The ship is old but clean and tidy. The crew were friendly but not so that you would mark this out as a good feature. The itinerary was limited and the docking was not good often a long way through the port to any civilisation. In particular we were unable to leave the ship in Majorca without taking a cruise trip or a 15 minute walk to a local bus. A shuttle should have been organised.
One very good feature was the quality of the main shows, the singers and performers were first class. Some of the other performers were not good and I remember the pianoplaying female singer who continually sang flat or out of tune. We left the venues when she came on to sing.
A serious problem was the lack of seating in the public areas, on occasion you could walk the length of the ship and not find a seat, we have never experienced that before on the 20+ cruises we have taken. To make matters worse a film was often shown in the Squid and Anchor a venue with say 200 seats but when we looked in, there where only 2 people watching the film and the bar closed.
On the day of departure the lack of seating was again evident and yet the “left luggage” areas were positioned in areas of seating with upwards of 50 seats being strewn with luggage.
We were not impressed with Marella and whilst we would not say never again, it will certainly be low on our list of cruises to take next time.
