Europe - Western Europe Cruise Reviews

I loved this cruise.  It was very well planned and the itinerary was just as advertised.The auxiliary staff were helpful, courteous and professional.  The food was well prepared and plentiful with many different options.  The stateroom was well equipped, clean and comfortable. The transport from airport to ship and back was quick, no long lines and the drivers were professional and personable. I would do this trip again.

We had a wonderful experience cruising around the British Isles. Loved the many port visits. The ship's port guide was very knowledgeable and helpful. A couple of things about the ship itself that were inconvenient: the elevators were unpredictable, there were no working stairs mid-ship. Our stateroom was mid-ship but when we had to go one or two decks up or down, we would have to go all the way to the front or aft to get to a staircase.

But we loved the cruise overall. The staff were all great. We would definitely recommend the cruise to our friends.

Your bartenders in Schooner's bar made our cruise.  Deney, Nigel, and Big Joe are a true asset to your ship and company.  This is our 3rd cruise, and we have never been treated so special.  Also the manager and waiter in Izumi's were fabulous.  Rose from Giovanni's went out of her way to come and say "hi" to us when she saw us at Schooners.  We were very unsure about Royal Caribbean since we always went with Celebrity, but in the end were very, very pleased.  But please send this message to the managers of the employee's I mentioned, especially Deney's manager. 

Got a stomach virus...5th cruise in a row. Show's were short & mediocre...Piano bar was great...Stuck in Cherbourg 2 days...Lost a Bruges excursion...Ended up late to Copenhagen...Had to make new plane arrangements & cost of $402 for a night's stay...First 6 days were great, last 6 abysmal...Food was fine as was the drink package.

   Lela/Harvey Sparer

Great cruise. Ship was small, but clean and nice. Great ports Room & balcony small. Food was not as good as other cruises. Not much choice. Food on buffet was cold, veges were all mixed or with meat dishes. Except potatoes . Mac & cheese was more like pasta with cream sauce. Hamburgers and battered fish were good, but not served hot.

My husband and I had not taken a cruise in over 15 years. Everything was excellent

Shows,staff, food, cleanliness,service.  The days at sea were very refreshing.

We have nothing negative to say about this cruise.

Ship has a very smart layout and the separation of restaurants bars and other entertainment venues is very well done, so that you don't feel the crowd except at the pool and at the buffet breakfast.  Food in the specialty restaurants was truly exceptional.  Food in the main dining room was OK.

Crew was friendly and helpful if a bit overzealous in distributing disinfectant spray: ,Washy Washy Happy Happy still rings in my ears

Ports were great even if the weather wasn't as warm as we hoped.

Entertainment in the main theater was hit or miss, more misses than hits but the talent in the smaller venues was very good and the settings intimate.

There were many problems. Begin with staff bored, lifeless (some exceptions that we can count on our fingers). The financial service of the vessel was on the ground, they did not know how to charge our credit cards, so three times blocked the use of the card on board. Very unpleasant. Almost ruined our cruise. Very unprofessional.

Evening performances, shows, were mostly boring, without sensational elements. We went on a cruise with NCL before but this one disappointed us. And the food was dull, with the same taste and the same kind of spices , morning menu was quite poor. Lucklly there was a great diversity of fruits. If you want to see special places even under these conditions, and if you can feel good with your family (friends) anywhere, then you can go on this cruise. Otherwise I do not recommend it. Poor experience on the board of the ship..... .....

Boarded ship, Spirit, in Barcelona after we had spent two days there on our own. Highly recommend at least two days to visit the city and see sights like Sagrada Familia. Use the Hop-on / Hop-off buses. There are two different companies which you can use. Both sell one or two day passes on the bus. We have stayed twice in two different hotels in Port Olympic area of Barcelona. Easy access to good restaurants and bus transportation to anywhere in the city. About 20 minutes to La Rambla on city busses. 

Spirit is the oldest Norwegian Cruise ship, built in 1998. Refurbished in 2010, but still shows some age. Had an issue with room safe and toilet vacuum flush but quick response by ship maintenance both times fixed the issues.  

Port visits were interesting. Casablanca definitely requires booking a shore excursion. Not much to do if you don't. Funchal was great and could be done on your own. Definitely ride the cable car up the hill and the toboggan down the hill. Great old town area to wander around. Tenerife is a good place to walk ashore and get a private cab / tour. For 20 Euros per person we went to the northern part of the island for some sightseeing and shopping. Prices are about half what they were in Funchal for ballcaps, beer, leather belts, etc. We spent approximately 5 hours touring in our private cab and were dropped off right in front of the ship exactly on time to board. The driver didn't even expect a tip for all he had shown us. 

