My overall thoughts on the ship are that it was a 4 star experience with a 5 star price. We had such a good experience on our Tahiti Cruise that we actually signed up as soon as the Tere Moana came on line. We wanted to see the Caribbean and felt that the small ship experience would best meet our needs. That being said, there is a lot of work to be done to get the Tere Moana up to the standards of the Paul Gauguin. Sometimes it felt like there was an identity crisis going on, was this a luxury ship or an adventure cruise? Sometimes it was hard to tell.

I would say that the itinerary was the other thing that drew us to the Tere Moana. We loved the idea of being able to visit small islands and places that the big ships don't cruise to. I did really appreciate the fact that PG did the research on when the bigger ships were in port and changed their itinerary to give us a better experience. One of my concerns was I was not notified of the changes. I only found out because I was in contact with other cruisers via Cruise Critic. I ended up having to call PG and verify because we had booked an off-ship excursion on Tortolla and had to make sure that we had booked for the correct day.

The check-in process was painless after we were aboard the ship but the actual process to get on the ship was unpleasant. We had to make our way through two separate passport checks and had to wait for someone to escort us to the ship. It would have been better to have a ship's representative waiting at the Port Entrance to make sure that people were assured that they were actually at the right place and were briefed on the process to get through French Customs. We weren't even sure we were in the right place and the Customs Officer spoke no english. We truly only knew we were in the right place because we had seen the ship earlier as we drove down the mountain towards the port. Read more