The cruise didnt start very well, we checked in at Manchester airport at 07:15 only to be told that there is a 3 hour delay on the flight so please accept a £5 food voucher each. We decided to pay the stupid price for a cooked breakfast as we had the vouchers then started the long wait! Sometime later the flight departure board went from showing a delay on our flight to disapearing off the boards altogether. An announcement followed asking all passengers on our flight to attend the information desk and collect another £10 each in vouchers as there would be a further delay. Following various different rumours we eventually took off at 20:35hrs some 10 hour delay. The flight itself was into a headwind all the way and took another 10 hours we eventually got on board Azura at just before 3am local time (7am UK time) after some dried up sandwichs we eventually fell into bed some 26hrs after waking up in the airport hotel.

The first day was a sea day although due to the previous days travelling we were virtually wiped out for most of the day.

We hadnt been on a cruise since Nov 2010 and I have to say that there does appear to be cutbacks that take the shine off somewhat in comparison to previous cruises. The flight is a long haul flight and all drinks used to be free, not any more. The on board entertainment seems to have gone down a few steps, previous cruises had some "headline" artists in cabaret ( Brian Conley, Tim Vine, even Martin Daniels etc) now the headliners are X factor or BGT semi finalists. Read more