Scenic Luxury Cruises and Tours - UK Reviews

A week on the Rhone on the Scenic Sapphire. A "high end" company with high quality service and beautifully appointed ship. All the staff are most attentive, keen to serve and pleasant. It was marvellous not having to pay for a thing once the holiday began. We haven't been on a boozier cruise! Even the cabin mini bar is free and restocked to bursting every day! Our only disappointment is regarding the meals, which are less "special" than advertised. Being used to ocean cruising with a far greater range of food available we were presented with good, but not excellent meals. We would have preferred to enjoy more cruising during the day. The night cruising meant that out sleep was greatly disturbed by the noise of the engine. We were unaware when we booked our cabin that it backed onto the engines. It made for a less than peaceful sail. The excursions were led by locals who were passionate about their subject. We particularly enjoyed the concert in the Papal Palace in Avignon. It was a magical occasion. The "Sundowner" was a bit of a wasted trek up the hill to a castle. On the whole we enjoyed being spoiled for a week. Would have appreciated a lie in some mornings, as we were on holiday. Felt the food was good but not as special as expected. Thought the staff were brilliant. And it was faultlessly organised from the chauffeur driven limo to the airport to the same back home. A week of luxury!!

Scenic Amber - Gems of the Danube - 25-04-19 This was our 25th Anniversary trip, from the moment we boarded we knew we had made the right choice, the crew were magnificent. Everything in the brochure was delivered in spades, we cannot fault any aspect of our trip, we were waited on hand and foot, it was like a 5star hotel afloat. We also met some very nice people from the US Canada and Australia. A big thank you to JJ, Andy, Alex, Goran, Marina, Marisa and many others for a wonderful experience. By the way I promised the crew a 100% pay rise I hope that’s OK

Fabulous organisation, food, wines and entertainment. Staff were absolutely brilliant, nothing was too much trouble. We have already started researching our next cruise.

After two cruises with Scenic, my wife and I are already planning a third cruise. Our cruises on the Danube were great and we really enjoyed exploring Transylvania after the second cruise. Every detail has been carefully thought out to make the holiday most memorable. The service is second to none and the staff, from cruise director to cabin attendants are helpful and enthusiastic to make your holiday a success.

Just back from 8 day Seine/Normandy river cruise. We have done many ocean cruises before but this was our first river cruise and, wow, it was amazing. From booking to disembarkation everything exceeded our expectations. Service was first class and 'no' just wasn't in the staff's vocabulary. We loved all the trips and there was plenty of time to do our own thing afterwards. We met some fabulous guests and had such fun. We won't be going on the big ocean cruises again and have booked another river cruise already - well done Scenic!

Absolutely fantastic, nothing whatsoever to complain about. Service and food exceptional, crew couldn't do enough for us. At first, price charged seemed a bit high, but you certainly get what you pay for and when we go river cruising again I, like a lot of passengers we met, will only use Scenic.

I have just returned from a river cruise which we booked with friends. We have enjoyed ourselves but some aspects of the organisation of the holiday were disappointing. Scenic make a great deal of being a 5 star company and providing a chauffeur service to and from the airport. The taxi company was excellent however Scenic arranged for us to arrive over an hour before the gates opened. We flew with Ryanair and had to print our own luggage tags. Not terrible thing to have to do but not a luxury experience. Most customers were confused about what they needed to do and the situation in the airport was chaotic. During the cruise our itinerary was changed, Scenic was aware of the situation but did not inform us until the evening before the change. To visit the places on our itinerary we would have had to make two 3 hour journeys for a half day visit. We missed travelling to Regensberg and Nurenburg and travelled down the same portion of river we travelled up. I am sure this was beyond Scenic's control. However Scenic did not introduce any incredible excursions or luxury indulgences to make up for customer disappointment or the fact they would not be able to visit the places they expected. They arranged some buses to take us to a local town, no guides were provided. I couldn't understand why my cabin was so noisy and realised there was a metal staircase outside and gangway. I can only guess that staff used it at night and early morning. I would be woken at all hours by loud clanging. On the return journey to the airport we were dropped off at 11.45 whist our 'Scenic booked' return flight was not due to leave until 17.30. I thought that was a very poor way to treat clients. When I telephoned them on my return I was told any issues after the cruise have to be put in writing and I could wait 28 days for a response.

