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Balmoral - Adriatic/Med combined cruise |
| Reviewed By: Stokes, Bedfordshire on 27th Jun 2008 |
| Cruise Line: Fred. Olsen Cruises |
Times cruised before: 6-10 |
| Cruise Ship: Balmoral |
Sailed:
June,
2008 |
| Destination: Adriatic |
Age: 46-55 |
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We have recently returned from 20 nights on Balmoral, a combination of two cruises to the Adriatic/Med flying to Rome and returning to Dover. Our flight from Stansted with Titan Airways was excellent. On arrival there were a number of people representing Fred Olsen to direct people to their luggage and the coaches. Once through the terminal a number of staff from the ship, including the Cruise Director were overseeing operations. As ours was an early flight we had been given the opportunity to pre book a coach tour of Rome. We were met by our guide at the carrousel and escorted through the airport to leave our cases for loading on a lorry to go direct to the ship whilst we boarded the coach for an enjoyable excursion.
On arrival at the ship we were served cold drinks whilst waiting to be checked in, this was completed in minutes. On board we found our standard inside cabin to be perfectly adequate for our needs (we do not spend much time in the cabin). It was slightly larger than those on Black Watch or Boudicca. The cabin had plenty of storage. My only disappointment was that none of the wardrobes was long enough to take my long formal dresses so the bottoms needed to be ironed before I could wear them on the formal nights.
All ports of call were good with the replacement of Tunis (because of berthing problems) with Messina making it even better for us as we do not care for Tunis. Apart from the initial Rome excursion we did not do any others, preferring to explore on our own.
The ship itself was excellent. Friendliness of staff and quality of food was of the usual Fred Olsen standards, although a number of the menus were repeated in the second sector of the cruise - not that this concerned us.
One slight problem was soot from the funnel coming down onto the aft decks on some days, seemed to depend on weather conditions. The sunloungers around the aft pool did get taken fairly early but there were always places to sit on higher decks or the top sun deck.
We enjoyed the entertainment and the Balmoral Show Company were very good. Despite being on two combined cruises we only had one repeat show and this was because it was linked to the Tropical evening theme.
We had already booked a second cruise on Balmoral for later in the year and on this experience will certainly look forward to it.
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| Quality of Food |  |
| Palms for Breakfast, Ballindalloch for lunch and evening | | Entertainment | |
| All good | | Shore Excursions | |
| Only did coach tour of Rome and despite being up allnight because of a very early flight we found in enjoyable, just the right level of information. | | Staff |  |
| All excellent | | Children's Facilities | n/a |
| | Onboard Activities | n/a |
| happy to sit in the sun doing nothing | | Cabins | |
| Needs space to hang long dresses | | Overall Rating | |
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