We booked our cruise with cruise.com in July 2011 and persuaded 6 of our friends to join us. At no time were we informed by cruise.com or the cruise line it was a heavy metal themed cruise called 'Shiprocked'. One couple who accompanied us had never cruised, were in their late 60's and celebrating a special anniversary. We were so embarrassed standing in line with them surrounded by heavy metal fans covered in tattoos and using appalling language. One of our party 'Googled' the cruise to discover it was a heavy metal cruise.

On boarding we complained at Guest Services but they said they couldn't do anything! We went on deck for the sailaway but the 'music' (if that was what you could call it), started. It was so loud we couldn't even hear each other speak. We had to return below deck.

The rest of the cruisers (I'd guess around a quarter of the guests), were provided with normal cruise activities which consisted of one show a night in the theatre. There were two cruise directors. Anna who was German introduced every show in about 4 languages. Tyler, an American then spoke in English. It was so monotonous. Whilst small parts of the shows were enjoyable, the Italian opera singers and dancers were not what we would have expected. In one show the male dancers wore rabbits ears! Why? On the last night we expected a spectacular last show. It was so awful we walked out. It was entirely in Italian. Read more