We were looking for an autumn two-week cruise that didn’t breach any of our red lines: 1) must be fairly cheap: 2) must be able to dine at variable times that we choose, not at a fixed time chosen by them. It also had to tick our main boxes: 1) must be a wide range of musical entertainment for us to enjoy in the evenings: 2) daily program must offer lots of options: 3) at least some of these must include, or invite, participation by guests. This simple list eliminated most of the English-style, Italian-style and American-style cruise lines. Marella, however, passed all our tests, and additionally this cruise was adults-only, so we were not likely to be impeded on the dance floor by children (just drunks, as it turned out). Having our hold bags going straight from UK airport check-in to our cabin door was an attractive extra, too.

After we booked, we got a rather skimpy summary from the agency that did not even mention which terminal at Gatwick we departed from, so we had to look it up. Nothing arrived from Marella, whose website said we didn’t have a booking with them, so we had to find a ‘back door’ into our cruise personaliser to look at aircraft seating options and enter our Advanced Passenger Information. Just two weeks before departure (and twelve weeks after we had booked) we received our Marella Confirmation and e-ticket email from the agent, and then only when asked if such a thing existed. Worse still, we found that this informative document has been sent to the agent four weeks earlier, and they had deliberately delayed forwarding it to us. In the ensuing email exchange, the agent was unable to provide a satisfactory explanation for the delay, and a complaint has been filed with ABTA.

The Marella confirmation itself was faulty, as it gave two different weight limits for hold and cabin baggage, so we had to query it with them direct. For this length of cruise, the TUI hold baggage limit is inadequate. We packed all we needed and it came to 23 Kg per hold bag, oddly enough the same as many carriers specify. We then had to go through the process of open, discard or substitute, re-pack and weigh, three times per bag until we got it down to the 20 Kg required, which took hours. For cruise passengers only, TUI upped their cabin baggage limit from 5 Kg to 7 Kg, still less than the typical 10 Kg, but this was scant compensation. Read more