Arrecife was a walking port with a central shopping pedestrian street full of stores and cafés. All had WiFi with password protection if you bought a beer, coffee, or snack. Others told us they had hired a cab to see some of the black sand beaches of the island. 

Malaga is beautiful and you could spend all day walking around the port area shopping and eating. We took a shore excursion to Grenada to see the inside of the Alhambra. We had been there before on our own 5 years earlier, but had missed being able to buy admission tickets by minutes after standing in line for over an hour.  That's why we booked the excursion to ensure we would get inside the palaces this visit. It was worth it. 

Back in Barcelona we walked off the ship and right into a pre-booked airport transfer van to the airport for a flight through Madrid to Paris. We found the van online at the Barcelona airport website. We were 10 total people and the price worked out to be 10 Euros per person. Taxis were also available for about 40 Euros per cab, but we would have had to take 4 to 5 cabs due to all the luggage and the size of the cabs. 

We really enjoy the Norwegian Freestyle cruising. Dress casually and comfortably and go to dinner when you want to at the Windows or Garden Room restaurants. We avoid Raffle Court because of the noise and chaos of cafeteria style eating. We ate most meals in Windows and the Garden room without any reservation. 

Good shows most nights. Good production singers and dancers. Also good special shows like 4ever,Cripton and Renata, etc. 

Discovered a new offer in the bars. Since we don't drink enough to make the "drink packages"worthwhile, we were typically ordering our pre-dinner cocktails in the Champagne lounge. On day three one of the waiters suggested that if we were going to always have the same drinks we should buy a bottle of whiskey that they keep for you at the bar. Saved us about 20% on drinks for the cruise. 

All told a good cruise. To be a great cruise, the ship needs another overhaul. Areas like the gym need to be updated and equipment in better working order. 

Staff are all very helpful and friendly and go out of their way to make sure you are enjoying the ship. A little tip on top of the service charge for drinks seems to go a long ways. 

We would definitely go on a fifth Norwegian Cruise if we see an itinerary we are interested in. We are planning to go to Hong Kong and SE Asia next. Unfortunately, Norwegian doesn't cruise there. 

Had a great time, but the service on the ship was horrible. They also tried to substitute wines. Would always order a specific wine and they would give us whatever they had. Caught them on several occasions....Great ports...

The cruise itself was wonderful but I twice had to complain about the noise overhead.  Our balcony room was directly below a children's play area. The area above us was used for active running and jumping. At times the noise went on until 10:30pm. My complaints had no effect on the level of noise. Fortunately, we spent most of our time out of our room. Next time, I will be sure to ask what is located above. We have been on four cruises now and this is the first time we have experienced such noise.

Everything else was great. We had interesting tours with knowledgeable tour leaders, staff was pleasant, food was good, and we met some interesting people. 

There were pros and cons to this cruise. 

Pros:

Excellent food in the cafeteria's dining room.

Freestyle cruising, which allowed for more choices on board.

Excellent friendliness and service from all of the Filipino staff, and most of the other staff; the Brits were somewhat rude, however.

There were great excursions offered on this cruise.

Embarkation and debarkation were very simple and easy.

Jefferson was a particularly talented and very nice musical artist on board, and made for some of the best entertainment option available.

The cruise ship allowed guests to bring in a bottle of wine free of charge, which was an exceptional perk.

Cons:

The stateroom was exceptionally cramped and not adequate for 4 persons.  This, in spite of booking and paying for a larger "family" room.  Which I do not believe we received.  The upper bunkbed was dangerous as it tilted towards the floor, and the exit door and way to washroom were blocked by placing the cot for the 4th person across the entire tiny cabin, making a hazard for anyone getting up in the night.  I have never been in such a tiny room before.

There was extremely limited selection on the TV channel for English speaking guests, and only 1-2 movies were offered in the theater the entire 10 day cruise.

The food was not of very good quality in the more formal dining rooms.  I am not talking about the specialty restaurants, I am talking about the formal dining options offered to all guests. Here, the food was a real disappointment, although the atmosphere and ambiance in the formal dining rooms was excellent!  So that means you could choose to eat good food in a noisy, crowded cafeteria, or choose to dine in a wonderful atmosphere with poor quality food in the Windows or Garden dining rooms. The cafeteria provided excellent and tasty meals, but it was often so crowded it was hard to find a seat.

It was tough to get a plumber to respond to our room.

Room service from the cafeteria was generally very prompt and excellent (all except once).

