Marella Explorer Review

4.0 / 5.0
248 reviews

Much Better Than I Feared

Review for the Western Mediterranean Cruise on Marella Explorer
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sandyboya
10+ Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Jan 2020

After reading some of the reviews on here, I was not looking forward to this cruise. However, we had an excellent time and I would certainly use the ship again. The vast majority of the negative comments simply did not apply, but maybe we were just lucky. The cabin was excellent and yes the a/c was a bit fierce, but it was very quiet and not intrusive at all. The beds were very comfortable and the linen changed regularly, by the excellent steward.

We saw no instances of drunkenness at all, although some large groups did get a touch noisy from time to time but this was not a problem. We upgraded the drinks package, and found the upgraded choice to be excellent. The basic wine was not to my taste but the premium wines were excellent. The gin selection on basic was fine but premium allowed you to access all the gins at the gin and whisky bar for no extra charge. Overall we thought the upgrade was excellent value at £50 each for the week.

The ship is a bit dated in some ways but upmarket for Thomsons. We did feel that they had dumbed the food choices down a bit. Gone was the fillet and lobster tail in the main restaurant, instead you had prawns and lamb shank. However, we always found something to eat and the quality and quantity were good. We did the trio package for the three specialty restaurants and we were glad we did so as the service and food first class. I do agree that they need to sort out the service in Latitude 53 as the meal can take up to two hours 40 minutes and other times only 90 minutes. The problem seems to be that there are no drinks waiters. The food waiter does everything and if anyone wants a premium wine, they have to go and fetch it which can take up to 10 minutes. Why not have all the very limited range of wines to hand, this would speed things up considerably.

Cabin Review

No problem with the cabin, lots of storage and a safe. We even got a kettle.

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