We joined the Ovation of the Seas in Singapore, and check in was well organised, it took only 45 minutes to go through immigration and into our stateroom. We were happy with our balcony room, on deck 11, plenty of storage. Luggage took some time to arrive and one item was missing for some reason, but eventually retrieved by us from deck 2. From then on we were in for some unpleasant surprises. We had chosen my time Dining, which was supposedly to be interactive with ipads around the ship. Unfortunately this was not the case, and on the first night, it was chaos, wherever you went to do your bookings, especially dining. The My Time Dining was a miserable experience everynight. No amount of complaining to appropriate staff solved this problem. Every night there was a reservation and non reservation isle, Commonsense would make you think those who had reserved seats would be seated first, but no, often those with no reservations had first preference, in other words, queue jumping, this did not go down well, this happened every night of the cruise.

Everything is in American Dollars. For those of us who like just a glass of wine with dinner, were in for a shock. An Australian Rosemont Estate Diamond Label Chardonnay 2016 was American $50 and at their exchange rate cost $75 Australian, in Australian Liquorland that same bottle costs around $8 Australian. This was the tone of extras. Again their exchange rate was 68cents to $1 American, while on land it was 76cents.

The ship has an adult only swimming complex, which is attractive, but again not what you expect. It is heavily chlorinated, and as the whole area is enclosed, with no fresh air, it becomes stuffy and unpleasant to spend any amount of time relaxing. Read more