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Airtours

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Reviewed by:  Ben Sloan
# previous cruises: 10 to 20
Date of Trip: March 23, 2004
Itinerary: Africa

The oldest ship, poorest food, dodgiest crew, and lowest class of passengers you can imagine! Sailed 7 days from Tenerife to Morocco, Madeira and back through the Canaries during the 3rd week of March 2004. 70% of the customers were low-brow Brits from depressed industrial areas of England (Liverpool, Manchester, etc). The rest were Scandinavians.

I would never sail with Airtours again! The crew didn't really seem to know what they were doing. Check-in lasted hours and nobody there had the faintest idea of visa requirements for the planned itinerary. Purser and I had words but she was pretty thick-skulled.

Pathetic public areas! One tiny pool filled with salt-water, a single restaurant, a gym the size of my garage, you get the picture. The ship is 35 years old and was auctioned off by a real cruise line years ago. Airtours de-mothballs these rusting scows, puts a fresh coat of paint on them and fills them with unsuspecting English plumbers and retired government clerks who think they are on 'the trip of a lifetime'. There is a promenade. Casino was empty most of the time.

Horrendous! Traditional english breakfast of watery scrambled eggs, cold toast, broiled tomato, and beans. Truly revolting. I'm not making this up. Lunches were along the lines of a chinese buffet or well-done hamburger with cold fries. Dinners were generally good, but certainly nothing fancy. When kitchen has to turn out a couple hundred plates each of, say, broiled salmon, roast duck, linguine alfredo, and vegetarian lasagne the results are less than stellar. Most of the dinner menu would reappear at the lunch buffets the following day, especially the desserts - dried up tiramisu, etc.

I was in the third best cabin on the entire ship (P002) and I would not rate it even one star by European hotel standards. Two tiny single beds with floppy mattresses, a tv which got two channels, rusted window frames. The bathroom was a sight! Rust and water damage galore, rotting tiles on the floor, etc. It was the sort of place one wouldn't pay E30/night for in continental europe. It was probably a considerable upgrade for most of the passengers, I'm afraid.

Cabin service was good, mostly because I tipped the steward well.

Pathetic entertainment! There was one really good Broadway style show but the rest was pretty tired stuff. Two nights were an English comedian named Peter Piper who apparently won second-place in a stand-up contest in Blackpool in the 1980s. His entire show was mocking Americans - the Brits seem obsessed with the USA for some reason. Two more nights were a guy nearly 70 years old who tried to imitate Barry Manilow! I'm not making this up! He sang okay, but it was pretty much unbearable.

See notes above on pool and gym. There was little to do on board except eat. Airtours seems to operate the only ships afloat without any internet access. The "library" was a couple shelves of dogeared english romance novels left behind by previous passengers. The funny thing was you could only check out these priceless tomes 30 minutes per day when the "library" was open and staffed by the "librarian"!!!

Since most of the passengers were old, they all seemed to crash right after dinner. One lounge near the rear was open late and you could, for example, watch a drunk insurance salesman from Basingstoke try to dance with his pudgy wife on their 44th anniversary.

Excursions to shore were generally good, but basically overpriced bus trips to the typical tourist sites. I was surprised so few of my fellow shipmates were even willing to get off the ship.

My fellow passengers were the likes of retired local tv presenters from Hull, auto parts supply shopkeepers from Manchester, etc. Friendly enough crew, but thoroughly low-brow and convinced they were on the 'trip of a lifetime'. Most got completely sun-burned, red as tomatoes, on the first day and never left the ship on the excursions.

I was lucky to get assigned dinner seats with Scandinavians, all of whom, to my surprise, swore never to cruise again! However, they were great supper company and did exchange contact info.