If one were to believe the marketing outline along with other supportive literature and link it with the cost we were looking forward to being spoiled. Go back a year and we'd just returned from another visit with UK friends in England and here was the ACL's booklet with our mail. We'd reviewed this same outline of ACL cruises for some years and decided why not. I called the ACL phone number expecting to talk with a knowledgable 'Cruse Line Specialist', but received such a difficult time as the reps I first tried to talk with could not answer any of my questions so I asked for a 'Supervisor' (who no longer works for the compay). She proved most helpful and set our minds at ease - should have gone with our earlier gut feelings and canceled our plans - but 13 months prior to this August 2013 we made our reservations.

Just ahead to early August 2013 and we receive notice that the dock and sucure parking in Providence had been changed so we called for directions. The first 'Specialist' said that once we get to the dock and off load our luggage, we could easily take a taxi to the secure parking (thus leaving our car on a roadside near the dock). When I pointed this out to the ACL rep, she hung up the phone.

I called again and was told by this other ACL rep that she lived in CT and thus knew nothing about Providence let alone be in a position to provide directions for center city Providence. Third call: Finally got someone who said they would send directions via eMail - most confusing directions provided for less than ten minutes of travel. We along with at least three other couples each spent over an hour in down town traffic before we finally found the secure parking lot where the lot attendent had no clue of our arrival.When we finally arrived back at the ship, our staterooms were NOT ready thus all were directed to the lounge. Once in our premium stateroom ($1000 more than the least expensive) we found that our requested king size bed with two bed side table lights were NOT provided, just simple twins with one bed side light. My wife soon found that only one wash cloth and one water cup was provided and her many requests for another failed, that was till she brought it to the attention of our guest speaker. We also soon found out that a back up roll of toilet paper was NOT provided until I broght this to the attention of one of the crew. Read more