Ambassador Cruise Line, Ambience, North America Review

Ambience, North America

Ref Ambassador Cruise on Ambience From Tilbury to /Faroes / Greenland/Canada/ Iceland 12/09/2022 – 16/10/2022
Dear Sirs,
We were very disappointed with the cruise and only partly due to the fact that we missed a number of ports (mainly due to Hurricane Fiona and appreciate this was beyond your control) but on two of the Ports we ended up in a completely different (to that informed) and inappropriate berths, the organisation for the change of berths was particularly poor and explained in detail below.
Original Cruise Itinerary when cruise booked.
2/09/22 London Tilbury (United Kingdom) - 1700 13/09/22 at sea - - 14/09/22 at sea - - 15/09/22 Torshavn (Faroe Islands) 0700 1700 16/09/22 at sea - - 17/09/22 at sea - - 18/09/22 at sea - - 19/09/22 Land by launch or tenderNarsarsuaq (Greenland) 0800 2000 20/09/22 Land by launch or tenderQaqortoq (Greenland) 0500 1700 21/09/22 at sea - - 22/09/22 at sea - - 23/09/22 St. John's - Newfoundland (Canada) 0700 1900 24/09/22 at sea - - 25/09/22 Halifax - Nova Scotia (Canada) 0800 1700 26/09/22 Land by launch or tenderSydney - Nova Scotia (Canada) 1100 2000 27/09/22 Land by launch or tenderCharlottetown - Prince Edward Island (Canada) 1100 2000 28/09/22 at sea - cruise St Lawrence River - - 29/09/22 at sea - cruise St Lawrence River - - 30/09/22 Montreal (Canada) 0800 1800 01/10/22 Quebec (Canada) 1000 - 02/10/22 Quebec (Canada) - 1400 03/10/22 Baie-Comeau (Canada) 0900 1600 04/10/22 Havre St. Pierre (Canada) 0730 1430 05/10/22 Corner Brook - Newfoundland (Canada) 1030 1800 06/10/22 Land by launch or tenderCap aux Meules - Iles-de-la-Madeleine (Canada) 0900 1800 07/10/22 at sea - - 08/10/22 at sea - - 09/10/22 at sea - - 10/10/22 at sea - - 11/10/22 at sea - - 12/10/22 Reykjavik (Iceland) 1300 2100 13/10/22 at sea - - 14/10/22 at sea - - 15/10/22 at sea - - 16/10/22 London Tilbury (United Kingdom) 0800 –
Before we set sail the sequence was changed that basically we left Montreal last to sail directly to Reykjavik this meant we had an extra two continuous days at sea bringing it to a total of 7 continuous days at sea. I calculated that we would only be doing approximately 11 Knots to achieve this and we could easily have had an extra day in Reykjavik or even some further time in another port like Dundee or even Torshavn again and no need for 7 continuous days at sea.
12/09/2022 Monday departed Tilbury.
15/09/2022 Arrived Torshaven.
19/09/2022 Arrived Narsarsuaq
20/09/2022 Due to fog the Capitan said it was not safe to use the tenders to land at Qaqortoq (Greenland) so this port was cancelled and we proceeded to St Johns Newfoundland so had a day at sea instead of in a port So we saw virtually nothing of Greenland as Narsarsuaq was so tiny with many of the facilities shut for the season.
23/09/2022 St Johns. Whilst at St John unfortunately Hurricane Fiona became a problem and we sheltered safely for around 2.5 days but this resulted us having to miss the ports of Halifax, Sydney and Charlottetown (Prince Edward Island) and an extra day at sea, this coupled with a disastrous day at Montreal meant we missed nearly 5 ports of 14 that equates to nearly 35% of the cruise.
28/09/2022 Wednesday arrived in Cap aux Meules
29/09/2022 Thursday Arrived in Corner Brook (Originally should have be last port of call before departing Canada for Iceland.)
30/09/2022 Arrived in Havre St. Peirre
01/10/2022 Arrived in Baie-Comeau
02/10/2022 Sunday Arrived in Quebec (for 2 days) but not in the berth directly in centre of town as previously advised, we were to be at pier 30 but instead we were at pier 93. The Captain had informed us to much applause that we were to be in an upgraded berth at Quebec but this was definitely not the case as we were a long distance from the town, next to grain Silos, it required shuttle buses that did not even take us close to the town and involved an extra 20 minute walk . Pictures of berths available as proof. I asked at reception for a letter explaining the reasons but was refused,
04/10/2022 Tuesday Montreal an absolute disaster and waste of a day. We should have been in berth at centre of town but ended up in a commercial berth that had no terminal building, it took ages for the gangway to be setup, no WiFi, road was still being tarmacked, required the use of shuttle buses that had not been previously arranged hence very late, initially only one shuttle bus at around 1100hrs that took a very long route and did not return for 50 minutes, queues were silly and we were unable to get off the ship until 1315 in spite of being in the queue for over 2hrs. Varying times issued for last shuttle bus !!! We were advised that although sailing was to be delayed until 2100 on board this was no benefit as the Main terminal Building (shuttle drop off point) we were told to be back at the terminal for 1600hrs to be sure of being on the last bus at 1630hrs. We therefore decided to do very limited sightseeing as we only had around 2.5 hrs. When we got back to the terminal building at 1555hrs we found that the shuttle buses would be running until around 2000hrs but the day was spoilt and no time to reorganise further sightseeing. A very poor experience and the fact that we would have been unable to use the allocated berth should have been known before we left Quebec. I asked at reception for a letter explaining the reasons for change of berth but was refused.

