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Pullmantur Empress - Lisbon -Sept. 22, 2014


cascais_1954
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  • 1 month later...

Woohoo, me and my husband have just booked the cruise on the Pullmantur Empress departing Bilbao on 20th September 2014. This is only our second cruise, first one was around Hawaii. Really looking forward to not having to pay for drinks on this one! Anyone else going???

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Pullmantur's all inclusive policy is a winning formula. We went on our first ever cruise this past Autumn on the Sovereign of the Seas for the Legends of the Mediterranean cruise. Our co-cruisers were on their 32nd cruise! Veterans! Whilst they were quick to admit that it lacked a lot of class in comparison with the other cruise lines, they also admitted that it was the best value cruise ever. To go onboard and essentially not to have to have any money with you is a joy. Anything you want to eat, anything you want to drink is included. There are a few exceptions - if you have a nose for Moet & Chandon perhaps (!) you will be expected to pay! But in general it's all included. It's put me off going on any type of cruise where you have to pay for the drinks - usually at rip off prices. We have relations who cruise regularly who tell us that their bar bill is normally almost as much as the cost of the cruise itself! The nice thing about this cruise line is that it is primarily all spanish customers - and we saw little over-indulgence. In fact we didn't see one drunk person - something I suspect we would have seen had the majority of passengers been British. We are planning on doing the same cruise again this autumn with a bigger group of people - most of our family and friends are now tempted to give it a try!

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  • 3 weeks later...
Woohoo, me and my husband have just booked the cruise on the Pullmantur Empress departing Bilbao on 20th September 2014. This is only our second cruise, first one was around Hawaii. Really looking forward to not having to pay for drinks on this one! Anyone else going???

 

Dont worry about that. You will be able to drink as much as you can and you wont pay anything at all if you are going all inclusive.

Enjoy your cruise

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I cruised on the Zenith late September 2013. It was a primarily a Greek island cruise though went to Turkey also. I've been on about 9 cruises in my lifetime(Carnival, Norwegian, Royal Carribean). I chose this ship because it would have primarily Spanish passengers (I have a thing for Latinas, what can I say, lol). Well, 95-99% of the passengers were from Spain. I thought there would be a lot of South Americans too but that was not the case. I barely missed the season for the single ladies (from what the bar tenders and staff told me). The staff said that June thru early September is the time for a decent showing of young singles. My cruise was full of oldies so it wasn't what I thought it might be as far as the passengers go. Ok, now on to the ship itself:

 

Condition of ship- quite aged but not too bad. You can definitely sense its a very old ship. It definitely shows its age in wear and tear. Since I like newer more modern ships, I didn't like it all. Just way to aged looking for me.

 

Food- Not very good, but it was certainly edible and satisfying. I sat at a table with two other American couples and one couple are seasoned cruisers (like 30 cruises under their belt) and they said they thought the food wasn't too bad, but they did admit it was a little below average for a middle of the line cruise. But overall they weren't too thrilled about the food either. Its just very average, almost as good as you might get at Denny's. (Denny's is better though), or a even closer comparison would be what you would find at a cafeteria. Yea, very close in line with cafeteria food would be accurate, but of course just presented on nice dishware and fancy table settings.

 

Other observations:

 

SHOWER TEMP - My shower water was able to stay hot, but one of the American couples at my table said their water was only luke warm and even that only lasted for a few minutes. They showered cold most of the cruise.

 

AIR CONDITIONING - My thermostat didn't work at all. It was stuck on a certain setting which was not cool enough for me. So, they had to send a maintenance guy to my room anytime I wanted it adjusted. The maintenance guy had to bring a ladder to unscrew a plate cover at the top of my room and adjust the amount of cold air that was blowing in. Ya see, the cold air blows around the entire ship but how cold your room will get will depend on the amount of air that is allowed in (More blocked vs less blocked) I watched the maintenance guy adjust it so that's how the AC works. My room temp changed based on his setting my blower to less or more airflow, not by setting a temp. Also, since I cruised in late September , we experienced a cold front and outside temp got down to the lower 50's on my cruise so I started to freeze my butt off. When I called the front desk to ask them to adjust my room temp to warm, they said the rooms don't have heat. I asked twice with two different customer service crew staff to be sure. Then when I was complaining again about it when one of the staff asked me how things were going (I had befriended this individual late one night as we socialized for about 30 minutes) so that's probably why he asked. He then told me that the rooms DO have heat. This staff member was one of the senior staff (he was always walking the ship rather than staying behind a desk).So I had to freeze my butt off one night before finding this out. I can only guess that its very rare that a passenger would request heat so they must have not known because of that, who knows, but it was infuriating that I had to suffer for a while due to staff INCOMPETENCY. Grrrr. One of the table mate couples said their air conditioning wasn't working either but they didn't mind so much. They departed ship before the cold front otherwise they probably would have also had to call a maintenance staff to adjust theirs to heat also.

