The Med

Well I do understand that almost everything has some bad reviews mixed with some good reviews, it was just that I couldn’t actually find any good reviews at all which was somewhat alarming (until the replies on this post). However, we’re now thinking that this cruise probably isn’t for us. The ship is too big. I’ve just been reading on another post about someone asking about Cunard. We haven’t done Cunard for a few years but we’re now considering the crossing to Southampton. I do adore dressing to the nines, so that would be nice. Its just that we won’t get the sunshine. Oh, decisions, decisions.

Does it vary depending where in America you are? I see Butterfly said that Canada is different. I would have thought that as the cruise leaves on 2nd for 10 nights that most children would have to be back during this period. In the UK parents get fined for taking their children out during term time, not sure what the USA rules are.

Thanks for that Butterfly4108 Well that’s made us think! We have been away previously on other cruises during school holidays (we had to when our son was at school) but we didn’t find it too much of a problem because we found that most children went to the kids club. However, we’re older now and less “kid tolerant” especially naughty ones! For various reasons we wanted to be away from home over New Year so thought that a couple of nights in The Big Apple followed by a cruise might have done the trick. Oh decisions decisions.

Thank you for all the quick replies. Although we’ve not sailed NCL for 4 years we have sailed with other cruise lines over the last few years, mostly Celebrity which up until recently we thought was a fairly good fit for us. The last two cruises were on Celebrity Beyond, although that wasn’t sailing full, and then in February we went on the Celebrity Edge and it was this last cruise that we thought we’d give Celebrity a break for a while. We definitely noticed a difference in terms of food, service and entertainment. We now realise though that it’s not just Celebrity that are cutting corners but apparently several cruise lines seem to be on a race to the bottom. The cruise sails on January 2nd for 10 nights so I presume there will be lots of children on board? Anyway we have lots to think about, whether to go ahead and book or not.

We were looking at a cruise on The Getaway from New York leaving in January. We only cruised NCL once before, on the Epic about 4 years ago so I thought that I’d read some reviews to get a feel of what’s what. Oh, my goodness, the reviews are dreadful, I haven’t come across a good one yet. The comments range from overcrowding everywhere, 45 minute queues to get on and off tenders, nowhere to sit in the buffet, all speciality restaurants booked up once you get onboard, all excursions booked if you happen to be a late booking, 45 minute queues to get into main restaurant with no queue separating those who have booked and those that haven’t.Also no quiet areas to sit and read, a screen on constantly in main atrium.Disorganised staff, people coughing all over the buffet, no sanitiser offered on entering restaurants. Can anyone either confirm this or offer a more positive experience? To be honest, it’s completely put us off booking.

First time on Regent for us and I stayed up late (1.00am UK time) specifically to make the dinner reservations. Even so, there were no slots left for 7.00pm in any of the restaurants on any of the days, but we managed to book in for a little later than we would usually eat. Eating at a different time than usual isn’t the be all and end all for us, we’ve got our reservations booked, we don’t mind being flexible, we just count our blessings that in these times we are lucky enough to be able to take lovely vacations that some people can only dream of.

Yes this exactly. We’re still debating.

Thank you, we expected it to be mainly Brits, but we don’t mind which nationality, we love to mix with different groups of people. We have previously done a 3 day Cunard which we loved and a 3 day P and O which we didn’t like at all (although we usually like P & 0.). We just wondered if anyone had the experience of a 4 day Princess? It was the words “booze cruise” that put us off, we just want to experience Princess in its normality, we don’t particularly want it to be full of people who are only on it to get drunk and be loud. I do tend to overthink things.

We haven’t cruised on Princess for 15 years, we’ve mainly cruised with Celebrity. However we’re now looking to give Princess another try and we’ve seen a four day cruise on Sky going in a few weeks time. We initially thought that a few days away would give us an idea of the ship and the brand but we’ve since heard it described as a booze cruise which we don’t particularly like the sound of. Will it give us a good idea of Princess or will it be a different experience than usual? Is there a different clientele going on the shorter cruises? We just want a quiet few days away, nice food, try out the theatre and entertainment, we’d rather not be surrounded by stag and hen parties.

