Cruise Nation Reviews 

Your colleague Jemma listened to me. Accted accordingly. My query was sorted out. I found her extremely helpful.

I don’t think this company can class themselves as cruise specialists. We have booked a Virgin Voyages cruise with this company. Unfortunately, once the cruise is booked, we have received very limited information about the cruise like how the sooner you check in, the earlier embarkation time you will receive. When booking the cruise we were not provided with important information to decide on which cabin/ rate to choose and were advised we could upgrade in due course. This is not correct and now we are stuck with whatever is allocated to us. We were not advised of the other benefits of not opting for the lock it in rate I.e earlier restaurant reservations etc. The staff working for the company do not know what they are doing. We were also told we would receive a bar tab due to the offer on when we booked. We had to chase this up and they are now acting like it’s a good will gesture even though it was advertised at the time of booking/ confirmed on our booking email.

We are now left in a position with potentially a cabin we don’t want, no restaurants bookings and a later embarkation time. Who knows what else we haven’t been told?

The cruise booked was to Japan for a family of 6 with Cruise Nation.
It was a complicated booking due to some family living in Europe and requesting extensions to the holiday, alternative flights,bolt ons for some couples and other complications due to the Iran/ US conflict.
Our customer support from Janine was amazing.
What patience and professionalism Janine showed.
Nothing was too much trouble even requesting birthday surprises whilst on the cruise for family members
She was always happy to deal with all our many changes and questions with a positivity and good humour.
Janine went above and beyond with our booking and I would book with Cruise Nation again based on this experience.
Thank you so much Janine for your patience and tolerance.

Olivia within the customer relations team was very professional and helpful.

fantastic service , helpful and efficient

Laura was amazing, she understood my situation, helped me resolve it and nothing was too much trouble. She was friendly polite and exceptional service. Thank you Laura

i booked this cruise through cruise nation and there were a lot of problems which is a shame as second booking and was looking forward to booking with them again, but after this experience and being called a liar deffo not.
when i returned home i called cruise nation to complain about the below problems with my cruise and was told no should not of been charged any more service charges as they had said it was included, also they said that they had no knowledge of the metal balcony and that msc should of informed them so they could inform me.
after complaining on my behalf to msc they then lied and changed there minds and emailed saying that they had in fact told me about the metal balcony this is a lie, also they would not be taking my complaint any further and it was now closed.
i have requested both phone calls the one where i booked to prove they did not inform me of the metal balcony as i had a choice of several cabins and would of booked a different one obviously, and the second phone call where she claimed they didn't no, but now suddenly they do and are trying to say i did which i didn't.
they have ignored both requests tells you everything you need to know.
the case will not be closed and i have now contacted my credit card, so we will see, but i have been put of of ever booking with them again.
What a shame my second time with msc and my last, where to start so many problems.
first problem went to look round ship on first day, came back to cabin to find our cases mine was smashed to bits, after 5 cruises this has never happened before, i rung down to guest services strait away and she said oh yes it was like it, i was livid there wasn't a mark on my case at all, when i got cross was told needed to come down to guest service to fill out a form, i did so and was offered no help with trying to tape up the case so i could return with it home at the end of my cruise. i was offered a horrible msc duffle bag and told if i excepted it that would be it, i declined.

secondly i booked a balcony cabin, its my 5th cruise and when i arrived it was metal fronted and couldn't see anything out of it unless you stood up not very relaxing at all.
i have complained as soon as i returned home they are not willing to do anything about it.
this cost me a additionally £180 on top of the holiday to upgrade to.

thirdly i was told all my service charges were included in the cruise fair. this is wrong they are not, if you do not have a drinks package then you are charged a service charge on everything you buy weather that be drinks or what ever. how ever if you have a drinks package you do not get a service charge yet the bar man is still making your drinks, so in other words non drink package get ripped of. also be very careful to check your bill as we did a speciality dinning and the waiter gave water to whole table and they charged me for the whole bottle that people that were not with me who i didn't even no were drinking just because i didn't have drinks package, and i didn't even ask for water or drink it as it was warm.

