We chose this cruise because we had cruised with Viking before and had a lovely experience. Also, we wanted to visit China and see the highlights. Unfortunately this trip did not live up to our expectations. The food on the land portion of the trip was very poor. Many of the lunches and dinners were buffets or tables of 10 with a lazy susan in the middle. Food was often cold and not very ...
We went with Princess again largely because of the 5-day pre-cruise land content in Beijing (for the Great Wall and other attractions) and Xian (for the Terracota Army). We enjoyed the experience with an excellent guide, top hotel accommodation and many fine meals. Well organised and highly enjoyable,
Unfortunately the cruise that followed was not up to our past Princess experiences. High ...
In keeping with the baby boomer penchant for cruising! and my wife's gentle persuasion(she had done a cruise to Europe);I decided to go on a cruise on the Sapphire Princess in April of 2016!
quite a few setbacks e.g. embarkation,visa problems,lack of communication, shore excursions.
Embarkation: endless wait,form filling;chaotic! a young staff member suffered a seizure! mass confusion! no ...
Chose cruise for fabulous ITINERARY-Beijing China, Busan South Korea, Nagasaki and Kagoshima Japan, Shanghai and Hong Kong China, Ho Chi MInh City (Saigon) Vietnam, Bangkok Thailand and Singapore. Weather changed from 60F to 100F, cool to uncomfortably hot and humid, and no rain except in Singapore. Some did pre cruise to Xian and Terracotta warriors but said they were worn out! We had 3 days in ...
For the most part, liked the remodeling, especially the closet - more room and ease of unpacking. Did not like losing the hand held shower nozzle though in the tiny shower. Found the food less enjoyable - seemed like too much mushy stuff - though there were a few good nights with prime rib and lobster.
Cannot complain about service. Excursions were ok but quite expensive. Drink prices ...
Firstly we are very seasoned cruisers and usually do not make comments on cruises however we found this cruise as being run mainly for a specific market which left it lacking.
The trip to Tianjin from Beijing was organised by our travel agent and was a joke with insufficient buses for the number of passengers and also no organisation, with some buses turning up and others not.
We left from ...
The food was mainly Asian and considering there were 2600 guests, of whom 600 were Asian, we couldn't understand why the food was mainly Asian. On formal nights there were many people in colourful polo shirts and when we mentioned this to the Restaurant Manager, he replied with "Royal Caribbean change their policy for the Asian market". Pity no one bothered to tell us, we had carried all our ...
The holiday started well with a good stay in Beijing, we were ready to get onto the ship after several hard days touring but unfortunately this cruise wasn't up to RCI's usual standard.
The embarkation was slow and disorganised, when we eventually found some one to help we were given incorrect information and queued for a long time eventually realising that we were in the wrong place ...
The mechanics of the trip were good - everything was well planned out and the hotels that we had were great. We had a wonderful guide in Tingting. That being said, China was a bit of a disappointment due to the massive upgrading to "new" and the loss of the "old" China. They were a few really great sites and a lot of blah!
Our room on the Viking Emerald was too hot and we couldn't control ...
Don’t think of this three-week odyssey as a vacation, but as a journey. It’s not an easy trip for several reasons, but the payoff comes in surprising ways along with a few pretty significant downers. The 21-day Roof of the World cruise/land “vacation” offered by Viking River Cruises, which we took, included the Hong Kong/Guilin supplemental portion.
Start your trip in Beijing because you’ll ...