We are recently back from a 10-day voyage from Venice to Rome on the lovely Azamara Quest. We are experienced cruisers with 50 plus voyages on ships of all sizes and shapes. Getting frustrated with the mega-ships, we were eager to go back to a smaller vessel that looks and feels like an ocean liner. We booked this trip approximately 18 months out and our first impressions of Azamara were not great. As we like to book all our travels directly, we tried to use the company’s online booking engine to make our arrangements. We found the Azamara website to be rather difficult to navigate and when we finally were able to make our booking, none of the promised credits or email confirmations showed up. The sale code at the time was continuously rejected and it took several frustrating phone calls to the 800 number to get our confirmation and onboard credits to actually appear. By this time, I was increasingly apprehensive about this product and wanted to cancel the whole thing. However, the travel dates were perfect and we really wanted this to work so we moved forward-and we were glad we did.

As time progressed, I am happy to say the web interaction improved dramatically. We were able to pre-book the Land Discoveries (shore excursions) we knew we wanted, and our electronic travel documents arrived just as promised.

We chose to spend 3 nights in Venice pre-cruise and stayed at the lovely Hotel Gabrielli (separate review posted on Trip Advisor). Transportation to the ship was super easy via the vaporetto, and staff was waiting to take our bags at the San Basillio pier entrance. Check in took approximately 5 minutes and we were on our way to the ship. Read more