A Butlin’s Holiday Camp on the High Seas………

As seasoned cruisers with thirty years’ experience of cruising with a variety of companies on several ships this has to be our worst possible experience to date and are not surprised that only 50% or thereabouts of clients are satisfied. After foolishly booking this holiday hurriedly at a Thomson’s Travel shop and realising we paid £350 more than the internet price only to be told by the travel advisor I booked with that this is the shop price showing on their website. So basically hard luck! Not the best of starts to the holiday. However in search of some winter sunshine and hopefully a culinary experience we reserved a Balcony Premier Suite on Deck nine at an inclusive cost of almost £3000 for the week, regrettably a five star price for a one star service. We did incidentally have the sunshine but not the culinary experience we had been anticipating.

The food presented was continually bland, boring, repetitive and basic, totally lacking in the usual flair and creativity that we have previously experienced on other cruise ships. We had chicken and salmon presented on the lunch and dinner menu each day which appeared in a different guise on each occasion with not much variation unless you were prepared to pay a supplement. You could select fillet, ribeye or T Bone steak each day at a supplement of £12.95 and always available as an alternative was, Hot dog with sautéed onions, chicken breast, salmon grilled or boiled, spicy Moi Bo Tofu and steamed rice or cheese burger with fries. Not exactly a gourmet experience after investing £3000! You could choose to eat in their up-market bistro at a cost of £19.95 pp but as this food was prepared by the same chefs in the same kitchen we never chanced it. The reports from fellow cruisers were not complimentary. Read more