Southern Australia & New Zealand with Auckland and Sydney Stays, 18 February 2024 (23 nights)

Ship ox food very good entertainment rubbish

Gorgeous massive modern ship. Amazing buffet food at the informal Lido restaurant, excellent food at the speciality restaurants (albeit tiny portions!), amazing friendly service (even got personalised service at the restaurant). One minus is that all tips are purportedly included in your booking, but then you get a surprise bill of $11.50 per person a day for "hotel service charge", which turns out to be "obligatory gratuity" for room maintenance and also for tips to all other staff in the background that you never get to see. We refused to pay this and opted for paying handsome tips to the 3 guys that bowled us over with their personalised service (the room service guy and the 2 restaurant staff at the Lido). Challenge the hotel service charge at any rate! We know almost everyone else just grinned, complained, and paid it in the end. Also make sure you don't need a doctor onboard! They have good medical facilities with several staff but you have to pay $97 to see the doctor for a checkup (you have to pay extra for any medicines, prescriptions). My partner wanted to have his tooth checked out and that's the price we were quoted. He just paid $1 for Ibuprofen instead. Onboard entertainment was not bad. The mainstream stuff was mainly bad, but we were thrilled with the B B King Blues Band multiple times as well as the violinist and the pianist at the Piano lounge (both first-class even though those venues are a lot smaller). There are 2 pools, one exclusively used by kids so it's busy, the other is supposed to be for adults but there were the occasional kids in it (but people complained) and even without them it's relatively small so it gets very crowded very easily, particularly between 1-4pm. In general though we loved being on our floating hotel taking us to lovely beaches and I have to reiterate that the service was impeccable.

Absolutely amazing time on board all crew were helpful and very entertaining. Cabin stewert was very pleasant always willing to help.... the dinning room crew were amazing MR W, well kids all took a shine to him... and the evening entertainment was amazing Charlotte one of the singers, well now hands up to her. She is a very helpful and pleasant lady... 10/10 for her enthusiasm and pleasantness. lovely crew all round and would deffo recommend.