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Festival Cruises

MS Bolero

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: Mrs. Mayer
# previous cruises:1
Date of Trip: March 3, 2001
Itinerary: Caribbean - Southern

We have never been so dissappointed in a holiday. The cruise was supposed to be English - it turned out to be 75% French. The entertainment and food were terrible! The crew was given notification that they would be unemployed by the beginning of April as the ship was sold to a Spanish company - so there was no happy campers on board. The excursions that the ship sold were a joke! They get the 1 star for the clean accomodations and excellent room steward. We line ups were long and tedious.....everything lacked organization. This was my first and last cruise.

There were two lounges....the "Reflections Lounge" is a smoking area - very smokey and you had to pass through this to get to the dinning room. The slot machines paid very little. The "Starlight Lounge" was non-smoking. Don't get a room on the Atlantic deck under either of these Lounges unless you plan to be in them until they close. The pools were always emptied every day and cleaned....

The dinning room was a better bet than the buffet, unless you had the "8:30" sitting....which turned into 9:00 - 9:15. Food was okay, but not great....service was rushed. Our waiter never talked or smiled....our bus boy was great. To be fair, some waiters seemed friendly. The buffet lunches consisted of sandwiches made from little buns or on foccacia bread....tomatoe, processed cheese slices and lettuce. The cold meats were processed mortadella, mac and cheese loaf etc. The fruit was watermelon, canteloupe, honeydew, apples (oranges if you could find them). The first day on board we had nectarines and peaches --- but they must have been stored incorrectly because they were like cardboard to eat.

Our cabin was clean and adequate. We had been told they were small. We had enough room to unpack and store our clothes and the shower was okay. We were located under the Starlight Lounge, so it was loud in the evening. The walls are thin, but most people realised this and it wasn't bad.

I have seen better entertainment from my children's high school productions. The entertainment was in English and French and it lost it's entertaining value in the mix. Very unprofessional....there was one young lady from Montreal with an exceptional voice....too bad she didn't sing more.

There was bingo (at $5 U.S./card)...We took shore excursions that were a waste of money. The English and French itinerary were written differently and so the expectations we had were not what we got. We stopped at Tortola and were tendered to the island and back....line ups again! Other stops included Dominica, Martinique, St. Lucia, Puerto Rico, St. Maarten (one of the best) and Dominican Republic. There was a childrens "club", but unless your child was French it was difficult. We met a Canadian couple with a child of about 6 and they were not happy about the childcare.

The English speaking Canadians we met were terrific!!! Most of them had been on the Bolero several times before this trip and had returned to it on this sailing as it was like home. They were all visibly upset by the changes in the past year. We understand that there was always a sister ship that was French and the Bolero had been English speaking. However, over the past year, seats were sold in Quebec and France that made the Bolero mostly French. The crew that was on the Bolero in the past were not there - the crew onboard were the ones from the French sister ship.