The marine equivalent of a Motorway Service Station! (DFDS Seaways)

Member Name: Dr Dave

Product:	DFDS Seaways
Date:	05/05/05 (495 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes you happy to get off

Disadvantages: Everything

On British roads it is a long drive from Newcastle to Hull. The A1 or A19 is dreadful, then you have a tedoius trek on back-roads, being held up by tractors and OAPs. You will probably get caught for hours, and stopping in a service station that smells of urine. However, given a choice between travelling DFDS again and enduring that journey to travel P&O North Sea Ferries, there is no contest. Endure the pain! Because when you are sitting in your nice cabin on the ferry in Hull you will realise that it has been worth it. For quite simply, my experience of DFDS is dreadful, and I would avoid it all costs in the future.

DFDS should be congratulated for managing to combine the style of customer service perfected by rural airlines in Stalinist Russia with the ambience of a 1970's motorway service station. The crew treat you with contempt at best, and outright hostility at worst. The cabins look to have been stolen by a diving team from the Titanic. Fortunately, having a shower is not a lonely experience as, in the case of my cabin, whole new life forms appeared to be evolving on the walls. I suspect that there is a good opportunity for evolutionary biologists here - quite how life can survive in such a hostile environment is beyond me, especially given the intermittent boiling hot and freezing cold blasts of water from the shower.

Eating and drinking is the icing on the cake! If you wish to have a drink I advise you to take out a second mortgage (and probably a third for the return), but fortunately you won't need to spend too much because the bar staff display the customer service of a storm trooper. The buffet meal is quite embarrassing - food that would disgrace a failing hospital in a restaurant whose fittings look they have come from a cheap nightclub in Benidorm.

And don't even get me started on the chaos that is breakfast!

So, take my advice and travel with North Sea Ferries instead. You won't regret it!

Summary: