MS Roald Amundsen

Beautiful ship, terrible communications, poor food

September

Pros: The ship is beautiful, the rooms are large and very comfortable

Cons: There is practically no communication with passengers, food is not very good, expeditions are practically non-existent

Recommended: No

The ship and rooms are beautiful and top notch. The name of the cruise was "History, Seafood and Nature Reserves" a cruise from Halifax to Boston along North America's east coast. There was less than five minutes a day of history--and some of it was just wrong: we were told that Boston was founded by John Smith There was seafood--steamed Alaskan cod. No local or regional seafood at all. Not much variation in menus and limited choices. For the eight days of this cruise, we were scheduled to only visit three nature reserves There is no entertainment at all. You cannot even get a deck of cards. The educational lectures are sporadic and poorly presented. Staff, if you can find them, are very helpful and friendly. Communications are abysmal and was a common complaint over the entire ship. We were not even told when or where to board the vessel. The only communications are via the Hurtigruten app (which is not kept up to date at all) and a tv station. The embarkation of the ship and the expedition embarkations were total chaos each time with no information being given out. Unless you happened to watch one talk (during dinner) we were not even told that an entire port was being cancelled. The included expeditions were directions on how to get to the towns' information centers to get maps for walking tours. The expedition to Acadia National Park was directions on how to get to the free bus in town.