M/V Discovery never ever again

[pralientje]

We left on March 21st for Auckland and after arriving on the 23rd we had 2 ½ days left for sightseeing. The weather was very nice and on Saturday March 25th we were embarking on M/v Discovery.

Going through security it took only ten minutes to board the ship. After our photos were taken our cabin steward, Vener, was there to meet us. Our American TA advised us to take a cabin on deck 8. Previously it was an officer’s cabin but at least 2 ½ times bigger than the normal category D ones. It has obstructed views by lifeboats but that did not bother us. The walkway outside the cabin is only used by crew and they never look towards the cabin windows, always straight ahead or towards the (starboard) side of the ship. There were only two higher categories, i.e. junior suite and the owner cabins. Later on in the journey we saw a normal cat. D cabin, it is very small, two single beds which can not always be put together. This information came from two of our table mates. Makes you wonder how small the other cabins are. We are not very tall but our legs were sticking out. We had a double bed, covered in sheets and one blanket. Every night we struggled for the blanket. In our opinion the blanket should be replaced by two duvets. Much more comfortable. The airco has two positions, either blue (cold) or red (warm). No in between.

Itinerary: very good.

Auckland/Bay of Islands/Norfolk Island/ Port Vila Vanuatu/Yasawa, Fiji/Lautoka/Vava”U, Tonga/Rarotonga/Bora Bora/Papeete/Pitcairn Island/Easter Island (on Easter Sunday and Monday)Arica, Peru (here we left the ship for our excursion to Macchu Picchu)/Lima, Peru (here we rejoined the ship)/Manta/Galapagos (5 days at San Cristobal, 3 days should be more then enough)/Fort Amador, Panama/transit Panama Canal/San Blas Island/Puerto Limon, Puerto Rico/Belize/Nassau, Bahamas.

When I booked the cruise the cruise company was informed about my lactose free diet (no lactose, no milk, butter, cheese and cream).

Food: awful

The first night I introduced myself to the Maitre d’ and told him about my diet. He told me it should be no problem.

On the third day I went back to him, since everything I got was covered in butter or cream. So we sat down and he made a list of all the things I could not have. Since then I went down to the dining room every day at twelve o’clock to discuss the menu. He wrote down my choice and that was it. Or it should have been. When I choose spaghetti, it was covered in cheese, so it was returned to the kitchen. One day I got a dish that was made of sliced potato parts covered in at least three centimetres tomato sauce. That was it. Very, very tasteful!! I decided to go to the Hotel Manager. He did not know about any problem. I was told there was a book in the dining room where complaints could be written down. There were none! Surprise, surprise. In general the meat was tough; somebody even broke a tooth on a chicken leg. This was his second, the first he got was returned to the kitchen. My tablemates once had a strawberry mouse desert. They took one bite and left it alone. It tasted awful. After my talk to the Hotel manager my meals were ok for two days. Talked to the F&B manager. He had not heard about any problem in the dining room. Then I had a meeting with the CHEF! Very arrogant person, from Austria, who blamed the waiters for all my problems. He never answered my question: since when do the waiters cook the meals? I was to be blamed, there were about thirty other people with a special diet, mine was very easy to cope with, and he did not know about any problem!! Several times during the trip it happened my meal had to be returned to the kitchen and my tablemates were having their dinner. Is does not make you feel very comfortable.

Then Ranko, the Maitre d’ told me he was leaving the ship in Lima and he did not know who was going to replace him.

In Lima a new assistant Maitre d’ came on board and that evening I had the most terrible experience until that moment.

I choose to have fried trout and when the trout came, it was swimming in butter!!! Again. So I asked the waiter to return it to the kitchen and get me some without sauces, cream or butter or cheese! My tablemates were having their dinner as usual and I was waiting. Then the waiter returned and he politely asked if he could give me a hand with de-boning the trout. Of course he could. He started and when he flipped one side over he stopped dead in his tracks. The new ass. Maitre d’ asked him what was wrong, his answer was: it is still raw!!!!! I then decided I had had enough and left the dining room without having had a meal.

I knew that the owner, Mr Dudley Smith, was on board and I requested a meeting with him. This meeting happened the day after the trout incident. When I told him I perhaps had had seven decent meals on the ship, he told me that was impossible. How did he know that? Is he a mind reader, or is he just somebody who cannot accept a client’s verdict on the meals offered on the ship? When I told him about the still raw trout, his answer was: I like raw fish. How stupid can you be! When we told him we thought it caused a health risk on the ship he got annoyed and told us: never ever has there been a health risk on the ship. Just for some information: the average age of the passengers was closer to 80 than to 50! At that moment I decided I had enough. On this ship there are too many Chiefs and not enough “Indians”. The culture on the ship is one of “listening to the customer, and doing nothing to solve the problem or putting the blame on somebody else. Like the ass. Maitre d’ did on his first shift: he blamed the waiter for the fact that my trout was not properly cooked!!!

