Friendly Staff

The Ship is looking tired in a few areas, and you couldn’t help noticing a few areas where chipped marble table in Brodies and even a split bench seat in the buffet were “gaffer taped” over, this showed a botched repair look to it. The cabin C241, whilst being spotless and well laid out had a chip on the sink and a crack on the bottom of the door step area and missing laminate on the wardrobe that you notice on entering the cabin.
We enjoyed the itinerary but not the sea days, there were far too many people for the sunbeds available and it looked like a prison in El Salvador on deck on these days!!
The food in the Peninsular and Meridian Restaurants was excellent and the staff in these areas could not be faulted, the buffet leaves a lot to be desired and very congested, seating/tables at a premium, this resulting in us using it only twice.
There were four celebration nights in the two week cruise we took and this seemed excessive and resulted in reduced dining options on these nights if you don’t opt to wear a black tie, you only had the buffet option or had to pay for Beach House or Glasshouse, you were in effect penalized for not wearing a black tie. I prefer the on board vibe of P&O but prefer the formality of NCL.
The bar areas, Brodies and Malabar were staffed by the most friendly Bar persons and Waiters and were a credit to the ship, the Cabin Steward was also fantastic, the staff actually made the holiday very enjoyable.
Finally the flights, it was chaos going out to Malta with the Flight being delayed and resulting in the ship having to wait for us in port and finally getting on board around 2100hrs, having paid for the drinks package, that was a waste of money for that day!! The flight home was also delayed and it was chaos in Luqa Airport, Malta with people sat around everywhere with minimal seating, so we paid 45 euros each to use the Lounge area.
Lastly we didn’t know nor get advised other flights were available for this cruise ie; earlier from Manchester or even from our preferred airport of East Midlands, the poor flights experience took the gloss off the holiday and earlier flights would have been much better, we had looked at doing a fly/cruise again in the autumn but the recent experience made us decide against it. The icing on the cake was landing back at Manchester where the supposedly now disused terminal one being brought back into use because Terminal 2 couldn’t handle the flight volume and resulted in us having to be bussed backed to Terminal 2 along with several other flights.