WE have recently returnedd from a Black Sea cruise on Thomson Celebration and were more than a little disappointed. This is an old ship (built 1984) and despite the recent refit it is very tired. The cabins are particularly small a an outside cabin only has a small porthole rather than the picture windows we have experienced on other cruise ships. The theatre area is just a large pub lounge. The seats are not tiered and therefore it is difficult to see from the back. However, the show crew do work hard and the productions are very good.

The ship broke down for three hours on our second (at sea) day. This obviously put us behind our schedule and since the maximum speed of this outdated vessel was only 17 Knots it gave us no opportunity to catch up. Rather than state the predicament the captain told us that because of an an anticipated demonstration when we were scheduled to visit Istanbul on our sixth day he had decided to 'put passenger safety first' and visit Istanbul the next day rather than Nessebar. It subsequently turned out that there were no problems in Istanbul on the sixth day but this change in schedule meant that we were not able to stop at Cesme on the penultimate day of the cruise. When we stopped at Nessebar on the sixth day one of the first tenders managed to get its propeller entangled with a rope and instead of disembarking at 1.00pm we had to wait until 2.25pm. All passengers had to leave Nessebar landing by 4.15pm.

The food was quite acceptable on the cruise and we had no complaints on this aspect. Read more