It was to be just a short break. A group of women (30) with a hobby in common (scrapbooking) on board the MS Astor for a few days out of Fremantle doing what they love best. Embarkation was confused, but I'll put that down to the group organisation rather than the cruise line and get to what I really want to say - about the cruise itself.

The food ranged from ordinary to poor. There was one really nice roast duck, but other than that ... I mean how do you make a cheese and herb omelette tasteless? And availability of food was extremely poor. Outside of set meal hours, there was nothing to be had.

We were doing back to back - 3 nights cruising and then a 4th night in port. So on the morning of the first section, we were just going about our normal activities. We weren't disembarking with the rest of the passengers. We didn't know that they were expecting us to go through all the checkout procedures. We did know that we would have to change cabins (why for one night?) but didn't realise the trouble this would cause. They issued us with new ID cards, but that meant that the computer system couldn't find us because it still had us in the old cabins on the old ID cards. Read more