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Paint, paint and more paint!


Eglesbrech
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Our recent cruise on Braemar was comprehensively spoiled by the amount of work going on on the ship. Now every ship I have ever been on has had bits of ongoing maintenance, that is par for the course. This was in another league.

 

The whole ship stank of a mixture of damp, paint and oxidised metal from the grinding they were doing morning, noon and night in our corridor for most of the cruise.

 

They painted virtualy the whole promenade deck so closed different sections each day or you had to dodge round the painters and the ladders and the drips.

 

They were fixing up the external tables and chairs so a large part of the aft outdoor area was condensed off with tape for the whole cruise.

 

They shut the main Marquee bar to paint it. It was a beautiful sunny day and the main outdoor bar is closed and the area stinks of paint! It was closed 3 days out of 8.

 

They painted the pillers in the Neptune lounge, now anyone who has been on this ship knows how narrow this is to get past We went to a lecture and had to dodge the wet red and gold paint.

 

They re carpeted the Morning Light Pub - noise all night.

 

They cleared out the cabin next door, everything in it removed back to the walls - banging and knocking all day long.

 

They switched off the water, supposed to be from 1am to 5 am. 8.45am and we still had no water whatsoever so could not flush to loo, wash etc. Did we get any apology, explanation or timescales -no, the curt answer from reception was we are working on it. Now given how often they tell you to wash your hands on a ship it ironic that they don’t provide the water to do so. I ended up washing my hands in bottled water (which I had to pay for!).

 

Now reception tell me that what we experience is “perfectly normal ships maintenance” which frankly I don’t believe. I have not sailed a lot with Fred but I have done so with other lines and never had this.

 

Is this fairly normal on Fred? (If so we won’t be booking again)

 

And just to add insult to injury we came back into to a “temporary” berth. That meant a cobbled together gangway to get everyone off which went from the ship to the top of a portacabin and then from the portocabin down to the ground. I am relatively young and fit and I found the descent far too steep, goodness knows how people with any sort of mobility difficulty managed it.

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The last time we were on the Balmoral in 2015 they were installing new cables for internet and the deck we were on was constantly full of cables and men on ladders. Sometimes we had to wait to get back to our cabin as the area was completely blocked off. During the cruise we had hardly any internet at all but that is not unusual on the Fred ships. We have never experienced a cruise with the amount of painting going on that you have endured Eglesbrech and understand why you would be upset about the smell of paint everywhere.

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We have experienced repairs, painting and varnishing on all the Fred cruise we have taken but nothing as excessive as your experience. May I ask if this was a French River cruise as I have read a post on one of the FB pages complaining about the amount of work being done on this cruise.

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We have experienced repairs, painting and varnishing on all the Fred cruise we have taken but nothing as excessive as your experience. May I ask if this was a French River cruise as I have read a post on one of the FB pages complaining about the amount of work being done on this cruise.

 

Yes it was. Glad I am not the only one who was unhappy. I politely voiced it whilst onboard, pax seemed to want to constantly just grumble about it but say nothing to those in authority.

 

The ports were lovely but the cruise was not great. The ship was filled to capacity (and numerous young families filling 4 berths to add to the numbers) there was a constant struggle to get seats in the show lounge, seats for lectures, for a coffee, in the observatory and queues for breakfast unless you were very early and for lunch most days.

 

The observatory bar had people hovering and then pouncing on empty seats as people wanted to see the river while passing (and some idiot decided to use the voyage up the rivers to paint most of the promenade and the marquee bar so there was a lot less viewing spots). Braemar is not particularly stable and my theory is that they took the chance while up the rivers with no sea movement to do a shed load of maintenance. Not fair on those of us who had paid quite a bit for the cruise.

 

The food was excellent I have to say and the guest speakers interesting. The show team could neither sing nor dance well compared to others we have seen on Fred and other ships.

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It sounds dreadful and I'm not surprised it has put you off. I hope you followed up with a complaint when you returned. I know they rarely take much notice of complaints but the more people who let them know they were not happy the better.

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Our recent cruise on Braemar was comprehensively spoiled by the amount of work going on on the ship. Now every ship I have ever been on has had bits of ongoing maintenance, that is par for the course. This was in another league.

 

The whole ship stank of a mixture of damp, paint and oxidised metal from the grinding they were doing morning, noon and night in our corridor for most of the cruise.

 

They painted virtualy the whole promenade deck so closed different sections each day or you had to dodge round the painters and the ladders and the drips.

 

They were fixing up the external tables and chairs so a large part of the aft outdoor area was condensed off with tape for the whole cruise.

 

They shut the main Marquee bar to paint it. It was a beautiful sunny day and the main outdoor bar is closed and the area stinks of paint! It was closed 3 days out of 8.

 

They painted the pillers in the Neptune lounge, now anyone who has been on this ship knows how narrow this is to get past We went to a lecture and had to dodge the wet red and gold paint.

 

They re carpeted the Morning Light Pub - noise all night.

 

They cleared out the cabin next door, everything in it removed back to the walls - banging and knocking all day long.

 

They switched off the water, supposed to be from 1am to 5 am. 8.45am and we still had no water whatsoever so could not flush to loo, wash etc. Did we get any apology, explanation or timescales -no, the curt answer from reception was we are working on it. Now given how often they tell you to wash your hands on a ship it ironic that they don’t provide the water to do so. I ended up washing my hands in bottled water (which I had to pay for!).

 

Now reception tell me that what we experience is “perfectly normal ships maintenance” which frankly I don’t believe. I have not sailed a lot with Fred but I have done so with other lines and never had this.

 

Is this fairly normal on Fred? (If so we won’t be booking again)

 

And just to add insult to injury we came back into to a “temporary” berth. That meant a cobbled together gangway to get everyone off which went from the ship to the top of a portacabin and then from the portocabin down to the ground. I am relatively young and fit and I found the descent far too steep, goodness knows how people with any sort of mobility difficulty managed it.

 

Hi there. Are you able to share which sailing this was, specifically?

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