Others have critiqued the boarding and disembarkation schemozzle so I won't repeat what they have said. I have cruised on the Voyager of the Seas some 18 months previously and found it to be a good experience. Maybe I was lucky that time as there was a very bad outbreak of Norovirus which affected some 800 people but which I managed to avoid.

When I boarded the ship with my partner there was a terrible smell in the cabin. The crew seemed unable to assist so we simply left the balcony door open to help dissipate the smell. On day 6 of the cruise we were abruptly moved to another cabin for 'maintenance' to be carried out on our cabin. We were asked to move by a senior member of cabin staff just after lunch. 5 minutes later a luggage trolley arrived and we were questioned as to why we had not packed yet. I thought the whole idea of a cruise was that you only unpacked once... We were moved to a cabin at the absolute rear of the ship above the propellors. This was not on a par with what we had paid for - it was much smaller and the location was very noisy. When we asked for an equivalent cabin we were told that none were available, but that instead of not being able to move back to our original cabin as we were first advised, we were told that we could move back the next day when the 'maintenance' was completed. Another pack and move.

We returned to the cabin on that first day as in our hurried departure we had left a pair of shoes behind. The cabin had been totall stripped of all soft furnishings including the curtains and bedding. These had been placed in zip locked plastic bags in the bathroom. The bed had been pulled apart and was stacked in the middle of the room. The air con also appeared to be in the process of being cleaned as was the carpet, parts of which were pulled away from the wall. There was a strong chemical smell in the cabin which made us abandon the search for the shoes. It seemed to be very strange that the whole cabin had been stripped down.. Read more