OnCruises.com

Halloween is my favorite holiday so when I came across «The Haunted Ghost Ship» cruise I thought «What a great and unique way to spend Halloween!».
I quickly assembled a group of 12 of us to go on this outing and we were all very excited to enjoy the mini-​cruise.
Well, what can I say but it was just one disappointment after another.
The boat itself looked like an old fishing boat (I may be exaggerating), not a yacht!
There was one bar on the lower level which provided very costly drinks including soda/​water.
We then came to find out that there was no complimentary buffet as was promoted in the ad (see pic)! We approached the event coordinator about this who didn’t believe us until we showed her a picture of the ad. We encouraged her to purchase food for us before departing but said her hands were tied because she couldn’t get in contact with her boss.
Extremely lame. She did not even make any attempts to gather my contact info so that they could perhaps apologize or provide a partial refund or ANYTHING!
Talk about bad business.
Being that this was a booze cruise and we thought there was food we were all just a tad disappointed. Oh, not to worry, the ship personnel decided to monopolize on our misfortune and ordered pizzas for which they charged $ 5/​slice!
Finally, they should not have called this a haunted ghost ship when they didn’t even have Halloween decorations up! I mean really… WTF?
The Dj was good, the bartender friendly and we had a good time despite the above that’s why I reluctantly gave a 2 instead of a 1.

Wouldn’t go back and getting 2 starts because nothing terrible happened on the boat. We overpaid plain and simple. With Groupon and a discount code I paid $ 130. On the boat all drinks are roughly $ 10 each. So overall cost with tip $ 180. Right now, on Groupon the same deal is $ 55 for 2. 2 Stars

WARNING!!! DO NOT USE THIS COMPANY!
They have been owning me a refund for months. They don’t return calls and always have excuse after excuse. It’s not a small refund either. Try over $ 400!!! I’ll re-​post if they come through will my money but at this point it’s not looking good.

I am taking the time to write this review to WARN YOU to buy tickets from this company!!!
Unfortunately, our 4^th of July was unforgettable, but not for good reasons. We paid $ 1,077.30 for 5 Platinum VIP tickets on the Serenity Yacht. What we got in return was a completely different experience to what was published on your website of the ship.
To start off with, we boarded the ship and when we walked inside the temperature was extremely hot. There was no one giving us any type of VIP Platinum treatment, we were simply told to go downstairs and look for our table, while walking to the stairs we noticed that the carpet hadn’t been vacuumed, and the condition of the ship both inside and out were mediocre. To top things off when we found our table, there was no kind of special VIP treatment period, so we were just fleeced out of over a thousand dollars for a wristband that read Platinum VIP and a $ 20 dinner. When we approached the food, it was cold and disgusting, the food wasn’t even presented decently.
Since we felt that we were just ripped off, we simply decided to board off the ship prior to it’s departure. We felt that we were being held hostage inside with the terrible experience that we suffered!!!

Came from NJ w/​some friends from out of town. These boat cruises around nyc are really cool. The party I went to on this boat was one of the craziest I’ve ever been 2. I got so drunk off the hen rock !!!

I am going to begin by saying the only reason for the bad overall rating is because of a bias in people that come here to write reviews. I have used oncruises five times now and have never been let down. I was referred by a friend over the summer, on my first trip out I had lost my girlfriends ticket and staff at the door were giving me a hard time (which was understandable). I asked to speak to someone and a man who introduced himself as the owner of oncruises asked how he could assist, five minutes later after conversing, though nothing was even said about the cruis yet, and he said follow me and escorted us up to our own vip table right next to the window with roses on the table!!! I was in shock and after this I made sure to keep in touch, since then I have been cruising non stop so make sure if you go through girlfriends as quick as me you become friendly with him!
Views of the downtown, uptown, stautue of liberty, and bridges are phenomenal, they never cease to amaze me!

Run like hell with these colossal scammers! My girlfriend below tell the story of our nightmare experience. It’s a shame and this company should be ashamed of themselves for targeting tourists! Please kids find another cruise line other than this one. They run through
too be wary my friends!

