We booked this cruise in February and were so excited and looking forward to our cruise. This is a brand new ship which had its maiden voyage in June. The ship is very bling and all extremely clean and well maintained. There is plenty of entertainment and is an ideal cruise for children who can spend their time in the water-park and outdoor walking bridge. There is also 10 pin bowling, a five-a-side football arena and lots of other activities for younger children too. The promenade area has lovely shops and at night the dome ceiling has displays which were pretty amazing. Overall, this ship has everything, however the negatives are there are too many passengers and not enough staff, there were queues for everything. We were assigned a table in a Panoramic Restaurant but the portions were so small and not very appealing that we ended up eating in the Market Place Buffet. Breakfast was a bit of a nightmare, trying to find a table with no staff around to assist. The food was pretty average but there was plenty of choice from lovely fresh fruit, cooked breakfast (although avoid the bacon, it was awful), selection of pasties and pancakes and waffles. We found that if we went for dinner about 9.20 it was a bit quieter and easier to get a table, however, it was difficult to find someone to order a glass of wine and most times we just helped ourselves to some water. The food at dinner was pretty average too, there was always a nice salad available. The pasta was ok but I could make nicer myself! There was always a good selection of fresh pizza which were good. The cocktails were very good, we were all inclusive and there was a great selection of cocktails and other drinks available. The entertainment was ok. We booked to see Cirque de Soleil which was amazing and popped along to another couple of shows done by the cruise staff which was pretty good. A lot of the entertainment is geared towards the Italian and Spanish passengers/ In fact there were very few other British passengers on board. I only spoke to one other English lady and a Canadian lady the whole week. Most other passengers were Italian, Spanish, French, German. I didn't find this a friendly ship and a lot of the crew looked pretty miserable most of the time. I would only mention a lovely girl called Gracie from India who worked in the bar at the back of the ship and she was lovely and always came looking for us to get our drinks and was wiling to have a chat. A few of the entertainment team made the effort to have a chat to us which was appreciated.

The stops were good, we had a great trip to Pompeii and would definitely recommend this one! We had a lovely day in Malta too and caught the local bus to St George's Bay so it was lovely to have a swim in the Sea. The No. 14 from the port takes you straight to the beach and takes about 40 minutes but was a nice drive through the town.

Overall, I did enjoy the cruise but now that I had been on MSC I would not return and would not recommend this cruise. This was the first time we had gone one our own and maybe if a crowd of friends /family go and have your own company it would be more enjoyable.