My wife and I took our first "small" ship cruise on Azamara's Journey on 1/31/09. (Port reviews to follow) It was a great experience! The ship made us feel like we were on a scaled down version of one of the bigger ships. (The Journey being 30,000+ tons as compared to the 100,000 that we were used to)

The Journey, in our opinion, had an up-scale look to her; a lot of wood treatment with more expensive looking furniture. The cruise experience on this ship was one of our best in our nine cruises. (Celebrity, Princess, Holland, NCL) The crew and staff were definitely the best we've ever had. They were all over the place. Captain Theodoros Mitropoulos, Hotel Manager Niyazi Korkmaz, and staff Captain Emmanuil Aposkitis were continually walking the ship! (I know...who the heck was driving!!! LOL) They must have special training in public relations, because they not only were very friendly, but had great personalities!

Every working member of the ship must we trained to be overly nice to the passengers, because every time we turned around, there was someone saying "hi" to us. Their service was great! Read more