The Speakeasy New Years Cruise on the Fume de Blanc was MISERABLE! We boarded an hour late which meant we stood in a cold parking lot for over two hours. And I can’t imagine who in their right mind would think that three (bad) bartenders could take care of over 200 people! Three and a half of the four hours on the boat were spent in line for drinks – not at the blackjack tables or enjoying the views.
«Top DJs»??? Ha! I heard the same (annoying) songs played over and over – plus, the DJ on the top floor kept stopping the music to start a new song! That’s the biggest DJ no-​no. Not to mention, I was a little disappointed that for a 1920’s themed party, there were never songs from that era played – not even any electro swing. When I mentioned this to the DJ, he managed to dig up one swing song which was the only time people really started to dance – the next song was more obnoxious club music and people became still again.
This was the first New Years in god knows how many years I didn’t ring in the new year with champagne – why? Because there was none! You can’t even pass around some cheap plastic flutes full of even cheaper champagne for midnight???
I did eventually find the food they advertised: there was one tray of sad looking chicken fingers on a tray in the corner next to… wait for it – the bathroom stall! The same bathroom that went out of order an hour into the trip because it was clogged.
For the amount of money we paid for this party, I expected a lot more. Very very disappointing.
And now that I’m reading all these other reviews, I’m convinced that this whole operation must be some sort of scam. For the money they charge, this should have been a top notch trip, but instead I’m sure most of the money made is lining the insides of someone’s pockets.
I wish I had read these reviews before booking – we might have actually had a really fun NYE doing… basically anything else besides this.
As a side note, I recently posted this review on their Facebook page and just saw today that it had been deleted along with the agreeing comments. Judging by the fact that their last post is from October, I’m guessing that a lot of deleting goes on on this page.

I would give this place 0 stars if it was possible. Negative even.
Legitimately writing this review from the cruise because it’s just THAT BAD. Hmmmm where to begin? Maybe with the DJ who couldn’t perform because he was «mugged» today. So instead they’ve been blaring Pandora all night. Complete with adds and all (I’m sorry, you really can’t spend $ 2.99/mo for a paid pandora subscription?). They also ran out of food. The bathrooms were clogged. We got a «VIP» table for 4… which mean we shared it with 6 other people. We have the pleasure of being crammed against the wall so if we want to get up it’s kind if like a jungle gym. Did I also mention that we didn’t know we had to pick up our tickets day of? However we didn’t know until an hour beforehand so we we had to hustle and leave work early to get our tickets and their customer service team was AWFUL and totally unaccomodating. The menu that they said they’d be serving us tonight did not exist at all. Dinner was served on plastic dinner plates. Drinks in plastic cups. Which would be totally fine if we didn’t pay $ 700+ for a VIP «table for 4.» I’d say our biggest mistake was not reading the other Unilocal reviews beforehand, so I’m hoping this will save somebody else all that money.
Just hanging tight now and waiting for is to get back to the harbor. Luckily I’m in amazing company, otherwise this New Year’s would be awful.

Would give them 0 stars if I could. Be warned. Also, Oncruises is run through
. Oncruises is just a property of Wesell. If you deal with customer service, it isn’t actually Oncruises.
I wrote a story about it for Business Insider, which you can read my full account here:

