Europe - Mediterranean Cruise Reviews

After a few "upgrades," "mandatory 'gratuities', the additional beverage "options" and excluded costs for after-dinner coffee this vacation ended up costing nearly double the advertised,"incentive" price. Should you desire a spa treatment, not unusual whilst on holiday, you will have to sell your first born child....and beware, they'll want to sell you a soothing gel for an additional $55. For those so inclined, a "behind the scenes" tour of the ship's inner workings was available for the mere price of $150. per person; These costs, when added to airfare made this a very expensive vacation. Worse than the cost was the fact that the experience was tantamount to being held prisoner in a two-star, floating hotel with each night's "entertainment" like a bad wedding reception at the VFW. (This comment is NOT meant to be an insult to the VFW!) Finally, each morning we were assaulted by a cast of crew members whose sole purpose was to sell beverage packages for bottled water. Really, people!?!?!?! I was never so happy for it all to END! The only thing to recommend this experience was the atttentive and friendly staff!

Desserts were scrumptious! The rest of the food was just average. I have to say the service personnel were great, always helpful, always a smile. Except, we had one problem. When we first arrived the staterooms were still closed off. It was lunch time and we had to have our carry on luggage w/ us. The only place to eat was the cafe on deck 9. A large part was blocked off and those tables could not be used. There were no seats available (people were taking spaces w/ their luggage). We asked if they could allow us to seat in the blocked off area and were told no. After walking around w/ our luggage for 10 minutes we hunted down a table that was being vacated. And 30 minutes later they finally opened up the rest of the dining area. The aerial shows in the Main Lobby were not worth the wait and the area is not really set up for this. The Diamond Lounge was great. We wish it would have stopped at more ports in Greece.

The 12 day cruise was nice. We picked this trip because of the stops from Venice to Barcelona - although Izmir, Turkey was really not a necessary stop. The ship was old, and compared to other newer ships I have traveled in the past this one was pretty beaten up. Besides this, the food was OK, the service was excellent except at the sit down restaurants where the staff where at some times rude. We where a bit disappointed with the mis lead of the cruise itinerary, we believed we had 2 full days in Venice, Italy when in fact its only 1 day followed by 2 sea days, which where a bit boring due to the lack of activities towards our age group. Overall I would recommend this trip to a friend but maybe on board another ship.

THIS WAS THE BEST CRUISE I HAVE EVER BEEN ON. I'LL ADMIT-I HAVE NOT BEEN A BIG FAN OF NORWEGIAN IN THE PAST-BUT I HAVE CHANGED MY MIND. EVERY CREW MEMBER WAS SO NICE AND ATTENTIVE TO OUR NEEDS. I WOULD HAVE TO SAY THEY WERE THE FRIENDLIEST CREW I HAVE EVER MET. I REALLY FELT THE CREW GAVE 100% TO MAKING THE CRUISE A HUGE SUCCESS.

Good points about the cruise: Cabin attendant was outstanding. Waiters were very good and entertaining. The ship was modern and very clean. Tours were well done. Neutral points: Had to skip Santorini due to high winds. Food was good but not great. One night the on-board singers substituted for the acrobatic show. Bad points: None

I had the most enjoyable cruise. Each port was awesome. The people and staff of the NCL were fantastic! A little cool in the mornings but got warmer during the day. France was very cold! It was excellent and would take another cruise w/NCL.

The staff was soo great! The food wonderful. The ship very very clean! We liked the entertainment but not the reservation process. I Prefer just picking every night at will.

The cruise is very fast paced- not much time for day activities on the boat, but lots of entertainment at night. Really appreciated being to see all the sights- would not have been able to go to so many ports without cruising. Loved the cruise!

We take many cruises and this was the Best Ever. Mediterrian is smooth as glass, food great and got to visit Sicily, Greece, Turkey and Crete. No language barriers. Great Food ...very reasonably priced.

We enjoyed the cruise very much. After a few days in Barcelona to get used to time change, we boarded the ship and had a wonderful time. All the staff were courteous and very helpful. Our stateroom was kept very clean and we enjoyed spending the week there. The food in all the on board restaurants was excellent. The only down side was the buffet. The food was left out too long. We got around that by ordering room service which was prompt and very good. All in all an excellent cruise which I would highly recommend to family and friends.

