Island Escape -- July 24th to August 7th 2012 (2 adults, 2 children aged 15 and 7)

Back-to-back cruises on the Island Escape (Escape to the Med, followed by Souks and Sangria). Last time we were on the Island Escape I was pregnant with daughter and son was 7 we had a great time then and couldn't wait to get back. Again we chose an outside cabin on Diamond deck and I had pre-selected it by working out which was the most central cabin and prebooking it. We knew the cabins were small but with four of us in it (son is well over 6 foot) it was a squash. Not really enough clothes storage space for four of us or places for our luggage but we worked around that. Shower room small, compact and did the business. TV in room with BBC world news, Eurosport (in German) and two film channels (plus various ships channels). We took a kettle for early morning drinks and be warned one of the two main sockets near the mirror is a 110V socket so if you plug a kettle in there it will take ages to boil. Cabin satisfactory but could do with a spruce up. Cabin steward very good and we did get a few towel animals but not that many.

We had two days at sea, one in each week, then different ports of call with a day at Palma (where we embarked) in the middle. Was very impressed with speed and efficiency of embarkation process much better than our last cruise on Ocean Village) in fact everything about the travel to there from Exeter was fine (except Thompson had moved our flight from a reasonable 9am to a rather early 6:50am!). Read more