I wanted to try a royal class ship and picked the enchanted princess for the European ports. But as luck will have it . They had to cancel Madeira due to a naval pilot strike. The ship is beautiful, clean but is showing wear in the cabin and hallway carpets, and lumpy beds. The only annoying things are the cost cutting measures put in place. Note cost cutting words were used by Princess staff. ...
Please note, this is a long, detailed, log-like review. If you just want the summary and conclusions just scroll on down to the bottom!
We traveled for 13 days before the cruise. A summary of pre-cruise travels: Porto was a “10” all around. Sintra a solid and enjoyable “8.” Florence perhaps a “3” if I am being generous. If we had to plan this again, we would have stayed longer in Porto and ...
We chose this cruise in 2019 for my husband's 70th birthday in 2020. The Holy Lands was a Bucket List destination. However, with COVD in 2020 and 2021 we pushed our cruise to November 2022. Then a death in the family forced us to push the cruise to 2023. Little did we know a war in Israel would start only days before our sailing and would prevent us from visiting the Holy Lands. It was now too ...
Viking shipboard service was impeccable.
The included excursions did not always match their descriptions, especially the driving excursions.
Some of the excursion guides seemed to lack training and enthusiasm which made the excursion below expectations.
Viking food was okay, nothing special
Twice menu items preselected for medical diet were unavailable because the wrong menu was ...
Our first cruise since 2012. Everything on Marina lived up to what we remember in terms of great and attentive service. there are always a few crew members who show indifference but the vast majority were wonderful. The measure of service is whether the service during the last 36 hours of a cruise was a good as the first 36. Oceania pretty much nailed it.
The Spanish Market dinners in the ...
We have just disembarked from our first P and O cruise on the Iona. Our trip visited Madeira, Canary Islands, Lisbon and Mainland Spain.
We loved sailing out of Southampton and the process of embarkation and disembarkation was seamless. We could not fault it. It is the way forward for future holidays. We have only cruised previously with NCL and found ourselves comparing. Each has their ...
As embarkation goes, it has to be the worst in all my years cruising. There were only 550 odd of us but it over 2 hours in makeshift tents, fighting for seats, coffee and biscuits ran out and after we got on and did the mandatory safety briefing - the buffet had closed.
We’d set off from Gatwick before 7.00am so we were tired, hungry and thirsty - NOT a good first impression of Azamara ...
We chose this cruise due to the itinerary and price. We booked an inside guarantee and got upgraded to a deluxe balcony. The location was perfect. Very quiet and close to everything. The room was spacious, the balcony was awesome our our room steward was great. Only complaint: we could not get our ice bucket refilled since the machine the steward had access to was broken. This has never been ...
THE FOOD:
The food on this ship was, overall, the best I've seen in 30 years of cruising. Even the Oceanview (buffet) was great. Not every single item was to my liking, but there was always something delicious available to eat. We ate at Blue, Luminae, Eden and Raw on 5, and Oceanview, and every meal I had was ranked from good to great. The crab cake and beef wellington in Eden are the best ...
This was our first Transatlantic, second time on the Apex and over 10th time on Celebrity. The ship is beautiful, huge and was crowded all the time. In that regard, we were so happy that we booked a sky suite. The retreat was our haven on all sea days, and for pre dinner drinks, and afternoon snacks. But for those in a suite, your "butler" with a new title, is now a cabin attendant with a ...