 

STAFF- Very nice people and always put in effort. Overall they were great! Most were very happy engaging in conversation. Many Filipino staff (English is spoken in the Philippines) so I was able to converse with them. Some latino staff spoke good English too. Almost all of the front desk customer service staff spoke English. Overall, you wont have any language issues with the staff. I was Very happy with them except for the few front desk staff who didn't know the ship had heat in the rooms.

 

DRINKS- The basic drinks were included in the package. Basics drinks like rum and coke, screw driver, mai tai, Daquiri's, pina colada, margaritas, wine, beer. But the specialty drinks like Bailey's and VSO , and many hard liquors were not included and you would have to purchase an extra package,...$30 to $40 a day I think? Not sure, but I recall crunching the numbers and cocluded that it was only worth it if you drank a lot. I might drink 2-3 drinks a day, so not worth it to me.

 

ON SHORE TOUR GUIDES - Mine was awesome! The others I ran into seemed good too. Thumbs up for the quality of people running these!

 

ROOMS- This was the only part of this cruise that I liked. The rooms are very spacious and didn't show as much wear and tear as the rest of the ship did. I was extremely pleased with the condition and appearance of the rooms (except for the non functioning thermostat). I wish I recall whether the TV had English channels such as CNN BBC etc but I don't think they did. I don't recall watching much TV like I normally would do.

 

THEATER SHOWS- I was impressed. They did a rock and roll themed show on my cruise and they did very good! I'm not a very big fan of cruise ship shows but thumbs up to this one.

 

WEATHER- Be careful about booking this region in September. As I said, we had a cold front blow through and it was FREEZING!! Low to mid 50's and even before the cold front, it wasn't very warm, few people were swimming. I froze my butt off on the Instabul shore excursion. It was very unpleasant to freeze all day in Turkey. If temps matter to you, check the average temps for whatever region you are going to cruise and watch out for the cold fronts in September or later. If this cold front had blow through early in my cruise, it would have sooo sucked!

 

OVERALL, I disliked this cruise. But the Spanish passengers seemed to like it as far as I could tell and my American table mates didn't do much complaining (but neither praising) so I guess they were ok with it. As I said, I STRONGLY dislike older ships, especially if they show wear and tear which this one definitely did. And I prefer cruises with very good food (better than Denny's quality at least). And the passengers were mostly older folks, like over 55. Although I'm 46, I prefer younger cruisers. Anyways, that's my 2 cents worth. Reviews of this cruise line are very hard to find, but its because not many Americans seek out Spanish cruise lines where 95% of the passengers are Spanish (very few of the passengers spoke English). As a single guy with a thing for Latin women, I was just after a cruise with a lot of single Latin ladies otherwise Id have no reason to cruise a foreign cruise line, especially if there were so few reviews available to know what I'm getting into. I don't do vacations without reviews but most of the the U tube videos show a lot of young single Latinas on deck and that's what drew me in in the first place. lol. But apparently I totally mistimed it. Ughh!

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I just pre-reserved a crusie on Pullmantur and would like to hear opinions about the ship, Empress.

 

Anyone planning on booking for that date (it starts in Bilbao, I think).

 

Thanks

 

 

Good choice. Nice cruise. The itinerary is very interesting. Empress is a guarantee.

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  • 5 months later...

Hi everyone! We're going to be on the same cruise, embarking on September 22nd. Very excited!

 

I've noticed there are 2 ports in Lisbon and our cruise confirmation lists both... does anyone know which port we're supposed to go to?

 

Thanks!

