TAUCK BOATS- Please advise.
Hello all. We just finished our first tour to Bellisimo Northern Italy and it was fantastic. Alexa was our TD and awesome. We had booked a second trip in April, 2025, Adriatic Treasures but am reading it may not be best for my hubby with bad knees as many steps and he's 77. I am wondering about the boats that TAUCK uses? I'm hearing that the food is not good and staterooms very small and outdated.I also am prone to seasickness but can wear a patch if need be. We are thinking of going to Croatia, Greece, Spain or Scotland and are limited to the months of April-beginning of May and October-November. Any advice would be so appreciated.
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We love the food on the ships, it’s presented French style. Some people don’t like that. There is a good choice that only the most picky of people might not find anything to their liking. Staterooms are certainly not like you will find on a large cruise ships. Even the toilets could be tricky for someone with bad knees as you have to step over a ledge to get into it. But most importantly, you may not be able to cope with all the site seeing the ancient sites with no facilities necessary for anyone with mobility issues.
Stateroom size is a function of how much you pay - more space means you pay more money.
I just completed the Rome, Amalfi, and Sicily tour and found the food on the Ponant ship to be perfectly fine.
Unless you are hyper-sensitive to seasickness I doubt that you would have any issue on any of the Mediterranean tours. We’ve done the tour I previously mentioned and the Venice and Dalmatian Coast tour on Ponant ships and a Greece and Turkey tour on a Windstar ship. I didn’t hear of a single person on any of those three tours that got seasick.
Of the periods you describe I would suggest early October, or May as your best options, but that’s an individual thing based on temperature and humidity tolerance.
What kind of boats Tauck uses is a broad question. Tauck uses Windstar, Ponant, Silversea, Scylla, and sometimes Princess. So when you look at the cruise you need to look specifically at the boat used for that tour. The Wind Star does not have elevators, the Wind Surf does have elevators. The Wind Surf has standard rooms, and suites. The Wind Star only has one ‘suite’. All the other boats have a variety of rooms available. On the Croatia trip Tauck uses Ponant. We just did the Croatia trip with Windstar on the Wind Surf, and there were several things I could not do with my bad knees. I still had a good time. Adriatic Treasures of course is a land tour. Med. cruises are normally relatively calm. I would recommend Treasures of Spain and Portugal. The touring is mostly on level ground, and with my knees the problem is not walking on level ground it is walking down hills.