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Festival Cruises

MS Mistral

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: Steve Ackerman
# previous cruises: 3
Date of Trip: January 20, 2003
Itinerary: Caribbean

The Caribbean is a great area to cruise and the MS Mistral is a good way to see the islands and visit them. The ship offers organised excursions ashore and the onboard entertainment and accommodation is good. The restaurants offer poor service but the food is good.

MS Mistral has numerous bars with table service and the bar staff and waitresses offer good service. There is a large card room and a library with computers. The ship has a large theatre withe table service and a variety of performers and dancers. There is live music in all of the bars and the ship has a good casino. The swimming pools are small and there is a large open deck area for sun loungers with a bar and a stage for entertainments. It also has a sports area for table tennis, darts and other games. The barman in 'El Borsalino' is very good at his job.

The restaurants have excellent multi-lingual waiting staff. Both restaurants suffer with bad management. The waiting staff try to compensate but the result is close to chaos.The first class restaurant 'The Rialto' is a good restaurant with a fair selection on the menu. The standard of the Rialto is spoiled by the inadequacies and incompetence of 'Antonio' the Table Captain/Matre Di. The food is usually like warm when it reaches the table, the coffee is awful and the wine list is limited. Breakfast served in 'La Etiolle' is always served nearly cold and toast always arrives after the breakfast and resembles stale white bread. The Croatian waiter 'Zelko' is highly reccommended.

We had a suite with a balcony and found it to be comfortable and adequate and well maintained.

The cruise staff and entertainers were absolutely average.

There was an excellent gym on board adjacent to a beauty salon that offered a menu of massage, beauty treatments and exotic therapy. Excursions and visits ashore were well organised. Most visits ashore were via tender lifeboats. The tenders gave preferential treatment to passengers that had previously booked excursions. The other passengers had their turn in the queue which reduced the amount of time they could spend on the islands.

I met and spoke with many of the passengers. They were mostly French, German, Italian, Spanish and Canadian. All good people.