NOT NOT NOT a "luxury" Cruise - Some Very Good - Some Very Bad

We (family of five) just returned on Sunday 22 Dec from a 7 day cruise around New Zealand.

SUMMARY

Pros:

* Friendly/Effective Service from crew (seriously the training has been top notch!)

* Excellent Food Quality at included European restaurant (Lunch and Dinner/good fresh fruit and veg and good meat not to be found on European cruises) Kudos to the buyer.

* Excellent Main Shows Entertainment (people just loved the shows)

* Very Good catering to both Asian and European cultures onboard (very difficult to do)

* Good/Effective use of an old ship

* Reasonably priced drinks/drinks packages

* Very Few annoying announcements

Cons:

* Poor communication about processes

* NOT NOT NOT "Luxury" level cruising - total marketing blunder bound to disappoint

* VERY hard DOUBLE sized mattresses (not good for some).

* Tired old ship - not FULLY renovated nor modernized (Main dining room carpet: are you kidding!?)

* Horrible Chlorine filled water and sugary "fruit" drinks. Water smells like pool water, you will not want to drink after smelling it.

* Many technology based services simply did not work (online check-in/Onboard App)

* Lack of indoor spaces with quiet or relaxed instrumental music

* Odd food failures (cannot seem to do European breakfast well, wtf is "beef-bacon"? Where is the bacon-bacon?)

* Time at ports - early and short (hard one to fix)

* Too short dinning times (no sleeping in for you if you like to have breakfast)

* Shipboard currency is Australian dollars when less than 10% of passengers were Australian and all the ports of call were in New Zealand (in part meaning buskers/charities/street vendors out for the cruise passengers business will have seen very little benefit as few will be holding NZ cash).

Having said all that, we had a very enjoyable cruise and the reality is that cruising is a complex multi-faceted experience so in the end your mileage is subjective depending on your attitude and what is important to you. I hope the Dream Cruises venture in the Australian/NZ market is a success. Its great for the economy (particularly for the small towns) and the crew were so nice, one wants them to have goods jobs.

Full disclosure though, we only paid a very discounted fare of $NZ427pp AND were lucky enough to pull $400 of that back out of the casino. :-) So very economical holiday for us. With the overall product being of such mixed quality, I do not think I would be happy having paid full fare.

In reality Dream Cruises is not "luxury", it's very much at the P&O level of cruising (for Aus/NZ), which is the budget level. My advice would be to definitely consider a Dream Cruises cruise but don't pay top dollar thinking you are getting a top rate cruise experience, the experience is going to be very mixed.

Happy Cruising.

P.S. Beer AU$7 Soda AU$3 Cocktails(strong)AU$12 Wine(good) glass AU$7 bottle AU$20/25 (all prices plus 18% gratuity plus GST)