And this is before our cruise! I have booked an 11 day Bordeaux Cruise Featuring Raymond Blanc - something of a hero and wine connoisseur, Susy Atkins . The cruise was featured in the Telegraph so attracted to it. First of all -why is it so many companies take my details then feel free to text or email or whatever media they choose and don't allow the customer the ease of similarly communicating. I had the phone, press 1 for this etc but they are not there. So I have yo wait until they manage to start work at 9am tomorrow when I have to use my precious day to phone. To begin; I rang& booked and had to give over information and pay in full. I then received and email with various forms to fill in. After attempting the most onerous - it seemed to be on on-line form but not sure. Lots of data about 2 passengers. It was a completely ridiculous programme eg asking for dates about passport, date of issue, date of expiry. Instead of being able to put in a date the cell brought up a calendar - you had to move forwards or backwards to get to the right month. select the date - 7th, 8th whatever. Then it gave you a date with 2018. Clearly most of thede passport issue/expiry dates will not be 2018 so this then needs manually changing. Then having called my husband in Germany to get passport details I reached the bottom of the page and clicked on 'Next' - perfectly normal when filling in a form. Noooooo - all the fields cleared. Aaaagh!! So I called Germany again and completed it all again. Then I tried various means of getting off the page. I even tried the field the said 'Download Document ' but it didn't. In the end I had to come out and all the fields cleared again. So if they want it filled in they are going to have to send me a paper doc to complete. On top of that I have been sent a Booking Advice - 3 A4 pagesof small print. The terms & conditions - over 5 A4 pages of even smaller type. 2 x 2 pagesPassenger Information \summary - a form to complete containing most of the data requested on the dreaded on line form. Then a medical information form - including 50% of which they already have eg name, address, emergency contact details on the other forms. Also there is a printed day by day itinerary. Clearly to book the excursions early is important. WELL these are terribly presented in the same on line group of documents. It is difficult to see the daily groupings. The operator earlier had said the 'scenic cookery session' was fully booked. I had done my homework and realised this was their own chef doing a demonstration. Imagine my horror to see this is actually the Raymond Blanc session - and frustratingly I can't speak to anyone to find out if my main reason for coming on this cruise - and I can't get on the talk. It seems they are saying on a large river cruise vessel this is limited to 8 people. They don't put that in the advert! I can't even see when the Susy Atkins sessions are So I am spending this evening being completely unhappy. Of course the ts and cs are full of get outs. On the basis of my first 12 hours of Scenic it doesn't bode well. I hope the organisation improves, and the boat works better than their admin ability. I will update this review as I go along.

Scenic UK customer care We have had four cruises with Scenic, including their maiden voyage to Vietnam and Cambodia along the Mekong. There have been niggles with all the cruises, which is par for the course. However, Scenic encourages feedback, be it answering questionnaires at the end of each cruise, or writing your own report, as ‘Scenic always listens’. Somehow this stopped suddenly at the end of our last cruise, a modest 8 day cruise from Bordeaux and back along the Garonne and Dordogne rivers, from 29 June to 6 July 2017. For the first time in our experience of Scenic Cruises, we had very disappointing treatment from the dining room staff in served dinners (most dining is on a buffet basis; these were waiter service occasions). We booked this 8 day holiday only to find out (after booking) that we could have had another 3 days of holiday free of charge. About a third of the passengers on board complained about the same thing! So on 6 July, a third of us disembarked while the rest enjoyed another 3 days from Bordeaux and back, this time via Arcachon! We were charged 40 euros on our return journey for a 3 kg excess baggage (on easyJet) of which we had not been warned about beforehand. Far from getting an apology for all of this, I was virtually called a liar by ‘customer care’, despite the fact I produced printed evidence for what I was claiming. In their reply, Scenic ‘customer care’ said: - “20 kilos is the standard luggage allowance for many airlines”, which is not relevant: 23 kg is actually the standard luggage allowance for e.g. British Airways and Air France. - “We do state in the Scenic brochure that guests are allowed a maximum of 20 kilogrammes per guest on board”. This is not true either: there is no mention of a baggage weight restriction on the Bordeaux cruise. - “The Scenic brochure features both the 8 and 11 day durations to Bordeaux”, which was equally not true: two separate brochures were sent, the first one only featuring the 8 day holiday, which is the one we used for booking. - “I hope my explanations fully answer your concerns.” No, they do not, see above. - “…your file has now been closed and further correspondence relating to this matter will not be entered into”. We thought there must be a mistake, as there is no way Scenic ‘customer care’ would treat their (‘Platinum’!) customers this way, so I sent all the correspondence to the Managing Director of Scenic UK, asking for his views on the matter. After a few weeks came back an answer, amazingly not from him but from the same ‘customer care’ I had approached in the first place, needless to say with the same preposterous comments! So it is good-bye to Scenic Cruises. The cruises are fine as they go. However, should anything go wrong, do not expect an apology, let alone, should anything go seriously wrong, any compensation! ‘Scenic always listens’? Not anymore. Confronted with the evidence of bad service, now they just call you a liar and tell you to f… off.