Mediterranean cruise on Azura

Check in at Manchester airport was awful .On arrival the meet and greet carpark was really good and we handed over our car key and received a receipt for it. The chap on the carpark reception was very helpful and directed us to the check in area where we were shown to our queue to wait with our cases to check in. When we got to the desk after waiting for an hour we were told that we had been directed to the wrong queue and that we had to join the correct queue at the front. This was not to the liking of the people already in that queue so we went to the back of it and waited for a further hour to check in. Then we got to security and oh what a miserable bunch of people they were and by their actions obviously didn’t want to be there! Anyway, eventually we got through and waited at the gate for our flight, this was ok, nothing exceptional but ok, however, there were no duty free merchandise onboard whatsoever so there were a few disgruntled passengers.
On arrival at Malta we were taken by bus to the cruise terminal and apart from a small problem with their computer it was sorted and we were allowed onboard. Our balcony cabin was ok but was looking tired with chips out of the furnishings, marks on the balcony sides, missing wall coverings (a refit is urgently needed).
The smoking areas on the ship have been changed since our last cruise on Azura and in our opinion it has made it worse for the smokers as we are not allowed to smoke near the pool now so if one half of a couple wants to swim and the other half wants to smoke, they’re on different decks 15 & 16.
The beach house was absolutely awful with our meal presented to us burnt but the waiter tried to convince us that it was spicy!
In general we used the buffet for our meals due to the complaints from others as to the meals in the mdr.
Entertainment was mediocre, hardly any during the day and what there was on deck was poor. The best shows, in our opinion was the ‘Dolly Parton ‘tribute but the best by far was the Brian Connolly jnr show where he talked a little about his father (lead singer in the 70’s band SWEET) and performed some of their songs.
The funniest (not meant to be funny) was the afternoon quiz on deck and the poor female member of staff hadn’t got a clue what she was doing. The quiz was to name the songs and the artistes singing them but she obviously didn’t know the songs and let them play past the title so in theory, everyone should have won the quiz.
There was some good onboard but also there was much that wasn’t so good and the crew wanted to blame covid for everything.
The captain was better than Houdini as we never once saw him, we heard him over the tannoy but that was all.
To finish, we only had one sailaway party and that was only because there was a Royal Caribbean ship berthed alongside and I think the crew wanted to show off.
The poor ship is in drastic need of a refit and the sooner, the better.
This cruise did not represent value for money as far as we and many others were concerned.