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Great to have you on board Julia. This thread has been very quiet but I'm hoping a few more English speaking people are going to be on the cruise as we don't speak Spanish :eek:

Sorry can't help with your question as we are getting on board in Bilbao on the 20th and we haven't got our cruise documents yet to know where in Lisbon we dock.

Hopefully we'll get chance to catch up when you board, just look out for the two English speaking Australians in the middle of all the foreign accents :)

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Hey good to hear from you. It'll be nice to have some other English-speaking people on board :)

We don't speak Spanish but I know Portuguese so I can get by somewhat (with the occasional confused look!).

Don't have our documents yet either, hoping it'll clear up some of the confusion.

 

 

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We were told we should get our document pack about 3 weeks prior to the cruise. I hope they are right as we leave about 10 days before the cruise, so it will be cutting it a bit fine if its any later than that.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi

We are also boarding in Bilbao on 20th & sailing to Malaga. It will be our 8th cruise with Pullmantur (3rd on Empress ) so that says it all! Ship a bit old but still nice, service & food excellent. Not formal at all not even on formal night. Live in Spain & speak reasonable Spanish but it's not necessary as most of crew speak English & daily programmes are usually delivered in English if you ask. Documents have always arrived 2-3 weeks before. Last time in Lisbon we doccked very near centre. Straight off ship to HOHO bus.

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Hi,

Great to hear from you and thanks for the info on Pullmantur, that is good to hear as it was quite difficult when researching reviews on the Empress.

May be a stupid question: but what is a HOHO bus?

Hope to catch up when on board. Not long now!

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Hop on Hopoff open topped bus Very good value for seeing city. We usually do a full circuit then start again & get off if there is anything we want to see. 18Euros a day. Weather should be OK & getting better from Lisbon onwards but northern Spain can be anything so be prepared!

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Thanks for confirming that, duh, I feel stupid now :) We were thinking of doing the cruise excursion to Sintra and Castais and then leave Lisbon for the evening as we are not there for that long. What's your opinion on those places, have you been there before? Are the ship excursions any good?

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Thanks Tiggywig! Great to hear from someone with first hand experience. That eases our fears, seeing as there are three ship terminals in Lisbon. I'm pretty sure I know which one you're talking about. We're staying overnight at a hostel in Lisbon and embarking on the 22nd.

Super excited!

 

 

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Skinnypin, if you're referring to the Pena Palace in Sintra, we've been there before but not with a tour. We stayed in Portugal for two weeks and drove there. If you like castles it's definitely a sight to see. We weren't allowed to take photographs inside though, not sure if they've changed that.

 

 

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Thanks for confirming that, duh, I feel stupid now :) We were thinking of doing the cruise excursion to Sintra and Castais and then leave Lisbon for the evening as we are not there for that long. What's your opinion on those places, have you been there before? Are the ship excursions any good?

Went to Sintra & Cascais many years ago. Both very nice.

Ship excursions are fine & if there are enough takers they will give you an English speaking guide but don't bank on it.

This time I think we will just stay on Lisbon.

Have you any thoughts on Casablanca? We will probably do a ship excusions there as we aren't very adventurous & don't like hassle of street sellers ! That's probably because we are old ( 67 & 70but don't feel it)

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The cruise excursion information doesn't specifically mention the Pena Palace in Sintra Julia, but they both sound nice places and thought this may be a way of seeing a bit more of Portugal rather than just Lisbon.

 

Twiggy wig, we are looking at doing the Casablanca and Rabat tour in Morroco. It's a bit of a long day, but we want to see as much as we can and really don't know what to expect in Morocco. Hopefully we will get an English speaking guide.

 

This is only our second cruise so also only the second time using Cruise Critic. Last time someone actually organised a meet and greet which was a good way of meeting other cruise critic members. I don't think there's enough interest on this cruise to do that though, but if anyone wants to meet up for a drink when we've all boarded we'll be in on that. Just let us know where and when?

 

Not long to go now :)

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Skinnypin it would be nice to meet up. They always have lifeboat drill before departing so maybe we could go to a bar after & have a drink. Thatbwould be well before dinner. maybe we could meet around reception after taking life jackets back to cabin & decide where to go.

Are you on 1st or 2bd sitting? We are on 2nd but will try to change to 1st as 10pm is a bit late for us. Julia Eugene also?

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