The embarkation process wasn't too bad, as we are platinum we had priority boarding, and although we had a later scheduled time to get on, for some reason no one had gotten on by the time we arrived, but they opened it up soon after that and we got on in reasonable time. Its interesting to note that the platinum treatment is only for the first gate, once you are in the hall for immigration, there is no special treatment and you join the long queue, but it didn't bother us to wait.

The boat is beautiful, its still lovely and new and fresh and very very big. You don't get to avoid doing a lot of walking on this boat. We had a mini suite and we weren't disappointed, it was lovely and roomy and well maintained. This was the first time in months the ship was opened up to the non Chinese market, so the staff onboard seemed happy to be having a change, particularly with it being a 14 day cruise, as the Chinese ones are only 4 days at a time.

We had the traditional dining in Concerto restaurant which was very nicely laid out, we had table 369 which was in the middle area, and our waiter was always good and attentive. Mixed reviews about the food though, some was very good and some was just horrid, I'm not sure what beef they were using but I didn't have one beef dish that tasted nice. Sadly I'm not a seafood eater, so it meant my choices were often limited. The pizza restaurant Alfredos was very good though, ate there a couple of times and the pizzas were lovely. We didn't eat at any of the specialty restaurants as the menus didn't appeal to us, so I can't comment on them, they never looked busy though. I'm not sure why, but they didn't do the English pub in the Crown Grill for lunch on sea days, which was a shame as we usually enjoy that. Read more