WE are 4 star Mariners and absolutely loved sailing on this cruise and ship! Was it perfect? Of course not, but I absolutely loved the ports that we were in. Most of the tours we took were private tours, but we did take some HAL tours. Fortunately. the HAL tours we took ended up being broken into small groups at some points. For Borobadur, we left in large buses, but we went on an antique train and really loved seeing the people up class working in the fields. We were also able to tour the temple on our own. When we went to Mt. Bromo again we went on large buses and then broke into smaller groups and rode in jeeps with experienced drivers. When we went to Phi Phi Island, we went in boats that carried about 20 people. We had a total of 60 people visiting Komodo Island on a private tour. HAL was wonderful getting all of us off first and on 1 tender. (You cannot get off the ship without a booked tour.) The front office collected our paperwork and then delivered our colored tags directly to the people on our tour. We assembled separately from the other passengers.

We thought that the food in the dining room was very good and never had a problem finding something delicious to eat. The staff did seem a bit thin in the dining room. We did prefer having breakfast and lunch in the main dining room because the Lido was always noisy and usually we had a hard time finding a place to eat. I think part of that was the extreme heat and humidity. Not many people ate outside. We enjoyed dining in the Pinnacle Grill. Jerome was the manager and the staff was very professional and friendly. WE also enjoyed the Cellar Master dinner there.

We had a breakfast solar eclipse party in our room for 2 other couples since our verandah was on the right side for viewing. The items that we ordered were delivered promptly and at the right temperature. Read more