We chose this cruise because it covered the ports that we wanted to see around the Med, unfortunately there was too little offshore time in some ports, especially when we cleared immigration later than the published time, and we still embarked on time thus reducing onshore excursion time. The rest of the cruise was memorable for all the wrong reasons. The attitude of the staff in the dining room and buffet was surly and they obviously wanted to be somewhere else and not serving passengers. At lunch one day in the buffet a lady slipped and dropped her food, the staff looked on as other passengers picked her and her food up, finally a senior person arrived on the scene and got the other staff members to clean up the mess and phone for the ship's doctor. We only ate in the dining room once because of the staff's attitude, and they do not even provide water on the table, you have to buy a bottle. There are plenty of no smoking signs on the back balconies and you can find these easily because the passengers stand right underneath them and smoke, and staff walk by and don't say anything. There are signs in 5 languages on the water dispensers in the buffet saying don't refill bottles because its a health hazard, yet everybody does it and the staff look on and say nothing. We had to complain one day when one of the staff touched the food in the buffet without any gloves on, his supervisor reprimanded him and gloves were put on, but this should never have happened. The desserts in the buffet were repetitive and boring, everyday a cake slice of some sort but with a different flavoured cream filling, and ice cream was never available in the buffet, if you wanted one you had to walk up stairs and buy one in the gelato bar. Bedtime sleep was interrupted on several nights with unsupervised kids running up and down the corridors to midnight. The shows were put on by the staff and were mediocre, too much dancing to piped music because they did not have a band, and there was not enough singing. Only one of the celebrity acts was worth seeing, the remaining ones just filled up time.

The only positives were that the cabin was a good size and the cabin boy smiled each day and said hello and did a good job maintaining the cabin, and for the most part the ship was kept clean.