We sailed with extended family on back to back cruises for 12 nights from Singapore to Shanghai via Thailand/Malaysia, Vietnam and various Chinese ports. I had an open mind having sailed on a good Baltic cruise on RCI's Vision a year earlier and we were looking forward to being on a really large ship for the first time.

We came away believing RCI could not organise a raffle and could not have cared less. The disembarkation in Phuket at tender took more than 3 hours after RCI seemingly messed up with the immigration formalities and after taking all our passport in Singapore had to return them all to us on board ( by making hundreds of people stand in a queue) so that immigration officials could eyeball every one of us before we got off. Sadly it seems RCI had not checked the position properly ahead of time.

In Saigon ( where we docked 2 hours from the city) we booked excursion tickets thinking this may allow us to disembark more quickly. However whilst those tickets indicated we should meet at a rendezvous point on this ship, it was closed when we got there. There was no one about to tell anyone what to do so we bumbled off after about an hour stuck in the stairwell with hundreds of others, then became separated in the enormous confused crowds, and only by accident found our bus amongst dozens of others. The excellent excuse from the lone officer we stumbled across, was "but there are 1700 people on excursions here". As if RCI hadn't realised in advance they were hosting several thousand punters. Read more