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Festival Cruises

MS Bolero

Your Rating:
Reviewed by:Karl Svoboda
# previous cruises: 0
Date of Trip: March 14, 1999
Itinerary: Caribbean

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed cruising the Caribbean aboard the MV Bolero. She is a nice sized vessel, tastefully decorated, and has a helpful and enthusiastic staff. Our every move seemed well planned out by the cruise directors from the moment we boarded. The ports of call were all outstanding and we had sufficient time in every one despite travelling a total of 1000 miles over the week. The majority of sea travel occurred at night and the anticipation of what each new port held greeted our eager eyes each morning at the breakfast table. We heartily recommend this cruise to others.

We enjoyed the Starlight Lounge and the dining areas. The two pools were very small and were very under-used because of this. The unique deck configuration allowed us to traverse the entire circumference of the ship.

The food and service were outstanding. The Indian chef makes all nationalities of food expertly. At our first lunch I was delighted to see the Czech national dish of zeli and even more enthused once I tasted it! There was a choice of buffet breakfast and lunch or sit-down, and even a midnight buffet! The servers were very attentive and made passengers feel very welcome. I have eaten at many fine establishments and the dinner service on the Bolero rivalled the very best.

We had an inside cabin with two smallish beds. The positives were that it was extremely quiet and well attended to by the stewards. There was enough closet space and the shower size was fine (I'm 6 feet, 210 pounds) also.

On the negative side, I felt it could have had more hooks for hanging clothes and it was quite small but we didn't spend much time in the cabin anyway except to change and sleep since there was so much to do on and off board.

We attended most shows. Here I found only limited talent although the shows had a 'fun' element to them. There was only one singer of any note and a good magician but other than that the quality of the show performers wasn't too high.

The bands weren't too bad. Lots of single 'one-man-band' types. Service was good at all shows and bars.

On board you can workout in a smallish but very well equipped gymnasium, play basketball, jump into the too small pool or simply relax and read a book in one of the many on-deck loungers.

We stopped at the following ports: Santo Domingo, San Juan, St. Thomas, Antigua, Dominica, Saint Barts, Virgin Gorda, and Santo Domingo again. This choice of ports was excellent and although we only took one pre-booked excursion in Santo Domingo, there was plenty to do at the ports once we arrived.

Our fellow passengers in this particular week were very much the type of people we would take home to dinner since it was the March Break and most of them were teachers. A nice upper-middle class of passenger is how I would classify most passengers.