OK, first off the good news: Arcadia is a great ship, the crew is excellent, the food is really good, the spa is brilliant, knowledgeable speakers on Asian art & astronomy etc, pretty good comedians/magicians, mediocre dance groups which seemed to rely on decibels only, destinations were OK but shore excursions were patchy.

The major negative is that you could be on a floating nursing home what with Zimmer frames & even self propelled buggies. Furthermore the North of Watford Gap accents seemed to be predominant & started to grate, where do they get the money from? Fortunately our table of 6 included some exiles from London to Norwich & a sprightly couple, mentally at least, from QLD.

The major issue was that the combination of South & North hemisphere populous getting together in Hong Kong before the voyage guaranteed a "Contagion" situation & 99% of passengers had no clue about contagious diseases even though there were anti bacterial hand solutions in evidence wherever you went on board. The problem was that most people were totally ignorant regarding methods of contagion, if only they had run that film every day ! Read more