Southampton to Italy Family Cruises Reviews

We like the smaller ships and particularly Aurora. We had wonderful calm seas for 16 days and then a Force 10 storm with high seas and missed Gibraltar as it was closed. We had already had Rhodes cancelled 6 months before the cruise and replaced with Messina, where we have been many times. The food in the main dining room seemed to be always roast this and roast that, along with 3 veggie ...

After around 20 cruises, this was our first Med. - and our last. The Silhouette which we had been on twice before was very crowded, I believe the passenger capacity has been increased and it showed. Full sunloungers, extremely difficult to get a seat in the evening and constantly running the gamut of the numerous motorised scooters - not wheelchairs I must add. More smokers than I have ever ...

A little bit about ourselves first. Me and my husband are seasoned cruisers, approx 20 so far with the last 8 being on the s class ships. We travelled with my sister and brother in law - cruise virgins. Embarkation was a breeze we were on board by 11.30, no long queues, checked in at the muster station and then dropped off hand luggage in our staterooms. We had adjoining staterooms deck 8 just ...

We chose this cruise for its itinerary, our Steward, Waiter, Assistant Waiter and Sommelier where brilliant considering the amount of tables/cabins they had to cover, however they were let down by the choice and standard of food in the Main Dining Room, choices for starters usually 2 or 3 Salads 2 types of Soups and Snails and Shrimp Cocktail. Main courses not much better and frequently the food ...

We hadn’t cruised for some years due to COVID and illness and decided to take this no-fly itinerary on ship we last cruised on in 2015 after a number of previous Celebrity cruises. Our overall impression was that the ship was much more crowded than on past cruises and this was most evident in the Ocean View Cafe and the sun decks where finding a sun bed proved an almost impossible task, despite ...

We choose this cruise as I was restricted to the date and amount of time I could have off. We have sailed in the past with Carnival, Ncl, P&O and finally celebrity - this was our 1st Celebrity cruise - and what I can say is that the service on celebrity is better than those other cruise lines. This was our longest cruise being 13 days - with 7 sea days including (departure day) The sea ...

Started writing this review mid way through the cruise as a way of managing my disillusionment, which will give you some idea of how bad it was. tl:dr version - horrified at how far celebrity has fallen, won't be coming back. For context this was our 3rd time with Celebrity. And it will be our last. I noticed a theme with these cruisecritic reviews, but dismissed it (as we had already ...

We had serious concerns about the drop in standards due to covid cut backs after our 2022 cruise but as we had booked this 2023 cruise we were hoping that things had significantly improved. However based on the issues below that have been reported to celebrity directly, we will not be cruising with them again: 1) Quality of white wines specifically and standard champagne were atrociously bad. I ...

This was our first time on QM2 since 2017 - we very much enjoyed this 4 night break in a deck 13 Britannia Club cabin. Here are my thoughts. Cabin Despite being adjacent to the door to the open deck, the location was generally pretty quiet. The Art Deco design highlights gave the cabin a nice touch of elegance. The shower with the glass door was great, good water pressure and consistent ...

We chose this cruise as it departed Southampton avoiding the hassle of a UK airport. Some things were good, cabin size and cleanliness. Some things were bad, the buffet was awful the food in general was pretty poor (think works canteen).The public areas were reasonably well maintained but the corridors and balconies were tatty. The ship had the feeling of a worn country house hotel. We had a good ...