainment could have been more varied though. Listening to Eliot Frisby sing 'Just wanna dance the night away' for 14 days can get a bit tiresome no matter how good he is! Bayside night club could have played more modern music and some promotions on drinks or some free shots would not have gone amiss! The oval seemed oblivious to the English Premier League which was annoying. The Blue Bar was relaxing and Ritchie the waiter was a little star. Excursions were great but overpriced. Menorcan jeep safari was poor though. Loved Rome, Pompeii & Barcelona. I could go on forever! We will definately be back. Thanx OV

this was our first cruise so we choose just one week at the end of which we wish we had taken a two week cruise. Organisation was excellant from the start to the end of the cruise, especially on trips, we booked, rome, portifino, monaco we chose to do our own thing in barcelona as this is excessable from the port with great ease. Ships staff were very helpfull and allways smiling, entertainment staff very good. The cabins were spotless and quite large. Food in the buffet resturant and La Luna very good. The bistro is well worth paying for especially the scuptious desserts. We had a medical emergency on the ship which called for a helicopter pick up and this was dealt with very professionally from all angles. I coud not find anything to fault Ocean Village on,and on our return home we have allready been looking at a 2 week cruise on this ship. The informality is a great selling point, as are the various tours, the ship has something for all ages which was reflected in the diffent age groups on the ship which went from 1 - 80 everyone was friendly greeting each other on site, this made for a very happy ship. if you on considering a cruise i would not hesitate to recommend ocean village.

This was my second cruise and I thought that the ship could offer more choice when it came to food and entertainment, I found myself bored during times with very little going on. The food was ok, mostly buffet style as you had to pay extra for waiter service which I think is wrong as you pay for a cruise as a full board option! The one great service they had was the night crech, you took your child there to sleep while you had time to eat and enjoy a drink for a few hours in the evening, if your child wakes up then you get called on the pager they give you to come and collect your child. if you suffer with sea sickness then this ship is one of the better ones to go on because of its size as you don't get much motion on board. this ship was not for me, but I wouldn't stop a friend trying it out.