This was our first river cruise having done many sea cruises with Seabourn and Silversea. We were initially pleased with the overall experience, although the suites were a little tired. All of the staff were extremely polite and helpful and we listed many individuals in our on board review.The food, service and excursions were excellent. The on board entertainment was average. Apart from one guest entertainer, we had the same pianist/vocalist for the entire cruise.

The problems started for us after a couple of days when our toilet stopped flushing. On reporting the problem, we were informed that there was a major issue as a plastic bottle had been flushed into the system. There was an unsuccessful attempt by staff to solve the problem and this resulted in 170 guests and all staff having to use 2 toilets on another ship alongside.The use of this other ship continued for 2 days but the problem remained for the whole of our cruise. We were assured by the staff that there would be some compensation for the inconvenience caused. In fact some guests chose to leave the ship part way through their holiday.

Having submitted a complaint to Scenic we were initially offered 20% discount on a future cruise.This is hardly compensation for what we had suffered and in fact has no value unless we book again with Scenic. We contacted Scenic to express our disappointment and it took a further 3 weeks to be told that we would not be getting any further compensation other than the discount. Read more