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In April 2024 we embarked on our first ever Ambassador Cruise. We joined Ambition in Tilbury for 6 nights on a cruise that visited Honfleur, St Peter Port and Plymouth before finishing in Bristol. We were excited to try a new ship and cruise line and had heard lots of positives from others who had already cruised with Ambassador. Will we agree with them?
Embarkation
As this was a repositioning cruise so we were embarking and disembarking at different ports, we took advantage of Ambassador’s coach service. We drove to Bristol and parked there, then got the coach over to Tilbury on the morning of our cruise. When we arrived at Tilbury, our luggage was unloaded from the coach for us and taken straight to the ship. We were able to walk into the terminal building and straight up to a check in desk with no queue at all. Check in was a quick process where we had to have the usual security photo taken before heading to a different desk to collect our cruise cards. Our cabin was ready as soon as we embarked so we were able to head straight there to drop off our hand luggage which was great. Embarkation was very smooth and well organised.
Muster
On Ambition muster is done the old fashioned way. There are no videos to watch in your cabin or via an app, and your cruise card is not scanned. We were asked to assemble on the promenade deck at our muster station in lines. Cabin numbers were called out and we had to answer to confirm that we were there. We then listened to the usual muster announcements whilst standing at our muster station. This wasn’t our preferred method of muster and it didn’t seem like a manual register was the most robust way to ensure that everyone attended. We’re now much more used to the more modern muster methods and much prefer them.
Accommodation
We booked an inside cabin for this cruise and we were lucky enough to be upgraded to 9208 which was a sea view superior plus twin. We’ll tell you more about it in our cabin review. But we were pleasantly surprised by the space in this cabin and we were delighted to have the upgrade.
We also had the opportunity to look at some other cabins onboard including an inside, a suite and premium suite and all were well appointed.
The Ships Condition
Ambition started sailing in 1999 and for a ship of her age she is in good condition. The public areas are all well maintained and we found our cabin was in a good condition too. The ship itself had a massive refit in 2019 when she was transferred from Costa to Aida and its obvious that there hasn't been a lot of wear and tear since then. Interestingly, you can see remnants of Ambitions former lives all over the ship, we even had German glasses in our cabin bathroom.
The Atmosphere
We found that the atmosphere onboard our Ambition cruise really varied. On embarkation we got the impression that it would be a lively cruise as is quite common on shorter sailings. We noticed that a lot of fellow passengers had a drinks package and they were making the most of it! As the cruise went on this did calm down and there were some very quiet evenings onboard. In particular on the 4th night of our cruise we experienced a much quieter night, we were even told off for talking during karaoke. We found other passengers onboard to be generally friendly and we met some lovely people. As is usual on a smaller ship you do seem to get to know other passengers quite well and Ambition was no exception to this.
Onboard Service
Ambassador claim to have the friendliest welcome at sea and we would say that we probably agree with them! The staff onboard were some of the friendliest we have encountered in recent years and they all seemed happy in their jobs. There were occasions when staff remembered our drinks orders from previous nights, which we always find amazing when they are looking after so many passengers and lots of staff were happy to stop for a chat during the course of their day.
The Food
We had heard good things about Ambassador’s food before embarking on Ambition, however if we’re honest we found it to be hit and miss. A lot of the food onboard could only be described as mushy. Every potato we were served was either mashed, crushed or pureed, there wasn’t a roast potato to be seen. We did enjoy some of our main dining room meals including the lasagne. The buffet selections were limited and we did find the food got a bit repetitive so we did decide to eat lunch off the ship in our final port.
The speciality restaurants were a different story, we thought that both Saffron and Lupino’s were fantastic. You can find out more about each of those in our daily videos.
Drinks/Drinks Package
Ambassador have 2 alcohol drinks package options, Explorer or Expedition which is more expensive. We booked an Ambassador fare for this cruise which included the Expedition package.There was a good range of drinks included and we enjoyed working our way through the cocktail menu and some of the different gins. This package basically included everything but there were a couple of exceptions, most notably bottled water. We like to take water back to our room at the end of the night and we found it difficult to get hold of at times. It was also a bit odd that soft drinks were served in cans on board, but if you have a drinks package they pour this out into a glass for you. A lot of the time this resulted in you getting a flat drink as the open cans would be left in the fridge from one passenger to another.
Entertainment
We enjoyed the entertainment onboard and we could tell that the cruise director worked hard to put on a great programme for this cruise. For example, we heard from other passengers that originally there was no hosted dancing planned for this cruise, but some passengers mentioned this to the entertainment team and the plan was modified to include it.
The show cast were very hard working and they seemed to always be doing something onboard. We enjoyed all of the theatre shows that we saw and thought it was interesting to watch a play rather than a musical performance on one occasion, its nice to see something a bit different.
Ports
We had 3 ports planned for this 6 day cruise and if you’ve watched our videos before you’ll know it wouldn’t be very like us if there wasn’t an issue with one of them! Our first port was Honfleur, which we loved. It was our first chance to visit Honfleur and we would definitely go back. The pretty medieval town has a lot of charm and there are lot of interesting places that you can access from Honfluer making it a great port stop.
Our second port was due to be St. Peter Port in Guernsey but as is quite common with Guernsey we didn’t make it ashore. We completely understand that part of the risk of cruising is missing ports and as we have visited many times before we weren’t too disappointed. We were however quite surprised to see any tenders in operation at all on the day that we were due to go into Guernsey. We know that some guests made it ashore with no issues but there were also guests that had some real problems with their tender journeys before the tender operation was suspended.
Our final port was Plymouth which is somewhere that we have both visited regularly and were happy to do so again. We appreciated the warm welcome from the city, its just a shame the weather wasn’t a bit better for us.
Disembarkation
Unusually, we didn’t arrive into Bristol until 10am on the final day of our cruise, we believe this is due to the ports operating times so it mean that our disembarkation day was not rushed. We, along with a lot of other passengers opted for the self disembarkation option which meant that we had to carry our own luggage off. We did this because we had something to get home for so needed to get off the ship quickly, we also know that we are capable of managing our own luggage and carrying it down the gangway, so before you choose this option, make sure that this is something you are willing to do.
We followed this instructions on our disembarkation paperwork that stated to wait in the bars and lounges on the ship until an announcement was made. This ran smoothly for us, however there were a large group of passengers who had not paid attention to to this information and had been queuing for some time when we arrived into port.
Bristol itself is a well organised port, but there are some operational challenges. You have to get a bus from the ship to the port building rather than simply walk off the ship into the building. This does lead to some delays but as Ambition is only a small ship it didn’t cause too many problems. We had made use of the port parking and our car was right next to the port building so we were able to step off the bus and practically get straight into our car.
Value for money
We paid £501.10 per person for this cruise and this included drinks, gratuities, port parking and a one way coach journey to Tilbury for embarkation. For a 6 night cruise we thought that this represented exceptionally good value for money. We also appreciated the convenience of being able to book our coach and car parking through ambassador as part of the booking process.
Because we had a drinks package, our final bill was not very large, the only thing we paid for onboard was 2 speciality dining restaurants and once again we thought these both represented very good value for money.
Ambassador are definitely a budget cruise line and it is a no frills experience, but for the price we paid we have absolutely no complaints about that.
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