Travel Weekly's Johanna Jainchill spent three days on Oceania's new ship, the Marina, on a preview cruise for executives' friends and family, travel agents and journalists. Her second dispatch follows.
Dispatch, Marina 2: Oceania has stressed that the Marina is just another vessel in its fleet. But travel agents raved about the features that set Marina apart from other Oceania ships.
In particular, they say the addition of specialty restaurants and enrichment offerings broaden Oceania' appeal.
“The people that go from premium, the lines that cater to a little more mass-market clientele but still have extensive suites and ame
nities on their ships, those folks can come over to this ship and find something extraordinary,” said Greg Nacco, vice president of Cruise Specialists in Seattle. “Those clients will be amazed at what they are getting for their dollar.”
The Marina has 10 dining venues, including two new specialty restaurants that join its signature steakhouse, Polo Grill, and Italian restaurant Toscana. There are also two new intimate dining experiences that carry a surcharge, but none of the other specialty venues do.
To the surprise of the Oceania team, the new Asian eatery, Red Ginger, proved to be the most popular of the four specialty restaurants during the ship’s inaugural sailing.
According to Frank Del Rio, the Oceania team expected Red Ginger to be the least desirable of the restaurants onboard. They included it “to round out the repertoire” on the ship, he said.
A culinary team that trained at San Francisco’s famed Slanted Door Vietnamese restaurant put together a pan-Asian menu that includes items like miso-glazed sea bass, foie gras and watermelon salad, and a Thai vegetable curry that vegetarians raved about.
The experience begins with choosing from six types of chopsticks (including pearl, metal and wood). There is an extensive menu of teas served in individual glass pots.
Red Ginger's space also drew praise. Craig Pavlus of Pavlus Travel & Cruise in Albuquerque, N.M., said that Red Ginger had “the ambience of a New York restaurant, not a cruise ship.”
Jacques is the first restaurant named for Jacques Pepin, Oceania’s executive culinary director since the line launched in 2003. The French eatery offers interesting presentations such as escargot delivered in a pastry shell and pumpkin soup served directly from a carved-out pumpkin.
For anyone wishing to splurge, two intimate dining experiences that are new to the Marina are La Reserve by Wine Spectator, where guests experience tasting menus paired with wine for $75 per person, and Privée, a private dining room where up to eight can experience a chef’s dinner for a $1,000 room charge.
Many agents said the dining experience positions Oceania exactly where it wishes to be, as a culinary cruise line.
The Marina also has two new enrichment experiences, the Bon Appetit Culinary Center and the Artists’ Loft.
Bon Appetit is a cooking school where two people share one of 24 individual cooking stations and prepare meals. Kathryn Kelly, an instructor from the Culinary Institute of America, teaches students to cook without a recipe.
During my experience there, we made lamb burgers with feta cheese, Greek salad, gazpacho and tzatziki (a Greek sauce made with yogurt and cucumber).
The class includes some basic instruction like correctly holding a knife, choosing an olive oil for cooking and pairing wines with food. (A warning to anyone partaking: The class yields a large amount of food — most of which ends up in the garbage — and is accompanied by a glass of fine chianti. Make sure your next meal is not for a while.)
Kelly will tailor a group to its needs. (For example, she already did a kosher cooking class.) Travel agents said the $49 price tag was very reasonable. It may be part of the reason why classes are already selling out.
The Artists’ Loft was not in action during this cruise, but agents said it and the culinary center together open Oceania to new possibilities in the group market.
“Those types of rooms are very attractive to specialty groups,” said Doug Crosby of Holiday Cruises & Tours in Henderson, Nev. “We could arrange to have special functions for them.”
Despite the upscale and mostly inclusive dining experiences, Nacco said that Oceania has held onto its promise to not become a luxury line.
“At this upper-premium level, you get some of the amenities and service aspects of a luxury product but you don’t get others,” he said. “There are things you will be charged for on this ship, and that is a mass-market approach but it’s trimmed way down from the mass market, but it’s still not as all-inclusive as the luxury lines.”