Lovely itinery, lovely ship. Lovely stateroom in aft of ship. Worth the extra cost. However service not as good as other lines. Very poor service in the bars and obvious cost cutting in all areas. Speciality restaurant was not special enough, food no better than restaurant.

MSC Divina is a great cruise ship....beautiful amenities and fantastic itinerary. Americans and Brits will be well served knowing this is a European cruise so many of the little touches one might see on an American Cruise Line aren't here. But that doesn't detract from the cruise. Be prepared for a cultural event and to take things in stride as you are on board with 3000 others from many different cultures. Habits and ideas collide at the buffet when it sometimes seems like chaos but is really just a bunch of people doing their own thing. All announcements are in 6 languages and other than the typical French, most attempt to speak English readily. The food is not fantastic but the itinerary and the atmosphere more than make up for it. Reminder that children cruise for free so you will probably see more of them than normal. The shops onboard are all high end so don't expect to do any souvenir shopping there. Be sure to invest in the Allegrisimo drink package..you won't get a better bargain. Try not to compare this cruise line to an American one as you will surely be disappointed. But view it as an opportunity to spend time with people of many countries and enjoy the scenery.

I will start from positives. * The stuff is polite and generally does the best to help * The ship is clean. Spa has great - large and hot, steam room (actually 3 or 4 rooms) and dry sauna (see also below) * Food in the dining rooms is generally alright (see the cons below). * Reasonable selection of wine. Mostly the wine is from CA (you are in Europe guys, you can have France and Italy wines tax free) but the selection is alright. You are not going to see anything exclusive on the wine card. Now the cons. * Carnival changed one of the ports 3 or 4 weeks before departure and let us know via e-mail. We did not pre order anything (no rented cars, hotels, excursions) so it was not an issue for us, but I can imagine that some people were annoyed. * Service gratitude is mandatory, it is part of the bill and for 10 days trip it is $100 for a person. In our case $300 or ~10% of the total cost. For many people on the ship it was a nasty last day surprise. Consider that you can get a cabin for $600 or less and $100 add on looks significant. * Swimming pool was closed. Carnival credited $100 to compensate the missing swimming pool. The ship is just after $150mil renovation. This was second trip after the renovation and name change - used to be Carnival Destiny, now Carnival Sunshine. Money well spent guys, ah? * Phone in the cabin did not work 3 days. We have spent a couple of hours with an electrician in our cabin. It was not great joy. Again the ship is after $150 mil investment. * In my case all spa services was included - this is called spa cabin. The spa costs $160 if you have to buy it. This is the largest steam room I have ever seen. I visited the sauna every day and I never met anybody there. What a waste of 50 feet long room full of 70 degree steam. Drop the price to $60 and may be people will start to come there. * The last day started at 5 (five) AM when the ship radio called the first 'zone' to get out of the ship. They want the ship to be empty before 10AM. There is not much to do in Barcelona, 6AM Sunday. Barcelona airport is not bad, but it is not the best place for the family with small kid either. Our flight was 2PM. So you can imagine. * 1.5L bottle of water costs $3.5. The bottles wait you on the table. If you drink the water you pay. * Photo services are pushed very hard and extremely expensive. A photo for $15? Luckily the kid hates to be shoot and we did not buy any photos. * Low hanging lamps in the restaurants and dining rooms are simply dangerous and wait for an accident. * One show (from 4 we have seen) was alright. Generally the shows are low quality. Nooman (manager/director) is a nice guy and probably does the best under circumstances. I can not call trivia an evening show especially if it repeats day after day. Lectures in the spa are not a show either. Food - I intentionally put as a separate list. * Do not waste time to visit 'restaurants' like 'el capitan cusine' or sunrise. JiJi is somewhat better, but still is not there. $12/person they charge to visit one of those places + 15% mandatory gratitude. In Italy/Spain you eat very good for this kind of money. * Dear Carnival chief, tomato paste is not a required ingredient in any fish/chicken dish. I have personally tried very good dishes which did not contain any tomato paste. Does it sound like a shock to you? Believe me such dishes exist. Seriously though you put too much, you put it everywhere. Not all your customers are Americans. And not all North Americans eat only ketchup. * The 'Sunrise' restaurant you are assigned for the dinner is a beautiful place to visit. Service is excellent. It is worst (I am not kidding) place on the ship to eat. Chief does his/her best to create an expensive dish which you do not want to try again. From four dishes we tried 3 were bad. * Dessert. You expect the dessert to be delicious. This is not the case on the Carnival ship. The desserts remind average US restaurant. Not fast food chain dessert mind you. It is better, but not by much. Is the review too long already? I can add more, but I guess at this point you got the picture.

