My wife had been ill, once she felt able to travel we grabbed a last minute cruise deal through Broadway Travel. We paid quite a bit extra for an outside deluxe room plus premier service and the drinks package. The total price was well over two thousand pounds. I am not sure what the premier service was for, everyone was treated the same. The cabin we were allocated was 9010, it was tired and generally needed to be repainted, new sealant and broken tiles replaced in the bathroom, however, for a week we can put up with that. The two things that we were surprised about though was firstly we had assumed that an outside cabin with a picture window was on the outside wall of the ship - not true. Between us and the ship's railing was a sun deck, I accept that the glass in our window was reflective in sunlight but if the light levels were low and the lights were on in the cabin, passengers walking by or standing around talking can look in. Secondly, our section of deck 9 was immediately above the Medusa Lounge where music is scheduled until 12.15 most nights. We talked to Reception about this, they said that our travel agent would have been fully aware of the problems with the cabins on that section of Deck 9. They also said that there were even worse-off cabins on deck 7 toward the back which were immediately below the discotheque that ran until 2am. Reception had one small cabin that they could offer us halfway through the week but it was too little too late.

The other matter that we found interesting was the drinks package. We are both mainly wine drinkers, we don't drink during the day but look forward to a couple of glasses of wine with dinner. Although there are quite a number of wines on the wine list, we were only entitled to the house wine; 1 white, 1 rose and 1 red. The white and the rose were okay, the red was pointless - no bouquet and no taste. When I looked at the wine list for other options I saw that the house wine was priced at 4.20 a glass, and interestingly a number of other wines were also priced at 4.20 a glass. Now logic would say that I should be able to have any wine priced the same as the house wine without additional charge, so you can appreciate how puzzled I was when I was told that I would have to pay 3 pounds for a glass of alternative wine that was at the same listed price. I pride myself on being able to add-up, takeaway, multiply and divide, I also own businesses, I have never felt the need to insult a customer's intelligence! I asked staff about this, they said it was down to management, please step forward management and explain yourselves.

The food onboard is basically 1960's school dinners. The fine dining is not fine dining. Read more