My Friends HATED Their First Cruise - Here’s Why

A couple of friends of mine took their first cruise and when they came back from the trip we talked about it. They were very polite but I could tell that they didn't have a great time. The cruise had been built up in their minds so much they booked this cruise years in advance and I spend my life telling people how amazing cruises are so it was a little bit embarrassing for me to sit down with my friends and listen to how bad this trip was. I'd spoken to them before the cruise and to be honest before they even boarded I could tell that this wasn't going to work out. It's such a shame because it could have been amazing but it just wasn't. They'd already booked and paid for the cruise by the time that they came to me. They came to me with concerns and questions and I didn't want to be the person to burst their bubble. In hindsight I probably should have said something but I didn't know how it was going to turn out and I didn't want to be that person. I though wouldn't have ever booked them on this cruise. The cruise that they booked was on an independent British cruise line and there is nothing wrong with that. The thing is though is that the independent smaller British cruise lines tend to have smaller and older ships and they tend to be a bit more traditional than the big American cruise lines. If you have a look at a huge cruise ship like Symphony of the Seas and you compare that to a small cruise ship like CMV's Magellan you can see how the experience would be different. Knowing my friends I knew that they would be worried about the dress codes. I tried to reassure them and tell them that on the majority of cruise lines now there's normally a suggested dress code rather than a strictly enforced dress code but they did pick one of the most traditional cruise lines and I wouldn't have picked that for them. On formal nights with cruise and maritime the men do wear proper dinner suits. The women do wear long gowns. I think my friends would have been much better placed to go with the cruise line that doesn't have any dress codes. Maybe one like Norwegian Cruise Line or a cruise line with very relaxed dress codes. Something like MSC. But they went straight in there with the traditional and quite strictly enforced dress code cruise line. Some people absolutely love the dress codes. They absolutely love the formality. I've just booked a Cunard cruise and Cunard have the strictest dress codes of any cruise line that I know but for my friends this just didn't suit them at all. They spent a lot of their cruise being stressed about what they were wearing and kind of worrying what other people were thinking. If other people were thinking that they were dressed formally enough. Cruise and maritime did go bust in 2020 and I know that we shouldn't speak ill of the dead but cruise and maritime were never known for having big or modern cruise ships. Most of the ships in their fleet were built in the 1980s and one, Marco Polo, was built in 1965. She was sailing up until 2020 but she has now been scrapped. The older ships is one of the main reasons that I personally never cruise with cruise and maritime. I have many friends who cruised on board and they would send me videos of the restaurants flooding, their cabins flooding. It didn't really appeal to me. My friends were so excited to be going on their first cruise and to be physically going on a cruise ship. They'd never stepped foot on a cruise ship before and I think that they found this one a bit disappointing. On the really big cruise ships you'll find 20 plus restaurants where you can eat but on a smaller cruise ship like Magellan I think there's only two restaurants. There are some amazing places on board ships like Magellan like this amazing area at the back but if you're looking for sparkles, you're looking for big atriums, you're looking for skydive simulators, surf simulators, you're not going to find anything like that. They would have been much better placed if they had cruised on a newer and possibly bigger cruise ship. Even cruise ships from the 1990s are very different from cruise ships from the 80s and before. In the 1980s it wasn't really the dumb thing to have a ship with lots of balconies so my friends did have an ocean view cabin. I think if they could have had a balcony they would have done that and they didn't mind the extra cost but on ships like this there are not balcony cabins. You cannot book balconies that don't exist. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Cruise and Maritime were a bad cruise line. They had loyal fans who were heartbroken when they went out of business but they were just not a good fit for my friends. Picking the wrong cruise line is bad but it doesn't have to be the end of the world. If you pick an itinerary that has lots of ports you probably won't spend that much time on the ship anyway. My friends though they picked one of the most sea day intensive itineraries that I have ever seen. I've been cruising since I was a child but I still probably wouldn't have booked this itinerary even for me. If you're watching this and you're looking to book your first cruise please do not book a cruise with so many sea days. My friends were worried about getting seasick and their fears were realised. If they were on a cruise that had ports every day it probably wouldn't have been a problem. I don't think I can really think of much I'd like less than being on a cruise line that I didn't like, on a ship that I didn't really find that exciting and feeling seasick on an itinerary with loads of sea days. Not surprised they didn't like it. I do get seasick and I have been seasick on cruises before. I can make another video about that if you're interested in that. But that alone would be enough to put me off of this cruise not just because of the itinerary with lots and lots of sea days but also the fact that the older ships they don't tend to have as good stabilisers as the newer ships. Sometimes they can be fine but I would probably not do a very sea day intensive cruise on this ship. Of course some people love sea days and they would do a cruise that's entirely sea days but I would recommend not for first time cruisers. On the sea day there's going to be loads of extra entertainment happening on most cruise lines. You can sit by the pool. If you're on an American cruise line like Norwegian cruise line you will hear over the tannoy announcements about bingo multiple times per day. Your Britishism of the week is tannoy. A bit of a strange one for me to try and fit in the video but I had lots of comments on last week's video asking me what a tannoy is. A tannoy is what we call the PA overhead system here in the UK. Tannoy is actually a company that makes the PA systems. I didn't know that just from the out researching this for the video. I used to work in Asda which is the British version of Walmart and doing the tannoy announcements was my absolute worst nightmare. No thank you. I usually recommend to first time cruisers to take a seven night cruise. I feel like that is the sweet spot. Seven days is enough that you get to explore all of the ship. You get to eat a good amount of food but it's not too long. If they could go back in time my friends definitely would have picked a different cruise line, a different ship and a different itinerary. So of course I asked them why did you book this cruise? If anyone sat down with you for 10 minutes they would know that this cruise isn't a good fit for you. They said that they used a travel agent who had never been on a cruise before and it doesn't sound like they knew much about cruising. So I think that says it all. I'm very happy to say that my friends have cruised since this cruise. This did not put them off cruising. They have cruised with Celebrity. I think Celebrity are probably their favourites and Princess and P&O. I recently disembarked the Celebrity Silhouette. This was my second time on the ship and it was a world away from my first visit. To find out how two cruises on the same ship can be so different, watch this video next.