I wrote a review on the Cornucopia Majesty itself, but now that I see this company treats all its customers this way, I will cut and paste what I wrote for the Majesty, as I really dont want any innocent soul to go through what I did. Also take into account these people giving five star reviews, only have one review. that means they work for the company
i dont even know where to begin. this was the worst new years eve experience of my entire life. the boat was supposed to leave at 8pm, but it didnt show up until 11p. thats hours of waiting out in the freezing cold and im extremely sick right now. They were not apologetic or accomodating. There were tourists from Australia who traveled all the way and had to have that horrible experience.
I wish there was an option for NO stars on Unilocal.Because I wish I could say that once we got on the boat all was well. That wasn’t the case.
The drinks were weak and the place was understaffed, meaning you’re lucky if you even got a drink. The waiter came once with a smile and was never seen again. The food was the quality of a high school cafeteria, and the bathrooms were so filthy that i peed standing up.
Most importantly, there was no apologies made. It was almost as if they were doing us a favor by even showing up. I have never come across more arrogant management in my life and being from New York I’ve definately experienced my share.
I tried to get out of that horrible funk by requesting songs to the DJ which he did not play, just loud ridiculous music. It was just awful almost as if we were on a candid camera reality show to see how much torture guests can put up with.
DO NOT TAKE THIS CRUISE you will be lucky to even have the boat show up! Unfortunate for those like me who had last nights experience and New Years Eve was basically ruined.

My friends and I purchased general admission tickets to spend NYE on the Harbor Lights. We showed up promptly at 8 PM, as instructed, to board the ship, but they stopped us when we were next in line. They left us standing on the pier for 30 minutes in 30-​degree weather and refused to acknowledge or speak to us. Then they informed us that ship was at capacity. Translation: overbooked. By a lot.
Their solution: try to stuff the overflow onto the adjacent ship, the Jewel, which had only one indoor deck and was packed with families. Most of these families actually had small children. NOT ok.
If the Harbor Lights were a Mercedes, the Jewel was a 20 year-​old something-​you-​haul-​out-​of-​a-​junkyard-​by-​comparison. The «open bar» consisted of cans of beer in a cooler, there was no seating left and the only standing room was a 3×3 area at the front of the ship.
My friends and I were pretty angry. But we actually felt worse for the people behind us. Several of those people had purchased VIP tickets, which cost a small fortune and were told that there was no more space for them on the Harbor Lights. Ummm… isn’t that the definition of VIP? You don’t even get what you pay for with this company.
I understand that all businesses must make a profit, but ruining people’s New Year’s Eve is not okay. We decided not to cram into the cargo hold they had the nerve to call a dining area and asked for the promoters to at least return our physical tickets so that at least we would have proof that we weren’t on the boat when we asked for a refund. They refused to do that and said we needed to take it up with customer service. Which should be pretty easy after they provide fraudulent evidence that we redeemed our tickets.

