Le Lyrial Cruise Reviews - Reviews

We have traveled to several continents, sometimes with major tour operators like Tauck and NatGeo, but more frequently on our own. This was our first cruise and overall Ponant was very good. The ship, cabin, staff, food, and locations were all wonderful. The presenters and guides were consistently good, and measured up to that I would expect from the Smithsonian. The logistical execution was flawless, especially with getting passengers onto shore and back again. Onboard announcements and information was timely and accurate. My criticism focuses on the communications between Ponant and guests leading up to the cruise, which were in a deluge of emails. One email arrived June 23rd requesting a response by June 19th. A series of emails confused me on what I should wear for "dinner", "galas", "black and white theme" etc. Some information was found online but most was not. Other emails were imprecise, to be kind. For example, passengers should not select excursions based on a code like HRPLE02. These ought not be passenger facing, and caused us to miss a much anticipated excursion to Mostar. Again, all of this was done via back-and-forth email, often with different people. All of this should be online in a passenger portal. Despite all the positives, the miscommunications would dissuade us from traveling Ponant again.

Highlight was the destination. Ship Stabilizers are great. Ship really cuts through a high waves/heavy seas and winds of the Drake Passage. We felt very safe. Safety first as very evident all the time on this trip. Wish the Naturalist Staff had been better. We had one British Lady that was outstanding. A Swedish Gentlemen that was great. They both spoke excellent English and were very knowledgeable. They clearly loved their job. Two more guides were pretty good with moderate English skills to a couple "English" speaking naturalist that were truly awful. Poor presentations. Very little interest in really telling you anything in the field and should find another career. I just learned to try and get on the Zodiac with the good naturalist if at all possible when Zodiac tours were the activity. Passing on presentations by the poor quality naturalists. Searching out the good naturalists if I had any questions when on shore. 1 The other half of the naturalist were not English speaking (when it came to activities with them) and we did not have much interaction with them. We watched a lot of Movies in the evenings and even during the long sea days when not much was going on of interest on the ship. There was a lot of free time. Bring some good reading for this cruise! I am so glad we did the trip that included Falklands and South Georgia! The animals were amazing there!