I had been on two previous Thomson cruises and decided to try their 'new' ship. Last year I had the misfortune of being on the Island Cruises which was a very basic ship with everyone on board seeming to be of the 'working mens club' attitude i.e. cheap booze and very dodgy entertainment. The Discovery was a little more up market and did have some good entertainment shows however there was very little in the way of day time entertainment. The staff in the Spa seemed to have the task of trying to sell the very overpriced treatments (about 3 or 4 times more expensice than on land) at every opportunity in the 'free seminars'. The included restaurants had good service and we never needed to wait for a table. The self service (Islands) restaurant was very, very busy at times with us being unable to get a table - don't know if this is because the service restaurants had very short opening times. Food generally was of a reasonable quality although anything with chicken in seemed to have been so overcooked that it was very dry, and the bacon at breakfast was so anemic looking it seemed like it had been steamed rather than fryed/grilled. The staff working in the bars and restaurants were very good and tried to accomodate any requests that were not on the menus. We did find that the music played in the bars and on deck could sometimes be very loud and did prevent conversation, also you would have great difficulty getting a seat in the Atrium bar which is a shame as it was next to the restaurant so would be a place most people would arrange to meet for a pre dinner drink. When disembarking in port avoid trying to get off when the excursions are leaving if you can as the you need to be on deck 1 to get off but the queue would be up the stairs to deck 3 or 4 waiting to go.