We choose the cruise because of the places it visited. Almost immediately we realised the number of people with mobility issues, were frail and elderly or had other serious health issues who were on the cruise. As we embarked we followed an elderly couple, she was in a large wheelchair and he used a walker with a seat on which he had 6 large carrier bags which make it too large to get on board without the help of two crew members. It took a further 4 crew to get his wife on board.

At the safety exercise it became more apparent that the people who have mobility issues would not be able to participate in climbing up two flights of stairs to the lifeboats. The exercise lasted over an hour. I would estimate that 30/40% of passengers had mobility issues or were frail & elderly. I do not know how the company work out how many disabled passengers they can manage safely or how they risk assess passengers based on the Medical Declaration we were asked to complete a week before we travelled. Looking at the deck plans there are only 4 disabled accessible cabins. Many passengers had falls when the sea was rough and had black eyes, bandages & plasters. One elderly lady had 6 stitches in elbow and other injuries when her husband fell on her.

Like others have mentioned many people including me went down with bad chest infection - hard cough, high temperature and bad chest. Again a large number of passengers were affected. Read more