Sailed from Harwick on 2/7/12, the embarkation could not have gone smoother. We arrived at 11am and were had unloaded our luggage, parked the car, registered and boarded the ship all within 45 minutes. The ship looks very clean and welcoming; we were greeted on board and shown to the windjammer dining room. We were so pleased with the ship having recently returned from P&O Ventura which was in a dirty condition, that we mentioned this to an officer on board; she took our cabin number and to our surprise a nice bottle of red wine with 2 glasses was left in our cabin.

The cabin was available at around 1pm and in a very clean condition , the balcony door was very stiff, this was dealt with very soon but was still quite hard to open. Two days into the cruise a bad smell started to emit from the toilet, again this was dealt with very soon but quickly came back again. Further attempts to eliminate it with strong chemicals did little to remove it. On day 4 we were moved to a very nice cabin a substantial upgrade from the one we had booked, and we were also given a 15% voucher for a future cruise, so all in all they could not have done more for us.

Food: was OK in the MDR nothing special but a good variety so I don't think you would starve. We did have some problems with food being at best lukewarm on cold plates; we pointed this out to the head waiter who did her best to resolve the situation. The service depended on who you got, some tables had very efficient staff, and others had slow staff. The people with diamond club badges in did seem to get priority service. Again the head waiter tried to resolve the situation but this resulted in the waiters going over the top and this made the experience quite uncomfortable. We were given a special lunch in Portofino's to compensate. One of the most bizarre moments was on the overnight stop in St. Petersburg, we were all put on open dining due to late trips so basically say anywhere with waiters from that section. We ordered a bottle of water for the table, but the waiter did not understand what a bottle of water was! He then called his head waiter who replied when asked for a bottle of water "you want chardonnay" this process went on for a full 5 minutes; after this I lost it a bit, told her where to stick the chardonnay and we had our evening meal in the Windjammer. The dress code is adhered to by quite a lot of people but unfortunately the jeans and tee shirt brigade seem to go unchallenged in the MDR. In the Windjammer the quality of food is quite good and very varied. In retrospect it may have been easier to eat there every night and cut down on the tips. Read more