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Cunard Line

MV Caronia

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: P. Viola
# previous cruises: 10+
Date of Trip: November 9,2001
Itinerary: Africa

The comments set about below reflect our views about our voyage on the Caronia on her sailing from Southampton to Cape Town departing on 9 November 2001. The comments made may not be appropriate for shorter cruises with a larger number of ports of call where the passenger mix and the use of ships facilities is likely to be different.

Overall - It was a most enjoyable cruise but we were very lucky with our table companions, 6 other people, and that added considerably to our enjoyment and impression of the ship. But we would certainly do it again and the single sitting dinning is a major plus.

A traditionally design built for the North Atlantic and cruising and is therefore more enclosed than more modern ships built only for cruising. As a result she is tight on outside deck space when full and at sea. Our private balcony was much used. Relatively few alterations have been made to her since she was built. The main alteration was the extension of the accommodation on the sun deck. Overall a very attractive and graceful looking ship and appeared to be kept in good condition. Although the weather was not rough she rolled very little and was very stable.

The Garden lounge is by far the pleasantest room on the ship and provided an excellent venue for classical concerts. The Ballroom is large and probably seats 500 passengers, which it has to do to deal with a single seating ship for the nightly shows. Whilst it does this well enough it is not a particularly attractive room being too large and furnished in dullish colours, which makes it quite dull.

The Piccadilly Bar only opens in the evening and is the late night entertainment room. It is quite small and whilst adequate on a long voyage with quite an elderly passenger list might well get overcrowded on cruises ex Southampton although the Tivoli upstairs could be used as an overflow.

The main dinning room is a very large room to accommodate a single sitting. Whilst the tables were very close together sometimes involving circuitous route to reach a seat at the table for passengers and waiters the room was bright and airy

The Lido restaurant has been slightly extended from the original build and in my view does not work very satisfactorily for those eating inside. There are up to three points for food dispensing at lunch, two at breakfast, which means there is constant traffic across the area. Much better to collect the food and eat outside particularly on the external wings to either the Tivoli restaurant or to the Piccadilly bar The White Star Bar is OK but is a quite small and is also a passage from the Garden Lounge to the Ballroom.

The Tivoli Restaurant is a small and very pleasant Italian restaurant in the evening and doubles as a card room or small meeting room during the day. You can also eat alfresco on the external wings to this room. Its capacity is however restricted to less than 40 covers which means on a 14 day cruise not everyone would be able to eat there if they wanted to.

The in-door pool is a useful feature with a gym area. There is an outside lido area and sun bathing deck overlooking the stern.

Presentation was good and staffing levels in the galley seemed high with a fair number of European chefs. The actual cooking was also good with some quite fine meals in the evening but some of the more expensive raw materials were either missing on appeared infrequently. The tendency to put all the expensive ingredients on gala nights menus was irritating! Buffet lunches were unexciting and even in the restaurant lunches were sometimes not exciting. Breakfasts in the restaurants were much better than the deck buffet.

The Tivoli restaurant was an excellent experience for both the quality of the food and the ambiance created.

The cost of alcohol was excessive and with the daily tip rate of $11 added to the bill you could add #40 a day per person to the cruise fare without trying very hard. There were only 3 wines at #10 with the rest being somewhat north of #20 a bottle. As a result wine sales seemed slow.

A very high standard of service certainly as far as we were concerned. Maybe being at the Hotel Manager's table helped but the same high level of service was evident in all the bars and in the cabin. The crew, which had some 25 nationalities, seemed very contented and happy in their work.

Our cabin was on sun deck and had had a balcony fitted after Cunard acquired Vistafjord as a result it had excellent natural light and as we overlooked the accident boat we had clear views. The bath with a decent sized tub looked to have been refitted recently and was in good condition. The only draw back to the cabin was that storage space was limited for a long voyage and there was only room for one chair in the cabin.

This was good with an excellent young classical trio; the pianist and violinist of which will go far. The only criticism was that there were too many pianists and comedians on board and there should have been a greater variety of acts. Cruise staff was good and there were plenty of lecturers on a wide variety of subjects. Almost too much to-do.

The most enjoyable part of this trip was the absence of ports of call only three in 18 days. Calls were made at Madeira, Dakar which was better than expectation and St Helena which was the highlight. A bright sunny day with no swell and a beautiful island.

Days at sea were spent either attending lectures, there were 5/6 lecturers on board, deck games, reading or sun bathing. There was plenty going on.

The average age was probably 60-65 so the ship was sedate. Would certainly invite our table companions round for dinner.