My husband and I loved the Queen Victoria and the Pearls of the Black Sea Cruise. We were in the Britannia level. We are not retired, we are in our 40's and 50's, but we are pretty low key. This cruise was perfect for us. I have taken two other cruises, Alaska and the Caribbean. Both of those cruises emphasized nothing but shopping. When I go new places, I want to sight see. These cruise emphasized the sites in each port, which was wonderful. I did not hear about buying fabulous Swiss watches, etc. I did not hear the Macarena once - THANK GOD!!!

I agree that the ship was mostly retired people. I only went on one cruise-prepared excursion, but I did not find the people to be immobile. The cruise ports and sites all required walking or climbing stairs and were not handicap accessible - easily, yet the passengers seemed to participate in droves.

We had the late seating dinner and had excellent dinner companions and severs. We sat at a table of six as we enjoy meeting new people. It was great fun and we were usually the last table to leave. We would go to the Golden Lion Pub each night before dinner and we met a couple we played trivia with each night (although, bring American, we felt sometimes at a disadvantage on questions, our British partners were awesome!). The library was awesome, again, a lot of American bestsellers I had hoped to read and I was able to take them out and do that. We used the pool in the back of the ship by the Lido and it was great, we could always find a place to sit. Read more