fourthly there were a few faults with the cabin, i didn't have time to report these on the cruise as i had had to go down to complain about so much and i was meant to be on holiday. but on my return i emailed msc and cruise nation who i booked through and said the wardrobe door didn't close, one of the single beds were squeaky and the air con was making all our clothes damp and all the bedding damp and smelly.
there response well you didn't mention it on the cruise so tough basically, they think you have nothing better to do then to constantly keep going down to guest services and completely ruining your holiday.
i would also like to tell you there new account system is rubbish, no longer does it break down what you brought like this coke is this much , instead you just get one amount for everything you spent in that day, i suspect this is so you can not check that you have been over charged or see all the service charges they have put on, i had to go to guest service and ask for all my receipts which took about 2 hours of my holiday so i could check it.
on my departure from the ship i had a bit of a wait for my mini bus to the airport, i watched the suit case people and how awful they treated everyone's cases, they were being thrown about, dropped of of the trolleys, i really could not believe the way they were treating them.
needless to say on my next cruise it will not be msc. or will not be booked through cruise nation.

I rarely leave negative reviews, which makes this particularly disappointing as I actually used Cruise Nation the year before and had a completely positive experience.

Before booking my cruise, I specifically queried a promotion and was given written confirmation that I would receive additional onboard credit with virgin voyages. After booking, the credit did not appear on my account, which led to weeks of emails, phone calls and repeated chasing on my part and no reaction from cruise nation.

The issue remained unresolved right up until I boarded my cruise. Whilst Cruise Nation eventually arranged some onboard credit on day 2, the final explanation provided contradicted the information I had originally been given when making the booking. Despite raising a formal complaint and replying to their last correspondence, I have still not received a response.

What frustrated me most was the lack of communication. Throughout the process I felt that I was the one constantly chasing for updates rather than being proactively informed. A complaint that should have been straightforward took weeks to deal with and caused unnecessary stress before what should have been an enjoyable holiday.

The reason for my 1 star review is not simply the onboard credit issue itself, but the way the complaint was handled from start to finish. Based on this experience, I would have serious reservations about booking through Cruise Nation again!

Janine was very helpful and friendly and tried to sort out the issues I highlighted.

Sherice was very helpful today with my enquiries. Kind, professional, clear and softly spoken. Sherice was able to help me with all my enquiries.
Thank you Sherice.

Appreciated.

Great advice. Helpful service.

Jemma explained how I could get the necessary flight logins for the 2 flights.
The previous cruises with Cruise Nation included the downloading info as part of the info I needed to get the boarding passes from Turkey airline and Easy Jet.

Very helpful and polite...very efficient also. Great customer service.

Great crruise company to book with. Competative prices and first class sales team. We booked with Scott for the third time. Had other quotes off him and always gets back to you in short space of time with our questions. Our number one go to for packages.

Wanted to request an upgrade, Janine was really helpful. Sorted everything out to our satisfaction. Really happy with outcome..

Olivia from customer services was extremely helpful with my query and kept me fully updated.

We booked a cruise online however the booking interface was quite erratic and we got an error message. After getting the confirmation we noticed that the cabin and the flight times were different to what we had selected! It seems that the system reset the choices to default. Unfortunately due to the corrections occurring the next day the price had moved by £40 which we feel should not have been passed on to us given the system issues. The booking interface for Virgin was not aligned to Virgin’s site so difficult to understand what we were booking exactly and the 70% discount banner was only displayed on the “Slightly Smaller Terrace” so we had not realised it applied to the Central Terrace also (which we preferred).

We phoned Customer Services and spoke to Jemma who was amazing at getting the cruise and flights corrected. Jemma demonstrated first class communication and customer care. Thanks to Jemma, we now have the perfect holiday booked however we payed more than necessary due to the CruiseNation website glitches.

Always have a brilliant service with Cruise Nation and this is our 6th cruise now with them as nothing is too much trouble. Thanks for always providing us with exceptional service.