For our VERY special and MONUMENTAL birthdays my sister and I decided to go to Italy, Greece and Turkey and we chose Celebrity to take us! We thoroughly enjoyed the entire cruise and LOVED our Aqua Class Suite and the Aqua Class Spa! We have cruised on Norweigan, Princess, Holland America, Carnival and Royal Carribean and Celebrity, by far, surpassed every other line. The food, the entertainment and the way were were treated by the entire staff helped make this cruise fantastic! The Reflection is an absolutely beautiful vessel and we both look forward to sailing on her again......SOON!!! Thanks so much to everyone who helped make our birthdays the best ones ever!!

Very good ship excellent service,food and entertainment.Health allows will travel with Celebrity again.Special thanks to waiters and stateroom cleaning staff. Despite 3000 gests on board the ship does not look crowded.Theater is beyond expectation

Overall my wife and I, also our children had a very good 12 day cruise on this gorgeous ship! The room acceded your expectations! The facilities throughout the ship were fantastic on each floor- beautifully designed, comfortable. We were very pleased with the musicians, playing many different jeanres of music. We would like to say special thank to our waiters at the Silhouette Restaurant- Martir and Suliana made dinners so enjoyable,they were so sincerely warm and friendly! We, however, have to mention that food was a bit of a disappointment, especially on the 14th floor. Despite the very big choice, almost all the food was deeply fried, very very salted. I hope food managers consider healthier choice in future! It was a bit ironic -traveling along the Mediterranean,- great fruits and vegetables producer, we were offered canned fruits and only once some strawberries, for example, (which cost very little in Italy). It was our first cruise and we hope to repeat the experience in future! We wish all the best to hard working stuff of the Celebrity Equinox!

We chose Celebrity because of the great experience we had several years ago with the service and the food. The service was excellent, but the food has gone down a little bit. It was excellent in the specialty restaurants, but in the main dining room it wasn't what it was before. That said, it was still better than the food on other cruise lines I've been on. The only other negative was the constant feeling of being hustled to buy something. Sales people were always standing in front of the shops shoving notices of sales of overpriced merchandise or raffles that really had no meaningful prizes.

The ship itself is brand new and very pretty except for the giant hot pink rose in the middle. The service was excellent. The casino however was not very nice to me. The ports were all enjoyable. The tours we chose we informative and well planned. The food was really good as well.

first of all this was an amazing trip, my wife and I celebrated our 30th wedding aniversay and we were not disappointed. Europe is beautiful, the weather was pretty good except in France were we caught rain, but even that was cool because we were able to enjoy some expresso and Crepes "Delicious" the ship time was also alot of fun, the food was delicious, the service was great. the only issue we had was our stateroom, the first two nights there was a terrible noise that no one could pin point so they moved us to another cabin, this was a hassle but we would rather sleep than to not move. our next room there was a horrible smell in the restroom, we complained about it but in this case nothing was done, again since it was contained in the restroom we just grinned and beared it. i wish our room accomodations were better but overall the cruise was great. i was hoping that Carnival management would of cared more about taking care of us but i guess they were too busy to talk to us. you hear of all the night mare stories of Carnival Cruises but except for these two major things we might travel again with this cruise line. we will see.

This was the cruise for the ages, ancient cities, beautiful Villages, and wonderful culture. We saw treasures in Italy, beautiful areas in the mountains of Spain, France and the seaside Villages of Serrento. Carnival Legend was very nice ship with excellent food, great entertainment, and superb service.