Ah, ok, I stand corrected re main dining bookings. We personally weren’t able to book any before boarding and no more than 24 hours in advance once on board. No idea why if everyone else seems to have achieved it!

We booked cruise only price too, but it still allowed us to book speciality restaurants. (We paid the gratuities at the end of the cruise). If you can’t book on the app try using another device, log on to Celebrity.com and then go into manage your booking. Then select which restaurant you want. It should show the days and times available for those days. For the main restaurants, you can only book one day ahead, you can’t book ahead for the whole of the cruise… at least that’s what we were told.

No, we didn’t see that menu. It came up in conversation because our son and his girlfriend are both vegan and we said “Gosh, if we took them on a cruise, there’s absolutely nothing on the menu for them, hardly any vegetarian/vegan food at all”. It was only this morning that I saw on another thread that you had to actually ask for the menu. It might have been helpful if at the bottom of the menu there was something that said “Vegetarian menu also available, please ask”.

Don’t be nervous. I’ve tried to give an honest review but really, we still had a wonderful holiday. The sun mainly shone, we visited destinations that we hadn’t been to before, our cabin was spacious and sunny, we had fun. The food is only a part of the holiday, and although we found it disappointing, we just got on with it and didn’t let it define our vacation. Enjoy it, embrace the good things and don’t let the bad things spoil your fun.

Yes they changed it, and yes they had a common theme in all four and a few unique items. I’ve always previously enjoyed it up until this cruise. I’m not particularly fussy. My husband doesn’t cook so when I go on holiday I’m generally happy just to have food prepared for me. However this time I was struggling to find something that I fancied. I don’t want to eat food that I can cook at home, I want decent restaurant quality healthy food. For example…oxtail. Where we come from, that’s a cheap cut of meat that you would make soup from. It certainly wouldn’t be served up as a main course in a decent restaurant. One night I had 2 starters because there was absolutely nothing else that I fancied. As I’ve said though, even though I had steak at the steak restaurant I’m not really a meat eater. So anyone that likes pork chops or lamb or chicken would have found more to eat than me and therefore have a totally different opinion.

I’d give the buffet a go before deciding. We also got fed up with the main dining room and ate in the buffet a few nights. We always found something to eat even if it wasn’t what we would have usually chosen. The choice is severely limited and I struggled to find healthy food. However on those nights we were tired and it was preferable to sitting in the dining room for ages. On my first post where I referred to only a few scraggy bits of cheese….this was later in the evening after we had been to Eden and I was still hungry. We had an overnight in Aruba, got off the ship at 5.30 and got back on at 8.00pm. There was a full buffet that night and also it was very busy.

Yes they are listed on the daily sheet. They tend to put them on on sea days. I’m not sure whether it’s only on the larger ships though.

I hope that you enjoy it. We’ve really loved it both times we’ve done it but the first time was special because of the novelty value. The second time we enjoyed it slightly less but only because the surprise element had been taken away.

ENTERTAINMENT. I personally thought that the entertainment was ok. Not brilliant, just ok. We had seen the magician before, I personally didn’t think his show was anything special. I enjoyed the comedian, I thought he was good. Apart from the Michael Buble act which I enjoyed I didn’t really care for any of the other singers that I saw. I didn’t go and see Charity Lockhart because I don’t really like Aretha Franklin. Others will disagree, as I believe others enjoyed the performances. We didn’t think Tommy Green Jr was particularly good but everyone else seemed to love him. What disappointed me was that there was no proper theatre show. As in A SHOW. Comedian, singers, magician but no show. Other cruise lines tend to put the singers, magicians and comedians in The Club and put proper shows on in the theatre. Actually to be fair, there may have been a show one night, but we lost 2 days due to horrific food poisoning. I won’t bore you with the details of that, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Anyway back to the entertainment. We’re theatre buffs, love going at home regularly so perhaps we’re pickier than most. We enjoyed the games and quizzes in The Club, we didn’t go every night but had fun the nights we did go. I didn’t go and listen to the Buddhist talks although they did sound interesting, the times didn’t work for me. I would have preferred more variety on the speakers. A few years ago on another cruise line they had a retired English Poilce Detective talking about how they solved certain crimes. Now that was entertaining. The best entertainment on the ship was from our Captain Tasos, he really amused me. Certainly my favourite Captain ever and the only reason I’d sail with Celebrity again. We’re definitely looking around at other cruise lines now. Celebrity has previously been our favourite, it was a good fit for us but it no longer ticks the right boxes. It’s time for a change.