DO NOT BUY ANY TICKETS FROM THIS COMPANY!!!
We purchased the General Admission Tickets from OnCruises for the Harbor Lights «Yacht» for NYE for $ 328.90. The party was described as a Black Tie event on a Yacht, the price was reasonable for this type of experience. However, a week before the event Pulsd was selling $ 99 tickets for this same «Black Tie» event on a «Yacht.»
«Black Tie» means long dresses, suits, tuexes, your elegant silks and glamour. Harbor Lights was more suitable for jeans, a t-​shirt and your oldest UGGS possible. We were of the few (maybe 5% of the 400 on board) that dressed-​up.
«Yacht» implies (especially Black Tie affair on a Yacht) that it will be a classy boat… instead this was just another run down, gnarly party boat. For the people who paid VIP to have priority seating at the tables; they were even more ripped off than we were… the tables and chairs were bare, minimal, badly placed, and cheap!
The line for Harbor Lights was LONG, we got on the boat and as soon as we did… they were at capacity and stopped letting in people. All of those people had NO NYE plans anymore. :(
The boat was late to leave. The tickets said the party was from 8:30PM to 12:30AM. We left around 9:30PM and got back to the dock at 2:00AM. As you read on you will understand that by 12:30AM we were ready to get off and by 2:00AM we were just DONE.
The drinks were strong, not complaining. BUT there were two bartenders downstairs (the place was so deplorable I did not even venture upstairs) for about half of the boat. So, after 40 minutes on line for a drink you got the strongest ones so that you didn’t have to wait another 40 minutes. Within hours people were throwing up EVERYWHERE! EVERYWHERE! I MEAN EVERYWHERE.
The food… GROSS. I forget what the menu was supposed to be but it was supposed to be something better than this. By the time we got any food we got breaded chicken whereby the breading fell off immediately, a gross soggy Cesar salad and cold hardened bread rolls (should have just served everyone a plate of croutons!).
No coat check. NOT APPROPRIATE in the Winter in NYC.
The bathrooms: looking at the drink line I decided to go to the bathroom as soon as I got on the boat, and before we even left the dock one toilet bowl was already blocked up and ready to overflow. REALLY classy. Disgusting. No hand towels to dry your hand on this «Yacht» either. The boys had one stall and one urinal. That doesn’t seem proper for a 400 person party!
The DJ was a terrible wannabe Hip Hop DJ that kept dropping «bombs» and announcing his name. NO ONE CARES ABOUT THE DJ’S NAME, STOP IT! He was terrible; played so many songs again and again… OnCruises should have put on Z100 and saved the money on a DJ.
THE GOOD…(1) We got to see the Fire Works on the Hudson (I believe) for the New Year, this was just amazing to see. AND (2) We got to ring in the New Year with our friends, whom we love and adore.
For argument’s sake let’s say that everyone paid General Admission: of $ 164.45 per person and with 400 people on board and about 100 on the dock they made $ 82,225…Even if they paid $ 50K to rent the boat, another $ 10K for staff… they had $ 22K to clean the boat, bring in some proper tables and chairs, have a coat check… etc.
This party was NOT worth it. I could have ended up at Gold Bar or Cirpriani, something a bit more exclusive feeling, after all that’s what we were going for «Black Tie» and all.
The company lied/​mis-​represented EVERYTHING. The pictures from the boat are from a million years ago… the party was NOT as described. It was deplorable, horrible and with my prior customer service experience I don’t think that ANYONE should EVER BUY ANY TICKETS from this company. They need to be out of business…
And start marketing your Harbor Lights cruise to the younger crowd… perhaps if you want to party and puke everywhere this is the party for you, NOT the older crowd.
STAY AWAY FROM THEM!!!

Do not trust this company! New Years Eve boat boarding time delayed by 2 hours. Hundreds waited at the freezing pier with no sign of any boat appearing. THERE WAS NO BOAT! There was few staff there to explain this. After another hour and a half… Yes at 11pm, we cut our losses and left along with hundreds of other people. This is the worst company I have ever come across. COMPLETE SCAM! Also, you have to collect tickets. Do not believe the print out which says that this can be used at the event.

