The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Cruise Review

The Good: Enjoyable Moments on the High Seas

We are now coming to the end of the cruise and I thought worth putting a bit of a summary together. The overall experience has been brilliant and we enjoyed it more than we expected, there have been things that we didn't like and some things we've learnt.

So;

Pros

The luxury has been great. Excellent food, good choice of drinks. Although amusingly I often ask for a Sierra Nevada IPA, as they have this, as well as Lagunitas, but only in certain bars. When the waiter responds with "IPA, for Matthew" I know I'm going to get Lagunitas. We got to try lots of different cocktails which was fun.

The amount of things to do on the boat is top and ensures no boredom. We've enjoyed exercise classes, table tennis, quizzes, shows, movies under the stars plus some I'm sure I missed. Also nice just to sit on the top deck reading and sunbathing with the pool available watching the sky pass by.

The service is fantastic from breakfast in the room, to drinks or food brought to you. Everything is quickly and cheerfully done. The medallion you use ensures they can locate you to deliver your order.

We've met and eaten with some really nice people (but see cons as well!) and had some good chats.

The ports of call have been fabulous, visiting new places with usually a full day there.

Decent sized ship never felt busy even on wet days when everyone inside or for the Super Bowl, when we were able to grab sunbeds to watch the big screen.

Enjoying time to relax together after over 4 hectic months

The Bad:

Would have been nice to have overnight stays in some places

Some people... the moaning on the Facebook page. Luckily we never sat with these culprits for meals as stopping Karen giving them deserved words would have been impossible. We have enjoyed reading the comments and laughing at them though...mostly it's been pompous Americans who wish to call everyone who disagree with them liberals/breeders or unbathed and suggest it's people of lower class who don't understand things like the formal dress code.

Cruise organised trips need careful consideration such as, the Pearl Harbour trip. Going there was a must and we enjoyed the visit, booking with cruise line was a mistake due to cost and the awful tour afterwards.

The main evening entertainment, the level is varied. I enjoyed the cruise bands' own shows as much as anything. We did disagree on our taste at times but only 45 minutes a show so not horrendous to endure a bad show.

Tips and Our Considerations

If there is a trip at a port stop you want to do, I'd suggest book early and avoid the cruise trips. We felt for our first trip would go with the cruise line to get a feel for it, in reality we didn't need to do this. We just paid about 3 times more. A second option is to wait until you're on board as in several ports we found that other passengers were organising trips and offering them out at a decent price.

Consider what the type of cruise means for the age group. We saw that princess cruises were popular with 40 to 50 year olds. We didn't consider that we were doing a segment of a world cruise, which pushed the average age closer to or beyond 70! This wasn't a big issue but something to be aware of. The positive side of this meant easier to get into the fitness classes which had limited spaces! Also less competition in the table tennis tournaments.

I did get involved in some groups such as table tennis and spin, it's a nice way to meet people and have a chat. Looking back, it might have been fun to join the people learning the ukulele as well.

Learn that you will never win Trivia lol, there are teams that get full scores every single time.

Would definitely get a package again if cruising in the future. We feel we have got our money's worth and meant we didn't have to worry about cost of another drink (Karen) or spin class (Matt).

We paid a bit extra for a balcony and I think that's a must. However, some people will book a lower type of room/internal cabin then hope for the chance to put a bid in for a better one. Similarly, some people were doing the world cruise but booked it as separate segments they saved £1000s this way. They may have to swap rooms for some segments but felt it was worth it. As we saw on facebook, this really annoyed some of the people who paid for the cruise as a full trip.

All in all a great experience but ready to get off and start our own journey again. We have both said we would do a cruise again and may be tempted by a full world cruise in a few years when we retire.