We are a retired couple who booked our first ever river cruise via Luxury Escapes on the Gate1 Travel Monarch Princess. After purchasing the voucher I tried to find some reviews on TA but it was difficult to find a lot. Some of those that we did find referred to this cruise as not as good as the key players in this market (Avalon, Viking etc), and because it was a lot cheaper than these companies, I became slightly concerned about what I had gone and bought.
Just by way of background, I worked in a role which required a lot of travel and the Company always put us up in 5 star accommodation so I used this as some sort of comparison to the quality of the cruise accommodation and service. I’ll go through some of the key things :
Before cruise