The pros overall outweighed the cons.  I would definitely recommend this cruise to others, but would suggest bringing on board your own movies and entertainment, as your choices in this arena will be very limited.  I would also advise to definitely NOT book a room for 4 persons on this ship.  You will spend a miserable vacation in your cabin.  Book 2 rooms instead if you have 4 people traveling.  All of the service staff are exceptionally nice, making for a very enjoyable interaction with your servers, but some of the staff with higher pay grades are much less friendly.  Its generally easy enough to avoid these people.  I would go on the same cruiselines again because I enjoyed it so much, and now that I know what to expect and plan for, I could make the next cruise even better. 

The ship was beautiful, clean, spacious. The grass on the top deck was awesome!

Cabins were spotless and baths were large. There is limited drawer space.

Crew was excellent in every respect.

Cruise Director was top notch.

Food was above average from other lines we have been on.

Itinerary was great. Ports were interesting, weather was warm and there were enough At Sea days to get to relax.

Not enough time in one port that was interesting and to much time in one that was not much to see

You could skip Wales and spend more time in Irlead xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

MSC has a long way to go to meet the standards of what experienced cruisers have come to expect from  Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, and Princess. Food on the Opera was poor quality and frequently poorly prepared. This included bones in the fish dishes on 5 of 8 orders. Coffee and tea was not even available during or after meals in the main dinning rooms, only at the buffet. Selection was also limited. The pizza kitchen was the only consistently good. The tendering process was very inefficient as it took 2 hours and 40 minutes finally get to shore and with a stop of only 4 hours, we were left with only 1 and one-half hours on shore. The library was a joke with approx. 20 books in each of 5 different languages, and it was only open for four hours per day. The entertainment was actually pretty good for this size ship. Overall, I would definitely not recommend this ship. MSC as a cruise line is still not ready for prime time.

We tried MSC cruise line for the first time on a 10 day W.Europe cruise. Previously we had cruised with Royal C, Celebrity and Princess. Anyone who has cruised on these ships will be highly disappointed with MSC. Food at the buffett on floor #11 was the same thing each day. Mostly unwarm items. Very limited menus. Iced tea and ice cream not free. Juices only available in mornings. Hand sanitizers used sparingly and many times empty during meals. Our evening meal had bones in the fish on 5 of 8 times served fish. As many as 5 bones in one serving. I still think how easy it would have been to have swallowed them. After about two times I came t expect bones even though I wanted to try the fish menus. Risotti was greasy and the meats were grisily. The servers were so busy that they spent very little time talking with us. Never offered to help pepper/salt. No coffee served. On excursions when we had to tender at St. Peter port we stood in line for 2:40 minutes to exit the ship only allowing 1.25 minutes to explore the city. Not organized at all. Waited almost 50 minutes in line to go back to the ship. Pool chairs were the most uncomfortable chairs ever in that there was no head rest on them. Library time was limited as well as the books in it!

Every evening at the theather we had to listen to the cruise director talk in 4 different lanuages. That got annoying and took up quite a bit of time doing so. Entertainment was fine. Overall very disappointed in the complete lack of organization and downright bare bones service. I could go on but will spare you the time. Don't go MSC!

We took this cruise to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary.  We were not disappointed.  We had the Gemini Suite.  The cruise staff was attentive and responsive to our every request.  The "freestyle" dining took some getting used to, but all in all we enjoyed the experience.  The ship was in better condition than some reviews suggest, but if you are looking for a sparkling brand new mega cruise ship, this is not the cruise for you.  We enjoyed the relaxed no stress atmosphere which was exactly what we were looking for.  The specialty resturants - Cagneys and Le Bistro - were great.  We have told trhe cruise line that Cassablanca was not worth the stop and another port should be used.  We were not impressed with this port.  The other ports were enjoyable.  If you are looking for a quiet, relaxing and stress free cruise, this is a good one.  If you are looking for a go go style carribean cruise, by all means go to the carribean.

We enjoyed the cruise but there were enough things wrong (poor service, noise etc) to only rate it a 3/5. The people we met on board and in port made a big difference to the success of our cruise. 

Wonderful cruise.  We have cruised on the Infinity before (Panama Canal) and once again found it to be a welcoming, manageable environment.  It was our first time for Aqua class and we are totally hooked.  Location of the cabins - 11 aft - was great, as was the cabin attendant.  The best part was dining at Blu.  It is available any time you want to go.  The service was superb, food very nicely prepared and presented.

The destinations were very interesting.  The only issue is that many of the excursions involve long (2+ hour) bus trips each way.   Our weather was not the best, so that made the journeys even longer.  We did a mix of private and Celebrity tours and for the most part were satisfied with the products.

Overall, we were very happy with the experience.  

We have taken 6 cruises. This was the 2nd best.  The ship was clean and the food was great.  The stops were new to us and we enjoyed them.  I would reccomend this to anyone.