AVOID THIS COMPANY LIKE THE PLAGUE… YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!
My fiancé purchased tickets for the Harbor Lights Yacht for New Years. We were both very excited to go, since we’ve never done a dinner cruise for New Years. It will be our absolute LAST TIME with Oncruises, no doubt about that. But before I begin, I just want to say that my fiancé and I made the most of the situation and had fun together, as well as with those we met (they had the same opinion about the experience).
Where to begin… I think the bad experience can be attributed to the complete lack of organization by the company. This is a recurring theme throughout the overall experience. We boarded the boat around 8pm, entering through the lower level. Some seats had cards on them with names, so we figured those were the reserved seats. Others had the word «table» on them, so we sat down. About 15 minutes later we were told these were reserved and had to go upstairs if we didn’t have a reservation. Not sure what their logic was in the cards. It continues to go downhill from there.
The bar… complete disaster. Don’t be excited by the «open bar,» you’ll be lucky if you can get 3 drinks. The Open Bar didn’t begin until 8:30pm SHARP, so I was forced to wait about 10 minutes with a huge crown pushing me against the bar. Once 8:30pm hit, open bar began. Drink choices weren’t the problem; it was the utter lack of experience by the female bartender, who I could have guessed had no experience whatsoever. She also didn’t listen very well. I said three times what I wanted, yet she still got it wrong. It was 2 drinks, what’s so hard about that??? Oh and they ran out of alcohol and sodas well before the evening ended. Probably because they overbooked.
The drinks were stronger than at a frat party. We like to enjoy our drinks, and these were absolutely horrible. The other bartender, a male, wasn’t as bad. TWO BARTENDERS FOR ~400 PEOPLE??? Absolute madness. There was another bar downstairs but we weren’t venturing down there due to overcrowding on the boat (I heard it was 150% over capacity).
Ironically, by the end of the night, there were tons of wasted people. I can understand that happening at a frat party, but not at a public dinner cruise. I was extremely disappointed that the bartenders didn’t take enough action to ensure the safety of everyone on board and cut people off.
Now on to the food, if you want to call it that. First, the line… or should I say, traffic jam line. There was only one place for food, so you would think there’d be one line. Nope… the line wrapped around the staircase in such a way that there were 2 lines that merged into one at the start of the food tables. In fact, one of the hosts couldn’t understand how the line situation began. Is this making any sense? Nope, not at all.
Next is the food, which was sub-​par, and that’s being nice. The breading on the chicken fell off easily, the chicken was tough to chew, the string beans were plain, the potatoes were undercooked, and the bread was terrible. The only thing that wasn’t that bad was the pasta, which luckily my fiancé enjoyed (she’s a vegetarian).
The music started out good, then got worse as the night went on. The dance floor was a complete disaster once midnight hit. The floor was filled with leis, hats, and noisemakers, which weren’t cleaned up by the staff, who was always nowhere to be found.
While we were seated, people came up to the table and dropped their empty cups off. Tacky to say the least. Did any of the staff ever come by to pick up garbage? Nope!
I think you get the point. There’s more but I think I’ve said enough and hope that you will heed my warning… if you want an enjoyable New Years or any other occasion, I highly suggest avoiding Oncruises. The staff members are from different companies which are married together for the cruise, yet have no idea how to work together.
As I said in the beginning, I was so excited to spend New Years with my fiancé. We had a great time together, despite the poor job the staff did. If we ever do a dinner cruise, you can be sure we won’t be using this company ever again.
Oncruises is a terrible organization, or should I say, disorganization.

My friends and I bought tickets in mid-​October for the New Years Eve cruise on the Cornucopia Majesty. At the time I purchased the tickets ($ 360 later!) they e-​mailed a pdf of the tickets to me saying I could print them out and use them to board the ship.
Then on Thursday, ¹²⁄₂₇ I get an e-​mail and phone call from them saying I would have to go to their 31^st Street ticket office to pick up physical tickets or I would not be able to get on the boat. So right there, that’s bad — pick up tickets in one location, then board at another location?!! Very inconvenient to say the least. But I was excited about the cruise — 21 and up, open bar, dinner, dancing, and watching the fireworks — so I thought, ‘OK, I guess I can go pick them up — whatever.’
So ¹²⁄₃₁ rolls around and I leave work early to rush and get ready. Then my friends and I hop on to the 5:30pm train from CT so we can pick up the tickets and meet the boat in time for the 8:00pm boarding. While on the train, I check my e-​mail and see the following message from Oncruises sent at 5:10pm THE SAME DAY:
«Due to unforeseen circumstances by the coast guard, the Cornucopia Majesty will not be boarding until 10pm at Pier 81. The cruise will be extended and you will still receive a 4 hour premium open bar aboard the Cornucopia Majesty. We apologize for the inconvenience.»
So by 5:30pm on 12/​31, I’m already VERY skeptical of this cruise. We finally arrive at the ticket office on 31^st Street only to find out that we have to wait outside in the freezing cold while the ticket «agents» were inside a warm booth. The line was very slow. And while in line, a guy with the company tried to get us to sign Oncruises’ waiver, which basically said that they are not obligated to give us a refund unless the event is rescheduled or cancelled. We told the guy we would not sign this until we talked to the ticket agents, as we were already thinking of not going on the cruise. He said that if we don’t sign it we would not get our tickets. Ugh. At this point we’re thinking that other than their sketchy ticketing practices and last minute alarming e-​mails, we did NOT want to get back to CT at almost 5:30am!
We get to the window and we’re told that the boarding was delayed because the boat got stuck in the mud (!!!) earlier that day and the Coast Guard had to delay their departure. WTF!!! That was IT for us. No way were we going to get on a boat that was potentially unsafe. Also, the other ticket agent (a brunette woman) that was talking to the customer next to us was VERY VERY rude to him. With ALL these factors put together, we just had a horrible feeling about this cruise and decided not to go. We already know we will probably have to contact our credit card company for a refund!
However, our other two friends went on the cruise and told us it actually boarded at 11:00pm. The food was awful and the toilets overflowed. Yikes! To be fair, she said the drinks and the music were good, but that was about it. So while I’m very glad we skipped the cruise, I’m EXTREMELY disappointed in this company’s customer service and operations in general.
It should be noted that not only does this company have terrible reviews here on Unilocal,they have had 19 (!!!) complaints filed against them with the BBB, and horrible reviews on various different cruise review websites.
DO NOT waste your money on this company. Go with City Lights or another company. How this company is still in business is just amazing to me. It’s really a shame because this could have really been a lovely and memorable experience had they just valued their customers — and their ships! — about 110% more. Tsk. Tsk. Major fail.