I there and then decided to write an article about the treatment of the passengers.

When I read a review of the M/V Discovery stating the meals are excellent, nine out of ten times the writer is British. They do like the food, but all the other nationalities find it very bad, without taste, overcooked, tough and whatever word you can find to describe it.

The last thing I noticed was when we were invited at the Captain’s table the shrimp cocktail had actually shrimps in it and underneath some lettuce! When you are having a shrimp cocktail when sitting at your normal table, you get lots and lots of lettuce with some shrimp. Although the duck I ordered was as tough at the Captain’s table as at the normal ones.

Excursions

In general they are too expensive and a lot of them are not very good. In the end we decided that we would go ashore and make our own arrangements. Much better and a lot cheaper.

One excursion we booked through the ship was the one to La Espanola. This is one of the islands on the Galapagos. The day before the excursion we were informed that instead of 3 ½ to 4 hours the excursion would take longer. Therefore we had to get up at five and have breakfast and join one of the two boats. The distance to the island was only 30 miles! When we got on board we noticed that of the two engines, only one was working and only on half power. This meant that we were limping with a speed of less then 7 knots. You could walk beside the boat and still be able to keep up with it. When we were underway for about two hours we were told the other boat had engine problems as well and we had to pick up the passengers. It meant that we got only one sandwich per person, there was not enough food for everybody! Neither were there enough life vests for the passengers who were on the boat originally! After 5 ½ hours we finally arrived on La Espanola. We were supposed to get an excursion of about 4 ½ hours. This was cut short to a little over two hours. This excursion did cost us Usd 160,= per person.

After our return on the boat, the engine trouble of the second boat was solved, so everybody was back on their own boat. We then got a nice warm late lunch, it was about half past four in the afternoon, and after the lunch we would go back to the Discovery. But ……… engine number two was broken down as well! At that time we hardly could see the other boat, it was going in the opposite direction. The zodiac was then used to tow the boat back to the shore line. It was drifting. The small engine could not do the job but luckily two other boats were there and one of them had a kind of zodiac with a bigger engine. After dropping the anchor the waiting started. We were then asked if we would like to go on the other boat, we thought they were talking of the smaller one, who was just in sight. We all said no, that would not be safe, so many people on such a small boat, and what about the life vests! After two hours it was decided to get another boat. The engine problems could not be fixed. But after six it is pitch dark and finally at about half past seven a speed boat came to our rescue. We were transferred to the speed boat by zodiac, but because there were not enough life vests, it took three trips to get everybody on board the other boat.

This one had two very powerful engines, but again, we were not supplied with life vests. It was a boat with open sides. Just the three people on either side of the boat who were sitting in front, had a side board, the rest had to hang on to the benches, or fall over board. Some of the passengers could not swim and when the boat would have hit a freak wave the Discovery probably would have ended up with fourteen dead passengers. Can you imagine travelling in pitch dark weather, no life vest and at full speed, to get back to the Discovery! Very, very scary!

At ten o’clock at night we arrived back on the ship. The atmosphere was kind of funny. We were all relieved that this trip was over. The people on the Discovery perhaps thought therefore that it had been a fun trip all over, and we were ushered in the dining room. We got separate tables and after a small dinner we went to bed. Exhausted.

Before we got back we discussed several things with Nick, the representative of the Discover. One item was that my husband’s new jacket was covered in paint, as well as the top of my new track suit and our back pack as well. The owners of the boat probably had tried to spruce it up a little, but used the wrong kind of paint. It was still wet when we left. No problem, he would write a complete report and we would be informed. The same story did concern the life vests, or better, the lack of them. He would write it in his report and we would hear from the management.

We asked Nick several times about it in the next couple of days, the only thing he could tell me was that his trousers were ruined as well, and that he would not get a refund for it. After one week I went to the reception desk, asking when they would try to clean our clothing/back pack. They did not know, as usual, anything about it. The same day though the head of housekeeping came to our cabin to pick up the items. The next day we got them back. The clothing was ok, but the back pack still has white stains on it. We then were informed that we would get an on board credit in the amount of Usd 50,= for the damage done. Up till the end of the cruise, we left in Nassau; we have not been offered a (partial) refund for this excursion.

One day the owner Mr Dudley Smith approached me, asking everything surely was ok now, but when I made a remark about the lack of life vest, he told me he had a meeting with the new Maitre d’, again confirming that the officers on board the Discovery are more important than the guest. In my opinion the officers get paid to do their job and the passengers pay a lot of money for a pleasant cruise (or so they hope).