Kym Karaban

Age: 37:
Number of Cruises: 1
Cruise Line: Festival
Ship: European Vision
Itinerary: Western Mediterranean

This was our first cruising holiday. In some respects it met and even surpassed our expectations. Let me first address those. We were in a balcony suite and found it extremely comfortable; the food at La Pergola restaurant was excellent as were the staff and our cabin steward.

Now to the bad bits. Firstly the embarkation from Venice was, in our experience, the most inefficient, unsystematic bungle we have encountered.

We proceeded to check-in where we joined the appropriate queue for our cabin number to find that when we had almost reached the front of the queue, after some 50 minutes, that the lady who had been serving our queue had disappeared and didn't return. We again queued up on another line which did not correspond with our cabin number which only added to our frustration as we knew we were in the wrong queue and wondered if we were waiting in vain. In the meantime the people from our original queue who were as frustrated as we were decided to push into our new queue. To say this was a complete mess and incredibly frustrating is an understatement.

After another interminable wait we were finally checked in and received our boarding passes and then joined another people crush to get onto the ship when our boarding number was called. However no-one seemed to pay any heed to the boarding pass numbers we had been issued with so there was an “extreme” people crush waiting to go through passport control. We waited in this “extreme” crush for over 1 hour only to find that the reason there was a hold up was not passport control but photographers taking pictures of all people boarding the ship once they got through passport control. The last thing we felt like doing at this stage was smiling for photos especially when we knew that this was the very reason we had been standing in a crush for so long.

How hard can basic people management be? Corralling and managing queues is not a science. This basic management skill was something that was totally lacking in Festival’s embarkation routine and we are sure that 100% of the passengers there that day would agree.

We at last boarded the ship but certainly not in a happy holiday mood. The embarkation put us on the defense from the beginning of our cruise and we found that we were constantly on the defense waiting for this lack of organization to appear in every aspect of our holiday and it did appear frequently.

We finally set sail approximately 1½ hours later than we had been advised which of course was due to disorder of the embarkation.

One of the main reasons we booked this cruise was that the port of Dubrovnik was on the itinerary. We were very disappointed when, as we docked late in Dubrovnik and only 4 tender boats were used to ferry passengers to and from Dubrovnik, that by the time we set foot ashore we only had a very hurried 1½ hours in this lovely port which was not what we had been promised in all of the marketing material we had received which stated an arrival time of 8.00 am and a departure of 1.00 pm. This was incredibly disappointing.

After the debacle in Dubrovnik we decided that it would be prudent to book all of the shore tours on offer so that when tender boats were necessary we would be among the first to be put ashore as passengers booked on tours had precedence. We booked the tours through the Excursion Desk and were told that our tour tickets would be delivered under our door that night ready for our first tour of Corfu the following morning. They were not delivered and we then presented ourselves at the Excursion Desk early the next morning as our tour of Corfu was due to start in an hour’s time. It was discovered that our request for tickets had not been processed as promised and we had to wait whilst this was done .

We then presented ourselves for the tour of Corfu just on time. The tour was titled “Achilleion Palace, Perama and the Old Town”. Unfortunately there were no seats for us and an American couple on the tour bus so we again had to wait while after much discussion and gesticulating for about half an hour the staff finally found seats for us and we went on the tour. Apparently some passengers decided just to jump on the designated tour bus to get a free lift into town so obviously tour tickets were not checked by staff as people got on the bus. Finally we were on our way. The title and detailed itinerary of the tour had promised time to see the old town square but we barely had five minutes in the old town square. Maybe it was because of the late start due to no seats on the bus but again we did not see the town properly as promised in the tour. Another complete farce due to incompetence.

Another issue was that the travel data on our television in our room was most of the time totally incorrect. It had us stopping at totally different ports. For instance the day we were due to dock in Heraklion, it had us stopping in Venice and showed a presentation on what to see and do in Venice. Such a simple thing that by itself would not have warranted a mention but put in the whole context of our cruise experience just added to our impression of Festival Cruises.

The day before disembarkation arrived and we went to reception to inquire about when we would get our passports back and were told that they would be delivered that evening to our rooms. They did not get delivered so quite late that evening we again presented ourselves at reception and were then told that we would have to collect them the next morning from reception. We went to collect the passports on the morning of disembarkation and spoke with a lady (we do not have a name) who did not speak English well and when we made the request for our passports she opened a drawer filled with passports and pulled out 2 passports without even looking at them and handed them to us. We had in our possession 2 American passports which certainly did not belong to us. We returned them to the lady and repeated that the passports were Australian. After much rummaging in the draw we saw the Australian crests and pointed them out to the lady. She just handed them over again without looking at the photos and thankfully they were ours. We could have walked away with 2 American passports easily or someone could have just as easily walked away with ours. We found this off-hand attitude towards security of our passports hard to believe.

The cruise did not meet our expectations. Basic management is obviously not important to Festival Cruises and due to this there is little chance of us becoming repeat customers or recommending Festival to anyone. We paid top dollar for the holiday of a lifetime to find it wanting in so many areas. All of the American passengers we became acquainted with on the cruise held the same views.

Ask a Question About Festival Cruise Lines

Here is something new from Google
Click on the Keywords you are interested in and then
follow the links for more information about Festival Cruises.
(Use Your "Back" Button to Return)