My wife and I celebrated our 30th Anniversary this year and to celebrate it, we spent time saving up for a trip that would be truly special, and above and beyond a standard cruising experience. We chose this ship because it was the Christening cruise and that was a unique opportunity, but also because of how the ship was marketed to us in terms of the experience that we would have on board. Even as we boarded the ship there was an image presented to us of high quality service and experience, but that image quickly disappeared as we left port.

As I mentioned, the Christening celebration was a key part of choosing this particular cruise and this particular line for our celebration, but quite frankly we would have been better off to be one of the guests attending the ceremony than a passenger attending the ceremony. There was a lack of information in the lead up to the event, with much information being found online long before any official communication from the company. The ceremony itself was a major let down, where visitors to the ship and I mean visitors lots of them over the 2 days were given better access and vantage points for the ceremony over passengers on the cruise. There was poor and often incorrect information given to us on the day. For example, we were told that there would be only standing on the dockside or by the Lido pool, yet the company was able to provide reserved seating for a range of visitors to the ship both on the poolside and in the theatre. Another passenger who chose the dockside had told us that their experience was just as problematic with the crowd being kept well clear of ceremony for what they were told was security reasons, when in fact they were actually reserving the space for a large number of what was apparently staff, making it difficult to see the bottle breaking ceremony. In addition the Queen performed the ceremony from inside the theatre and not the dock as people had thought the Queen was going to do, with HAL instead opting for staff to release the cable on a cue from the theatre. So we didn’t even get to see either key component of the Christening in person, being that we weren’t able to see and hear the Queen in the theatre in person and we didn’t even know it was on in the theatre as it was kept very secret and passengers on the dock barely had any view of the bottle breaking ceremony. Basically it was ages of standing around to watch it on a screen when quite frankly the 2 minute replay on the tv in the cabin was better and more comfortable. Had we known this was the experience, it would have been a major cause to have reconsidered our choice to go on this cruise.

But it wasn’t just the Christening celebration that was a massive disappointment. The customer service on the cruise was lacklustre in all areas. I will acknowledge that we came across two or three staff members who were very friendly, helpful and personable, but on the whole staff either seemed to want to avoid interacting with passengers or just ignored us outright. Read more