My wife and I booked a last minute cruise departing Belfast on Sept 8th with Thomsons on the Celebration ship on a cruise called Ancient Wonders, a very apt name as the ship is nearly ancient and a wonder that it is allowed to sail considering the regular outbreaks of norovirus on the ship.

We got off to a good start with the flight leaving Belfast at the allotted take off time 7am for the 4.5 hour flight to Dalaman in Turkey. We enjoyed nice flight until it was time to start our descent to land, the plane dropped down very suddenly causing many on board to scream with fear before banking away and climbing again, this happened about 5/6 times before the captain came on the intercom to tell us that he was having problems getting a landing slot due to the amount of air traffic around Dalaman airport, he then advised that if no slot available on the next attempt that he would have to divert to another airport as he was running low on fuel, you can imagine what affect this had on the passengers on board. After another futile attempt he was then forced to fly to Bodrum airport to land and refuel. We eventually landed in Dalaman at 5.30pm, some 4 hours later than planned. We should have been on the ship around 3pm but did not board until almost 8pm, therefore losing any chance to spend some time in Marmaris.we boarded the ship and made our way to the cabin which was pretty much what we had expected. We then made our way to the buffet restaurant as this was the only venue open for dining and were shocked to see that staff were serving the self service food as there were cases of norovirus ongoing and the public were not allowed to serve themselves or even make a cup of tea. This greatly detracted from the enjoyment as there were difficulties due to staff not understanding what customers wanted and long queues developing due to the slowness in serving the food. As the week went on the norovirus became more wide-spread with. Number of passengers becoming infected and in some cases detained in their cabins. Staff were constantly sanitising all areas around the ship including a number of cabins on our deck. By the middle of the week my wife and I began to feel ill and decided to eat & drink as little as possible on the ship for the rest of the holiday, we survived by eating when we went ashore and by buying soft drinks & water etc off the ship, we returned home on Monday 15th and have both had to take time of work due to this illness.

Our feeling is that the ship needs to be taken out of commission and to be completely overhauled, sanitised and checked to ensure that the norovirus is eliminated. Read more