scenic.com.au

Jewels of Europe…

I recently did the Jewels of Europe tour on the Scenic Jewel which began in Amsterdam on 28th of July and brought my son and his family. Altogether there were 7 of us.I have also booked for 17 people December 2014 for the 7 night Christmas market tour.Please take this feedback in the manner it is intended and I hope it will be helpful for future planning.First of all the staff were absolutely amazing. Nothing was too much trouble and this helped make our trip very enjoyable.Now some areas that could be definitely improved.1) The food for the evening meal was not good. I understand they have a small kitchen but there is very little variety and whenever we ordered the options of salmon, steak or chicken, they were always well over cooked and dry even when we asked for it to be rare or medium rare.2) Bread rolls were so tiny and tasteless, Nice large bread rolls would be great3) One day we had just been in beautiful German wine country where we all got a chair lift over miles and miles of vineyards. That evening we were offered Australian and American wine. I asked if it was possible to have wine from the region we had just visited, and they said sure, but this should have been standard practice and we should not have been offered Australian and American wine.4) It would be nice to have table cloths at night. We were often tied up next to other boats and could see they had table cloths which made the meal more special5) Portobellos was closed half the time meaning we only had one turn in there. Suggest opening every night as the meal quality was much better and that way everyone could get 2 opportunities to eat a higher quality meal6) The machines to talk to listen to the tour guides were terrible. We spent 20 minutes of each tour trying to get them working In the end I just stayed close to the guide so I could hear what they were saying. My brother did same cruise 2 weeks before me and he agreed, Everyone on his trip had same problem. Even the tour guides said other companies use much better and more modern systems, so would be great to replace these.7) Even though it is small, the massage/facial room is still charging top prices for a treatment but the ambiance was not good. This small space needs to be made a lot more relaxing and spa like. ( Im in the beauty training industry so this really bugged me as we work with small rooms and it is easy to do, good bed, battery candles etc, nice things on wall.8) I also suggest a dress code for the evening meal, jacket for men, long pants, women well dressed.This raises the level.we were on the trip of a lifetime, and having people in thongs at dinner and shorts ( men and women) lowered the qualityAs I said, the staff were amazing. I could not fault them, but the suggestions above would be easy to implement and raise the professionalism and quality of Scenic experiences

Date of experience: Jun 28, 2023