The Cruise Line Information: Marco Polo - 15 Nights Cruise to see the Northern Lights 2017 February
Cruise Website: Cruise & Maritime
Equipment: Camera & Drone

Photo Copyrights: Photos can be download for personal use only.

Overall Rating: 8/10
Overall I think the cruise hit the all the right spots. Although targeted at older people, it had more than enough things to do for younger guests, especially as it allowed many opportunities to see the Northern Lights in Norway.

Did we see the Northern Lights? YES
Luckily, whilst on the ship, we had 4 nights where we could see the Northern Lights between Levels 1 - 5. Check out the pictures. Funny enough, the 'Chase the Northern Lights' night tour in Alta suffered from overcast conditions and a weak aurora, so it seems our plan of maximising our chances by spending nights on the shp paid off!

How many day stops? 8
The cruise had many stops, but also plenty of nights on the sea for relaxing. Most of the stops had Day Tours available (at slightly inflated prices when compared to the local vendors), such as seeing the huskies, snowmobiling, mini town walks (not worth it for the young and cheap), and funiculars to go up. We found it best to just go out and have a walk as you'll see a lot. The Norwegian towns and cities almost always had hiking paths nearby, leading up some form of mountain/hill.

For Young Couples? YES
Being with the older generations made this trip surprisingly better. Older people aren't so lairy, aren't getting pissed, aren't obnoxious or pushy. The music catered for everyone, playing stuff as recent as Bruno Mars, and going all the way back to the 30s. We built a snowman on the ship (here) and it lasted for 4 days. One of the ladies even knitted a scarf for it. Everyone thought we were on our honeymoon, and would call us cute. Then when they find out we've been married for almost 5 years, they would call us exceptionally sweet. But why wouldn't we be? We're at sea, surrounded by delicious food, relaxing with not a care in the world except thinking about where our next stop is, and what leisure activity shall we do today.

Why choose this as the way to see the Northern Lights?
We had been planning to see the Northern Lights for a while. We had looked into flying to Tromso and staying a week, but overall (for the two of us) it might have cost £900 for flights and accommodation (no food) and there would still be no guarantee of the lights. On top of that, we would be stuck in one tiny city. So we held off on the Northern Lights and stumbled across the discounted Cruise online. It was still double £900 but with everything included, twice the amount of time to see the Northern Lights, and we got to see 7 different places! Why not!

Getting there: 3/10
Getting to Bristol from Manchester was easy enough, you either drive and park, catch a trai,n or catch the Mega bus. We caught the Mega Bus unfortunately, not realising that the Bristol dock terminal is quite out of town, then caught an Uber (good thing we had £14 off for first time app use). We also didn’t notice that Cuise and Martime had sent an email stating that the ship could not land at Bristol, and would depart from Portland instead, which we could reach via another 2-hour bus trip (arranged by the cruise). Finally, once reaching Portland, we had to wait an extra 4-hours to get into the ship. The very long, tiring and horrible wait was at least compensated by £150 credit to every cabin at the end.

Service on the Ship: 7/10
The service of the ship was generally polite and all smiles. Some of the asian servers even had a snow fight with my husband. The people working at the reception counter could definitely improve their english though. There was a ‘diversity’ of nationalities in the ship, where you can see that people of darker colour did most of the hard work, and the higher the position the lighter their skin got (except for the captain).

Ship Condition: 7/10
Although an older ship, it was very clean and tidy. After 2AM at night, on the way to our room back from Scott's Bar we would see a bunch of the crew members cleaning. It's not the biggest ship, with around 7 floors accessible to passengers, but the decoration they had was just nicely done and not too tacky. The ship does show some aging signs here and there, and it was definitely not kid friendly (which is why it's only for adults).

Entertainment: 5/10
Plenty of entertainment for the elderly, eg. bingo, lounge-sitting, mini library, games-room, cabaret, ping-pong, mini gym, sauna, craft times, lectures about the lights/space/photography, etc. Some of the entertainment options had an added cost (like £5) but nothing too pricey. Although, because you don’t pay anything in cash (they give you a ship card that charges to your room), it can add up at the end. As for the internet, don’t even bother thinking about it unless you are rich, and in that case, you should go on a cruise ship with better options. That said, while sailing in the Norwegian Fjords we often had better 4G reception than when driving through small towns in England

Value for Money: 6/10
We can only assume that Cruise Ships are like any other company focussed on trying to make more money. The drinks package for the 15 nights would have cost us more than £500 for two people, and you have to have both people in. Although you have choices of two restaurants, there are still options to pay for better food.

Day Trips: 3/10
Plenty of day tours are available at a hefty cost. They are scheduled to benefit the cruise - the ship suspiciously seems to arrive and/or depart half an hour or so too late for the local vendors tour times, or the cruise itself books out the local tours to resell them back to the passengers. We're just glad we had our drone for fun. Also, lucky for us, most of Northern Norway was covered in waist deep snow while we were there, so we bought a snow toboggan and some mini skis to make the most of it.

Room Service: 9/10
Room service was great, as they try to clean your cabin out every day before 9pm, at your convenience. You can get continental breakfast delivered to you in the morning, although the lady will be pissed if you don't give her tray back when she comes back. And watch out for that hefty £5.00 per person per day of the cruise tip charge they try to put on to your bill on th second last day.

Dining: 8/10
There were two restaurants available, one buffet (the Marco Buffet) and one where you are served (the Waltdorf Restaurant). Both restaurants shared the same mains on most days, however the Waltdorf had much fancier presentation while the buffet had more options. We ended up going to both restaurants roughly evenly, the Waldorf Restaurant was really nice and quite fancy, but the buffet was super relaxed and was open at a more convenient time. You can expect better service in Waldorf restauramt.

Overall Experience: 7/10
We really enjoyed the cruise. One of our motivating factors was that even if we didn't see the Northern Lights or go on the many of the available day trips - we knew there would be enough to keep us entertained (and we were right). We had our drone, we had the Fjords, and we had the cruise. It was definitely a bonus that we got to see the Northern Lights. It was spectacular and seemed so ethereal. We do advise that every gets a camera that allows manual adjustment of the shutter speed and ISO (NOT just a 'night mode' setting), as many people were dissapointed that they couldn't take photos of the dancing lights, and we felt really sorry for them. We would recommend the cruise to everyone looking for a short braek to see the northern lights (if you have the time to spare)!