Ocean Countess, Cruise and Maritime

We liked the idea of a weekender to Dublin, but were slightly apprehensive after reading some of the reports about Ocean Countess. I have to say, we had no complaints about the ship. The cabin (outside) was a good size, the food was very good and there were plenty of places to sit round the ship. The problems were really fairly small, but the sort of thing that makes a difference to your experience. The gangway going on to the ship (in Liverpool), swayed, so not easy going up with hand luggage. As a Scouser, I was rather ashamed of the dock area, but that is not the fault of the cruise line. We were shown to our cabin by a crew member, something that doesn't always happen on the large ships. It was a good weekend, I would certainly consider the ship again, but the company needs to tighten up some aspects of their organization.

We did the west med cruise in September and must agree with most of the reviews that the liner is spotless and the food amazing but oh! the boredom and with so much time at sea it was awful. One stop was only 5 hours 3 were six hours and when we realised we were getting 11 hours in Gibraltar everyone was delighted until they realised that as it was a Sunday the shops were closed. If you were happy to play scrabble, cards shove ha'penny and see how many bean bags you can throw in the bucket within a minute then this is for you. There are 3 quizzes a day and at 9pm every evening you can be "entertained" by playing the old gameshows etc. Mr & Mrs, generation game, catchphrase and so on. I would not recommend taking the excursion to the cider factory in Gijon as it wasn't even in use and we saw 3 presses and about 12 massive barrels. We saw some beautiful cities and the weather was excellent but we would not travel on this liner again. I would recommend this boat to 75 years old and higher as it would be perfect and most of the people on board with us were elderly and it suited them even the people who brought there knitting. ( we are in the sixty age group)