Magellan Review

3.5 / 5.0
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River Seine Experience was Anything But !

Review for the British Isles & Western Europe Cruise on Magellan
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eab14
2-5 Cruises • Age 70s

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Sail Date: Oct 2019

Scenic River Seine Sail plus French stop offs and Dublin on the way back. Unfortunately this did not work out as planned this cruise line need to change their winter timetable to ensure you are arriving at places no later than midday. Rouen was 3pm far too late, too cold, too dark and shops closing, the queue for shuttle bus numbers was non stop and they were still calling them off at 5.30pm when most people then decided to remain on the bus and come straight back as the journey was taking around an hour. We decided not to bother getting off at all.Honfleur the next stop was much better and as the shuttle into the town was only ten mins rather than longer plenty of opportunity to get there and back okay. Dublin our last stop was again quite a lengthy transfer into town ours took an hour due to traffic but only to an area where the terminus hop on and hop off buses were rather than central so unless you liked walking you were obliged to use those which a lot of people didn't want to do so again when this was realised stayed on the shuttle bus and came straight back to the ship so we felt there had been insufficient information about these ports of call for people who were not paying for the organised ones from the ship.

This ship let down the disabled people very badly, when awaiting disembarkation at both Rouen and Honfleur days annouchments were made that the gangway could not accomodate wheelchairs so they could not get off. They were saying this was down to the french port authorities I would say they should have known this as people were trapped on board. I personally saw one man shuffling down the gangway on his bottom with his chair at the bottom to be able to get off a sight I would not wish to see again in this day and age and totally blame the ship for taking these peoples bookings under false pretenses.The dining and food quality on board was excellent and that gets full marks, sadly however no dedicated daily afternoon tea only twice over the week and no late supper just a few nibbles on a tray a steward wandered about with around 10pm.We saved buns from breakfast and fruit to have in our cabin as there was tea making facilities in there.The overall bar and entertainment experience was good but the theatre was dreadful for viewing no matter where you tried to sit it was either eye level glass panels or large posts in your way so a thumbs down for that! also the ship was far too cold everywhere with the aircon on high not necessary in the winter! We managed to turn ours down and off intermittently in the cabin, but I still got a stiff neck to come home with! There were a large number of private groups on board who kept blocking off the public bar areas both in the day and early evening which we found totally unacceptable on such a short cruise that we were not allowed to go where we pleased, when we paid the same as they had. One night in the bar near the restaurant where you went for pre-dinner drinks at 5.30 they were still in there from the afternoon standing up giving speeches so you didn't feel you could intrude this we found along with many other people to be totally unacceptable, on a ship this size they should have been given a private area not the public bars.The crew and staff were very obliging nothing was too much trouble but as this ship sails from Liverpool therefore mostly an english contingency using it we feel they let themselves down on customer service.I will end by saying that although we wont use them again others probably think this is the cruise market and was okay but there are better ships out there.Another note of caution if you are thinking of paying for port parking at Liverpool DONT there is none our pack contain instructions and a parking permit for a car park burnt down over 12 months ago and they had never changed their website! we ended up being put into a fenced gravel compound for the week not the undercover 24hr security we were expecting! So board the Magellan at your peril and definately check out docking times and distance to places from the ship.

Cabin Review

Lovely cabin no complaints at all, until the towing ropes have to come out to dock/leave as they drag right past the window! the noise for half hour was horrendous so don't book this cabin if you arrive anywhere early or leave early otherwise you will get no sleep.

Port Reviews

Honfleur

Had a lovely day here plenty of shuttles only took 10 mins to get back to ship so no queues

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