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African Safari Club

m/s Royal Star

Your Rating:
Reviewed by: Stephen James
Date of Trip: July 6, 2002
# previous cruises: 6
Itinerary: Africa

I went with African Safari Club. But note that there are 3 companies involved. African Safari, African Safari Airways, Star Cruises (Jersey)Ltd. With AS it would have been nice to see a Rep around... especially when coming home via Mombassa airport and people were being presented with hotel accounts to be settled from 10 days before!ALSO WATCH YOUR TOTAL LUGGAGE ALLOWANCE. THEY WILL AND DO CHARGE FOR EXCESS $7.5/Kilo. ASA... Brilliant! Economy seat pitch of 31 inches (77.5cms)was good, plenty free soft drinks, helpful cabin attendants, though 1 film in 7hrs bit poor. Star Cruises... Staff Wonderful and efficient. Food fantastic. Ship is a little old, built in '56 and plumbing can be a little quaint. Plenty of hot water though! She's not particularly smooth, you can feel the thrust as a vertical motion near the bow and stern. Stick to the midships cabins.

Life centres around the Marco Polo lounge for evening entertainment and presentations. Pleasant and comfortable. Starlight lounge one deck up towards stern is an alternative plus you can sit outside. Below you is the Lido deck where you can also sit in the evening after your meal.

In front of the bridge is the Sun deck. All areas are very clean and plenty of sun loungers. Massage/Sauna and Salon are available (not tried!). Pool was fine for a cooling dip. Casino still had only 2 of the 5 gaming m/c's working but the Roulette table and Blackjack were fine. Remember its a small ship (159 of us) so can seem compact.

No words can describe the cuisine. Excellent is not enough. Theme nights, where the staff dressed up, a couple of formal nights and presentation of the chefs de cuisine (8 of them) Our Maitre 'd Allan spoke 8 languages including Japanese! and all know your names wherever you are. Have a Birthday or Anniversary and you'll be singing "You are my Sunshine" for the rest of the cruise! Our Cabin steward, Fei, never let us down when, occasionally, the plumbing did.

Originally on the Riviera deck up near the pointy bit (cabin 304), but the vertical motion of the ships thrust was unPleasant here and the aircon was noisey. Moved down one deck to midships which was much better. Cabins are compact but adequate. 1 porthole each. The suites are larger with square windows, but you don't spend much time in the cabin anyway.

At this time the band and dancers were Croation I believe. They were ok for what they were doing. Bianca, the cruise director, cheerfully intertwined English and German during intro's, explanations etc. They bias the language for the majority on board.

Itinerary was Seychelles (fantastic), Madagascar (Nosey Be) Mayotte (I could have given this a miss) Zanzibar (more than 1 day would have been nice) and Mombassa. When the band played on deck at night, porpoises came around (apparently they like music). Saw whales couple of times. You could play darts on deck, jog with Julie or just eat!

I think its more suited for the mature traveller or those that like peace and quiet.... theres no loud disco nights. Wouldn't recommend taking young children. You soon get to know everybody on board, as a couple of American's said, its like one big family