We love the Azura, this is our second time on her and we had a wonderful trip to Iceland. The food in the main Dining is excellent and though the portions are smaller now than they used to be, I ask, "how much food do you need" we certainly were grateful for the quality and less quantity, we now have less weight to lose before our next cruise. The ports we visited were all different and interesting, so the itinerary was really good. On sea days the lectures were fully subscribed with standing room only in the Theatre for the code breakers talks. The staff on the Azura are still the best we have experienced, our cabin steward always smiling, singing and happy to see us and whilst we were on freedom dining we managed to keep the same waiters for the whole cruise, very efficient and friendly service here. Now for the not so good. She is looking a little tired and needs a make over. The Sea Screen has big squares missing from the picture, I heard one member of staff asking the comedian not to mention it one night, but it is so obvious that it's very faulty and if they loose any more of the picture it won't have a picture at all. The Epicurean Restaurant was a big disappointment, at £28 each cover charge you would expect the food to be phenomenal, generally it was a little better than main dining, a few more dots of sauce on the plate and slightly more adventurous menu, but we had to send my wife's meal back, Chicken should not be hard to cut and should be at least moist, it was cooked to death!!! Our main complaint however is not how worn the furnishing have become of the dirty carpet in the cabin, it does need a good clean and maintenance programme, it's the level of noise on the ship. It is very difficult, particularly on sea days, to find somewhere on the ship to sit quietly and read a book without one of the entertainment staff coming along and winding up the volume on the background music to nightclub volume, or screaming over a microphone telling everyone to step to the left and dosie doe. Even the Planet Bar, where normally you can relax, with nice piano or middle of the road music, had the sail away party in it on the last day, "everyone put your books down and do the conga" was the cry. NO! not appropriate! and when I heard American Thrash Metal music being played in the Antium i thought the entertainment staff were surely having a laugh at our expense as 99% of the passengers were over 60's.

The big thing about the sound is the Theatre. The Headliners were once again brilliant, how and where do they get their energy, all brilliant vocalist and dancers, a show every other night and other sets in the bars and around the ship with singing lessons and dance lessons plus helping on the excursions. What a brilliant bunch of talented young people, the theatre was packed with standing room only every night they performed. The new shows were imaginative and very entertaining, "Evolution" and "Astonishing" were brilliant, all ruined by the sound levels. The live Orchestra and the pre recorded backing and feature tracks were very audible without being over bearing BUT when the Headliner Vocalist sang their top notes and projected them, it was ear splitingly painful, I am not kidding when I say that I am pretty certain that the sound levels exceeded safe levels at that point. I like loud music and have often enjoyed Rock Concerts (Slade, Quo etc) where your ears are ringing, this distorted sound was not enjoyable and did a disservice to the obviously talented vocalists.

This is a great Cruise Ship and a Great Itinerary and i would definitely recommend the Ship and the cruise to anyone, but take some era plugs.