I'm going to start with the positives , embarkation and disembarkation were excellent . The food was mainly good , hot and well presented , our waiter was charming and spoke perfect English .

The worst thing without a doubt was the noise, we were woken by such a noise at 5am first morning that it sounded like one of the engines was in the next cabin . There was absolutely no chance of getting back to sleep so I rang reception , somebody who had limited English came to the cabin and said " is engine " my reply was that I had been on many ships and never experienced such noise , to this he shrugged his shoulders " is engine " . Having complained we were moved from deck 4 at the very front of the ship ( ocean view was a tiny port hole up very high ) to the back of the ship on deck 6 , the noise was not as bad but it did still wake us for the following 2 mornings we were aboard . There was also on many occasions a strong smell of diesel .

The cabins look dated , carpet drab , only air conditioning control is on the ceiling which at 5 ft 4 inches I couldn't reach , air conditioning was also noisy . Between lunch finishing and dinner there is no food available anywhere on the ship . For the 3 days we were on the ship the pools were not filled . The entertainment was ok , but I do wonder if they only have the ships theatre group or if they do have comedians , tribute acts etc . A lot of the staff had limited English and some of them were a little surly . I had hoped we would enjoy it as Tilbury is very local to us , but I can say I would never sail on Magellan again no matter how cheap it was .