We saw this cruise advertised and thought it rather expensive but advertised as 5 star luxury so went ahead and booked a cat 2 cabin.

I cannot call it a stateroom as there was nothing stately about it, ok so it had a hairdryer and a huge shoehorn but little else - no fridge or minibar, no tea/coffee making facilities (had to queue in corridor one floor up to use machine for early morning coffee), no room service, a filthy half window but always docked against a wall so nothing to see. The shower room was a good size unlike the cabin, and had L'Occitane toiletries bolted to the wall. The worst was to come when a tremendous noise repeated itself frequently, this turned out to be the pump syphoning every time anyone, anywhere on the ship flushed a toilet, most annoyingly late at night or very early morning before 6am when the crew awoke. We were told by the Uniworld representative that you get used to this after a week or two but we were only on a 7 day cruise!

The whole ship felt crowded, we were told that it was fully booked with 116 passengers on board. On gala evenings there were insufficient seats in the lounge for everyone and it became so hot it was obvious that the air con couldn't cope. The two bar staff ran around each evening trying to manage all the drinks orders, they looked exhausted. Likewise in the restaurant the tables at dinner were so close that the waiters couldn't get between them and ready filled plates of food were passed down the tables, no service at table. The food was adequate but nothing special as would be expected for 5 star rating. At lunch the self service buffet ran out of hot food after about 10minutes and was not refilled, so the queue for the pasta cooking station was ridiculously long as that was the only hot food available. Read more