Le Laperouse Review

Le Laperouse is a beautiful new ship but still a few kinks to work out

Review for the Arctic Cruise on Le Laperouse
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Small Ship Fans
6-10 Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Jun 2018

This was our fourth cruise with Ponant and we are big fans of this French cruiseline. We love the small ship experience, Ponant's first class service, food and crew. We were excited to experience their newest ship, Le Laperouse on it's maiden voyage (actually it's second week sailing around Iceland). The ship is beautiful, obviously everything was brand new. The capitan was great and very imformative. Iceland was fantastic. We took a Ponant excursion in every port and they were all fantastic. Some local guides were better than others (which is always the case) but all seemed to know their stuff and were very enthusiastic to show us and tell us about their country.

Given that this was a new ship on only it's second voyage, we should have realized that the most of the crew would also be new. Many were and appeared to be unexperienced. This was most obvious in the food service and kitchen areas. Many of the waiters appeared to have no idea how to provide first class service. Many guests experienced very slow service and cold food. Waiters rarely ever return to your table after delivering your food. You had to ask (if you could find your waiter) to get more water or coffee.

For most meals, only the dinning room (not the grill) was open which they said was due to the weather but it meant that only a buffet was open for breakfast. The grill was completely outside which is dfferent from the other Ponant ships that we have been on. I I think that this was a design faux. Outide dinning is great in warm weather climates but not in Iceland. The food on the buffet was not to the Ponant standard. The eggs were unsually cold and there was no cooked to order eggs available (on other Ponant ships they cook eggs to order in the grill). After a few days, we started ordering our breakfast through room service and the service and food was great but we missed dinning with the other guests.

Cabin Review

Cabin Prilege Stateroom

The cabin was great. It was realatively large and again everthing was brand new. We had a little trouble with the TV and the phone (I don;t think either one of them had been used before) but the maintainence staff came quickly and fixed it immediately.

The young woman that cleaned our room was outstanding. Very friendly and it an excellent job of keeping our room tidely and supplied with clean towels etc. We sent some cloths out to be laundered and they came back earlier than we expected and looked great.

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