This was a pretty wretched experience. My date and I paid for VIP seating on the harbor lights boat. We did not get it. VIP guests have a special blue wristband. Not only did they not have our names on the list, they insinuated that we had stolen these blue wristbands. As we all know, there have been a rash of wristband thefts in NYC.
So we paid roughly 160×2 for no VIP service, no seating, terrible food.
The event was also advertised as open bar, but we ended up paying for our first drink on the boat. The drinks were only free once the boat had embarked from the marina, and they left at 1 hour after the scheduled time.
To their credit, the drinks were strong.
The boat does not look like the pictures. There is no coat check. They seem to have crammed more people on the boat than was legally permitted.
Do not waste your money with this company. Pretend you are in small claims court and bring all of your documentation. We won’t be paying for this. We did not get what we had paid for.

They have no customer support whatsoever. i purchased 2 coupons on amazon local deals ,
was a merchant and they sold tickets for after work cruise. and i wasnt able to redeem them online as i was instructed and over the phone for TWO days!!! i tried 2 phone numbers: 1) 646−397−7660 was provided by
and once u call it says: the GOOGLE subscriber u are trying to reach is unavailable. 2) 212−724−3900 was provided by oncruses as well and their representative failed answering single question, promised to call back and most certainly never did.
bottom line: tickets are canceled. after all this i got scared of getting on THEIR boat.

I went on a July 4 cruise with a large group. First, the process of getting tickets and boarding passes was absurd. Why can’t I just print everything at home? Or, for the exorbitant price of these tickets, why can’t they just be mailed to me?
That antiquated process aside, the boat was late, leaving all of the cruise goers to melt in the sun for about 30 – 45 minutes. When we finally got on board, the staff was less than friendly, and the bar lines were much longer than any bar I’ve ever been to. The bar selection was limited to say the least. The staff had a really special way of making all of the passengers feel like prison inmates. When the time finally came for us to eat, the food was cold, and one of my friends was sure that her meatball had once been a hot dog. Meat reincarnation? –What a miracle.
I can say that this cruise earned its one star because of the one thing that was completely out of OnCruises control – the fireworks show. The fireworks were amazing, and the view perfect, so thank you Macy’s for being the silver lining in this mess.

If I could give them a 0 stars I would. We bought fourth of July tickets online, thinking we can print them at home (according to the email) but after the email it said go to pick them up. It should hav been a quick pick up but there were 2 people servicing a line of 25+ people. And each person took 10 minutes. I have no idea what was taken them so long but they were ridiculously slow, unhelpful, and wasted our time. I haven’t gone on the cruise yet but their service in just getting tickets was awful. I will review the actual cruise later but so far outlook doesn’t look good.