My wife and I enjoy the smaller ships so The Vision of the Sea's was a size we've been on before, much more intimate and easy to get from one end to the other. We cruised the British Isles from Amsterdam on May 22nd - June 3rd. The crew that were in contact with the customers were just fantastic, I told my wife I thought the crew in the Windjammer was the best I've ever encountered. The only problems on this cruise all involved Management, they had excuses for them all, and if this was the first time any cruise line had ever been to these ports you could understand some of the issues, they tried to say it was the first time the Vision had been to Edinburgh and that was the reason for the tender foul ups. Unless there is absolutely no communications between ships and company exec's that is a very weak excuse. In Edinburgh the first day, before day 2 when they put two tenders out of commission, we got our tender ticket at 8:30am and did not get called till 12:20pm. A 25 minute tender ride to port and 20 minutes for tender to return, with four tenders and 2000 customers simple math tells you it doesn't work. The second day in Port we left the ship at 7:20am to avoid any lines, it worked to a degree, however people who had tickets number 9 did not get into port till 1:00pm , because they didn't understand the tides and two tenders ran aground. Wait they didn't understand the tides, aren't they sailing the high seas with thousands of lives depending on them?

Dublin we docked in a freight terminal (pretty normal) however we had to pay for a transfer to go 4 miles and it took 30 minutes into town and some people took over an hour back to the ship. This is no respect for your customer. June 3rd cruise ends they tell us to be in the theater by 7:00am, busses were not ready so we waited till 7:40 am till we were escorted off the ship through hallways on deck 2 which is all cabins with people trying to get in and out of their rooms. At the airport the bus driver told us what airlines where in what terminal, no one was available to tell us where each terminal was.

In conclusion let me emphasize the staff was great every encounter on the ship was enjoyable, however anything Management had it's hands in was a horror show. Ship is clean and plenty to do so I guess management gets some credit for that.