We were on the Beyond last summer and it’s a beautiful ship. We’d sailed on the Edge 3 years ago but since going on Beyond and then back to the Edge there really is no comparison. The sunset bar on the Edge is stunning, the Martini bar is beautiful, everything was just lovely. It was however on its third voyage when we sailed on her so it was basically brand new, everything clean and sparkly. The Edge looked in parts, quite shabby in comparison. Fir example most of the seating in the rooftop was marked, dirty and ripped. It surely wouldn’t cost much to replace the covers but they just hadn’t bothered. I hope that you enjoy your cruise. I’m confident that you will love the ship itself, but id be interested on your opinion on the food situation.

For clarification re Eden, the service was good and attentive. We’ve eaten there on previous cruises and it’s usually our favourite restaurant. We’d pre booked and paid before we got on the cruise which brought the price down. It was just this occasion that I didn’t enjoy my lobster. We booked the steak restaurant on board and it cost $150. It was our wedding anniversary but when we got there they said our reservation had been cancelled. They did however find us a table since they weren’t full. The steaks were nice but certainly not worth the money. The service was slow, we had a wait of around 45 minutes in between the starter and main. The waiter was lovely and apologetic, he said they’d unexpectedly had a large table arrive and it had thrown things out. I personally wouldn’t eat there again unless they brought the price down considerably. The main restaurants lacked choice and imagination. On one night out of 10 choices for starter 8 of them were either for soup or salad (if you included the prawn cocktail). Only 2 items that weren’t soup or salad.. I mainly eat fish and the choices for main course were extremely limited. I personally found the choices and quality not to the same standard as previous cruises.

SPECIALTY RESTAURANTS We didn’t bother with the cartoon plate thing, love it but done it twice, that’s enough. Not interest in RAW on 5 so that only left us two other options. We are at Eden restaurant which my husband enjoyed but I didn’t. We both had the lobster, I couldn’t eat mine, it didn’t taste right. Husband ate his own lobster and mine. So I left hungry. Steak restaurant experience was abysmal. Food ok, service appalling, totally not worth the money. We ended up hungry after both nights and wandering up to the buffet but to no avail. A few scraggy bits of left over dried up cheese and bread.

A quick review. We got on at Fort Lauderdale 23rd Jan. Booked infinity Balcony. Cabin was great, spacious and light, loved the location and proximity to everything and everywhere we needed to be. FOOD MAIN RESTAURANT UnfortunatelyThe Main Dining rooms lacked quality and choice. They like to give the impression that it’s 4 different restaurants. It REALLY ISN’T. Same thing every night,in each restaurant. But, we found something to eat along with the new Celebrity missive “You won’t starve”. BUFFET Buffet was excellent for breakfast and lunch. Dinner at the buffet was.absolutely abysmal

Thanks, we’ve compromised and booked a tour with the cruise company which involves a small tour then time to explore on our own for a while. It wasn’t much more expensive than a taxi both ways so we thought it took the hassle out of it and gave us the best of both worlds.

I’d like to know the answer to this too.

We’ve also looked at this tour and couldn’t for the life of us work out why it was listed as strenuous. We don’t understand what would be strenuous about getting on and off a boat. If anyone has done that tour, how long were you on the boat? We want to maximise our time in the old town and don’t necessarily want to spend too long cruising. We don’t really like tours, much prefer to do our own thing, however I’m getting increasingly uneasy about what I’m reading. Aggressive vendors, people jumping in your taxi, not easy to get a taxi back. We really don’t want the hassle so will get a tour for this port.