12/10/2022 Wednesday Reykjavik Berth changed from original but was ok.
Cabin
Heating a bit erratic and we were lucky compared with the feedback from many others.
Balcony very small very difficult to get out onto it mainly due to table being far too big. Simple cheap solution just add a small shelf that fits to guard rail and could even fold down. The table disappeared in the last week (no although we were tempted we did not throw it over the side.) This as suspected was a huge improvement.
Cabin 10226 Cabin Steward excellent.
Nice comfortable beds and towels / bedding / pillows all very good. We considered that the towels did not require to be changed out up to twice a day and would have been quite happy if they were only changed when used ones left in the shower for example.
Cabin TV
Main problem was there was no TV guide to advise what films and programs were available. Normally switch on to find a film halfway through or near the end. The films were nearly always very very old. Gentlemen prefer blondes with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell being a typical example.
Some channels had poor grainy picture although this improved somewhat during the cruise.
Palladium
Heating ridiculous sometimes too fat too hot or too cold.
Borough Market
Food not the best but acceptable, some serving staff could be a bit rude and got the impression they were new to the job. Both sliding doors not working and very hard to open and close manually my wife twice broke her finger nails opening the doors. These doors were broken on our last cruise on 12th August when I suggested that if the doors could not be repaired then handles be fitted but initially got a very unsatisfactory response. This was later corrected and told they would possibly fit some handles as suggested however nothing ever done. Doors in this condition would be a health and Safety risk with rolling in rough weather but fortunately did not occur.
Normally difficult to find a seat at meal times could be improved if passengers were asked not to take up space just reading books etc. Table cleaning and clearing could be improved.
Frequently no cups or glasses available even at normal tea times this even occurred on all three stations at the same time, tea coffee machine empty many times hence long queues this could have been easily remedied!
Observatory
It was impossible to find a seat at the front as people were reserving places by leaving possessions we thought they were meant to be checked every 30 minutes to stop but did not appear to happen.

Wi Fi was unacceptable and wasted a lot of my time at reception. After purchasing packages and only using for a few minutes the package was just not accessible even though log showed only very limited use this happen on 4 occasions (dated 09/10/2022. Even when the package was accessible we were unable to send and receive (Mainly when in the Greenland area).
Security - CCTV
I noted many of the external CCTV cameras had what looked to be very dirty domes possibly smoke but most likely sun damaged domes -plastic??. I also noted some of the camera domes were not fully attached as there was a gap or missing seal. I therefor doubt that these cameras would have been functioning efficiently or even at all due to moisture ingress. I have been involved in many CCTV systems and never thought a system on a cruise ship would be allowed to fall into such an apparent poor condition.
Ship Tracker
Not showing correct position for most of the cruise for example at 1311hrs on 11/10/2022 the ship was still being shown at still at the narrows on north tip of Newfoundland when actual position was less than 200 Nm from Iceland.
Buckingham Restaurant (Table 38) and Sea and Grass
Fantastic service cannot compliment staff and supervisors enough also food was excellent and compliments to kitchen staff and chefs for their high quality cuisine, sauces, soup, gravy etc . The waiter and wine waiter were efficient and friendly.
This was our second cruise on the Ambience and we were going to book further cruise (North Cape Norway and possibly a Christmas market) but due to some of the problems mentioned we decided against it. On the whole this was a disappointing cruise.
We paid £10,918.00 but my wife kept getting emails offering the same cruise at nearly half the price that we paid rather annoying.