Wonderful, comfortable cruise with everything you could want on the ship, friendly helpful staff, and great port locations.
Embarkation
5 out of 5
I was fortunate to get a room on the ship for a great rate! Kathleen Wedral was my travel agent who got me on the cruise, and she was very kind, and all over finding me a room with less than a month before the cruise! I'm grateful to her.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
5 out of 5
The buffet was fantastic, but the selection and quality of food at the Vivaldi restaurant, that m and my family ate at every night, was truly amazing. Our waiter (#10! Benedict! on the Princess Sapphire) had a consistently patient and delightful attitude with us, and he was consistently efficient and helpful! We became endeared toward him over the trip on the cruise.
Onboard Activities
4 out of 5
The fitness center and spa was nice to have. They were good amenities to be sure, but the sauna did switch off several times while we were there and required a manual reset, and the gym seemed a little small for such a large cruise ship (indeed there were only two vertical bikes, and often they were both taken.
Entertainment
5 out of 5
Danny Remadi is a talent! and from what I heard in passing, the other performers were quite impressive as well. The educational presenters were fantastic. Their presentations about the zoology and history of the regions of the cruise; Gave context, meaning, and wonder to the experience of those locations. Carmens explanations of the different ports was so helpful in planning the visits and getting excited for the various port stops.
Service and Staff
5 out of 5
Jervis on floor B (floor 11) key the room very clean and was consistently warm and responsive. The guest services desk was friendly and helped me effectively with several questions and requests I had (including a couple times when I left my medallion in the room at night and could get in, so they called the floor manager who showed up quickly to help).
Ship Quality
5 out of 5
I do wish that all the floor went through the whole length of the ship/none of them were bisected. Feels like playing god, to criticize such things, but that made the experience navigating the shop more complicated for me.
Cabin / Stateroom
4 out of 5
The room was nice enough and comfortable enough. However there was something above the ceiling that loudly rattled very frequently during periods whenever the ship was somewhat unsteady which was the case a couple nights. This noise made sleeping near impossible. It was pretty loud. Had to acquire and use earplugs to address the issue. I'm not a light sleeper either.
This was the destination but it's a wonderful city with a great food scene and many different attractions. We visited the suburb of Tigre which I highly recommend.
Beautiful city with friendly people, but we disembarked a couple hours before everything opened. We also disembarked on a Sunday, which seems like a dumb idea in hindsight as the city was sleepy and lots of things (including banks and currency exchanges!) were closed.
Missed opportunities to see a really good site for penguins. Mostly thats our fault, but I do wish that the excursions and the buses to these coves ran more trips a little later in case people improvise or change their minds about using them. The tow also cant keep up with supplying things like food for the overwhelming demands of the cruise passengers, which isn't anyones fault necessarily, but it is an issue.
The process to get off the ship itself was well organized. Within the port, the lines were long, and more importantly, they disintegrated at a certain point into something approximating anarchy. What happened was people had to get there luggage which was located significantly further down the line than the end of it. Once they had their luggage a staff directed them simply directly into the line AT THAT POINT, which cause understandable resentment and total disregard for the line among the disembarking passengers. It also would have been helpful if more staff were at the pick-up zones for the terminals to help with things like getting taxis without being exploited by them (I was charged 20$ for a 1 mile ride. To be fair it was a 15-20 minute ride due to traffic conditions, but that still seems quite pricey especially for Buenos Aires).
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