We loved the smaller ship, and the itinerary and the crew were great, but there are a lot of things about this ship that need improvement.

The problems started with embarkation and continued right through disembarkation. At embarkation, we were handed a pile of forms to fill out. The woman who handed them to us made a point of saying that two of the forms did not need to be filled out until we got to the cabin because they would be collected later. That was wrong – we had to complete them before we got to the gangway. On board, other papers were delivered to the cabin with instructions to fill them out and return them to drop boxes that didn’t exist. The Compass was often inconsistent with other documents. After all the harping about meeting your tour at the location printed on your shorex ticket, we would show up in the designated lounge to be told the meeting place had been changed to another lounge. On disembarkation day, the documents said the gangway was on 2, so that is where we went with our bags, but there was no gangway. We asked a crew member, who confirmed the gangway was on 2. It was actually on 4. The shorex manager admitted at his presentation that some of the tour descriptions were inaccurate, yet if you go to the desk they have very detailed info in the computer – why can’t they make that info available in the tour descriptions (Princess, for example, posts all that info on the website)? The shorex tickets were not in the cabin when we embarked. Sometimes the puzzles were illegible. Many of these are small things that we would have overlooked if there had only been a couple of them, but the number of problems across multiple departments suggested to me that management has a problem with attention to detail.

The cabin had good storage but the AC did not work properly. After we reported this to our steward, an engineer came who seemed to blame us for the problem by suggesting we were leaving the balcony door open (we had not done that). He removed a panel from the ceiling, left a filter on the floor, left and did not come back. The situation did not improve much. The drainage channel on the edge of the balcony was clogged, so that water could cover the balcony when the ship rocked and we had to put a bathmat by the door to keep the carpet from getting wet. That problem was resolved after a few days. The water pressure in the sink was very low. The lighting in the cabin was horrible. If you turned on every light in the room, you could read but it wouldn’t be comfortable. The “reading” lights on the wall were about as bright as a nightlight. There were no amenities in the room – we got bar soap and lovely towel animals and that was it – no shampoo, no tote bag, etc. We had to leave the steward notes to get things like laundry bags replaced. We were given ice but no glasses. They don’t leave you any maps or port info anymore, and no beach towels (which we would have liked to protect our clothing from the soot that hit the balcony). You may want to avoid cabins on the atrium – the ship has the noise-blocking doors, but they never closed them. The balcony chairs have straight backs that do not recline for a nap. Read more