This was our first cruise which we booked the day before travelling after our Thomson Spirit cruise had been cancelled due to the volcanic ash. I had read a lot of the threads on this forum and felt that I knew what to expect on the Spirit. I looked at the Thomson brochure and website and read the hype about the Dream being the flagship of the Thomson fleet, so set off on our cruise expecting even more.

Our disappointment started shortly after leaving Palma airport. We were on coach 3 of about 15. There had been 5 Thomson's flights all arriving within 15 minutes of each other from various parts of the country. A rep got on board the coach and told us that as soon as the coach was full we would set off to the port where someone would explain the check in procedure. The rep then left the coach and we set off. We had already seen The Dream in port from our plane as we came in to land. As we arrived at the port the driver drove past the security gates we then heard sirens as the port police flagged us down in their car. There was a loud exchange between the police and the driver, in Spanish, we then turned around and drove out of the port. Nobody knew what was going on until we eventually realised that the Dream was berthed in a different part of the port with a separate entrance. Once we got to the right place a rep boarded our coach and explained that when told to do so we had to leave the coach and go into the terminal building where we would be given an envelope with our boarding cards and a sheet of stickers to put on our luggage, which had been taken to a different shed. It took ages to get to the table where we collected our boarding cards as there was a bottleneck caused by the ships photographer. Once we got the boarding cards we had to queue again to get them activated and register our credit card. We then had to go to find our luggage and stick the stickers on before finally boarding the ship. It was pouring down and we had to run from one building to another to do this. This whole process took well over an hour and a half to complete and there were still massive queues behind us. We had all been on flights that took off around 6:00am and by this time were tired and weary. Some of the more elderly passengers looked fit to drop, as there was nowhere to sit nor was there any complimentary drinks provided. When we came to board the ship we found that the person who had activated the boarding cards had linked my card to my wife's photo and vice versa so we had to swap cards.

When we finally got to our cabin we were exhausted but found that the cabin door did not have a key in it like all the others. We found a member of the housekeeping staff who opened the door with a passkey and told us that the cabin was already being used by a member of staff. We were then taken to the Customer Services desk to be allocated another cabin. When we got there the queue was very long. After a while we got another cabin and were escorted to it by a member of staff. Concerned that our luggage now had the wrong labels stuck on them we looked out for our cases as we passed the lift. Luckily for us we managed to spot both our cases and took them with us. Some people didn't find their luggage until the following day. Read more