baltic on balmoral

The ship was a good size for where we went as we got to go through the Kiel canal. We went to Ijmuiden, Copenhagen, Tallinn, Stockholm, st Petersburg and Gdynia. we were really lucky as had great weather everywhere.
I think with Fred Olsen that you don’t get the wow factor when you get onboard. However the wow factor comes later after youƒ??ve been on for a few days and you discover how lovely the staff are. The ship looks nice but didnƒ??t have a wow for me until we’d been on a few days. Everywhere was lovely and clean and comfy. The cleaning was fantastic and lots of hand gel everywhere! They really ensured guests were using it as well.
Our cruise director was fabulous! I already miss being woken up in a morning by his little summary of where we were. He put a positive slant on everything even when it was foggy one morning he told us all it was atmospheric! We are people who never participate in anything when we are on holiday but for the first time we were involved doing the quizzes, golf, bowling, and carpet bowls!!! It was great fun and the staff were excellent. It would have been nice to have a better choice of films in the cabin as they played 4 films constantly and they only showed one film in the day in the theatre. You could buy films but they were ?œ5 each and not a great choice. My husband particularly missed this on sea days as when we were on P&O there was a lot more on. Some of the guest entertainers weren’t great but they were funny without meaning to be and they were all lovely.
After a couple of days on board we were loving the ship! It has lots of nice areas to sit and relax, thereƒ??s lots of space and lots of sunbeds too. As it was a little cool we didnƒ??t use the pools too much but lots of people including us used the heated Jacuzzis on deck they were fab! We found it a little tired round the edges but we really didnƒ??t mind.
We had to go to reception early on as the hairdryer in the cabin wasn’t great. The reception staff were lovely and rented me a hairdryer for a refundable ?œ20. The tips were put automatically onto the onboard account. They charged ?œ2 per person per day for the cabin steward and the same for the waiter. We completed a form onboard like many other passengers we spoke to to remove the automatic grats. We then tipped people individually as we wanted to give extra tips to certain waiters and more to the assistant waiter who had been so lovely.
Overall, lovely ship, lovely staff and I woud definately go on Balmoral again!