Shanghai Stay, Osaka, Kobe & Tokyo, 5 March 2025 (12 nights)

We were on the land /cruise tour walls,warriers,panda and Yangtze River Cruise In May/June 2019. This is our second holiday of this type, the first being Borneo orangutans and cruise also book with Planet/Iglu Cruise. The whole holiday was excellent, my only complaint being on the Wendy Wu part of the holiday and the Yangtze rive Cruise ( the ship was damp, dated and awful). Spectrum of the Seas is a amazing ship very similar to Ovation, there was a lot of Chinese passengers on board, on the plus side they hardly drink, so the bars are quite. The food in Windjammer was excellent in fact it was better than the MDR so we mostly ate there. I have no complaints about the Spectrum, in fact would love to go on her again.

Singapore Break: This was good for me as I choose a hotel in the midst of the relevant tourist area. Unfortuneately for those who went to the Elizabeth (who I met whilst on the land tour) things were not so good. They said it was tired,away from the sites and no food service available at the hotel. I may have paid more upfront for my hotel but received a heftydiscount, all the food and drink I needed included and very close to all tourist sites. Basically Iglu choose the false economy route whilst failing to understand that for many of the travellers it was part of a trip of a lifetime and deserved a far better start. Iglu certaintly need to change their commercial dept to understand that people do not want cheapness for the sake of it. Ship: Being a very new boat it was extremely good whilst realising it is meant predominately for the chinese/asian market plus a family friendly enviroment. The only problems being firstly that all the waiters were new and knew very little about the food they were serving and secondly that many tables allocated in the dining room only had half the number of the seats occupied. Why didn't the management reallocate so lesser number of tables would be fully occupied? At the end of the day it was only 9 days and it achieved the point of getting from A to B. China: The Wendy WU land tour retrieved the situation. The organisation of the various locations was excellent and managed exceptionally well by the national guides, Mark and George. Only two things slightly marred the tour (which were out of the guides hands) were the Yangtse cruise boat and the changed hotel in Beijing. The Victoria cruise line boats appear to be left over from WW2 and compared to the other lines on the river they should be scrapped. Nothing wrong with the crew but the cabins were damp, smelly and our clothes were never dry. As regards the hotel in Beijing this states that it is an International hotel but it does not cater for say Europeans. The so called lounge bar was able to serve tea and soft drinks but had only 3 small bottles of beer for a potential number of 50 brits!!!!!! Behind the bar were numerous dummy bottles on the shelves and if wine was required then this had to be got from the restaurant which closed at 21.30. Luckily our guides showed us the local store for beer which we drank in the lounge to the disgust of at least one staff member. The promise to obtain beer for the 2nd night never came to anything. Thus the label "International" is meaningless.

A bit disappointed with this ship. Having been on Liberty of the Seas found the decor of the Spectrum to be rather lacking. Entertainment, food and service was good and everything was clean (as expected from a new ship). An improvement in the cabins - more room in shower. Just lacked any WOW factor.

Great cruise Iglu organisation was second to none, only comments the visa requirements were difficult to get sorted but in the end very simple, and both hotels were a little tired and in need of updating