Nice looking little ship. Good looking rooms. The bed was hard and made my back ache for both nights. Very efficient staff. Considerably better than both DFDS and Stena Line. No wonder when their ship looks like this. Lots of restaurants on the ship. We went with the buffe, but considered just alright. Mass-making of food turns to turn down the quality a bit. Next time we might just go for one of these restaurants. Decent choices of beer on tap, but lacking the final touch. Too many lacklustre Norwegian pilsners (we see enough of those on the mainland). Looks to be the absolute place to be if you got hyper-active kids with a thing for clowns or people in large costumes. Nice little casino with some old-school slot machines you found on Stena Saga in the early 1990s. I dug those. Very nice receptionist apologizing when the cleaning lady did not re-supply us with new towels. Cardinal sin to do that but alright. Went to Kiel for a few hours, got straight back into the ship using what I believe is a new ticket system. Worked like a charm. Here's the shocker; no wi-fi unless you pay an abysmal amount of money for it. Seriously shocking that a cruise-line can do this in 2015 and still think they can get away with it. People got their business to attend to, if not just for the odd Facebook post. I like to have the choice to go online. A big no-no for the charge. I'd go again anyway. read more

We had a really good time on the boat, but would like to warn people for the horrible horrible roadworks that are from Hamburg to Kiel.Please takes lots of extra time to get to the boat or take the b-route. We had estimated that we would arrive around 11 am if we took another stop. This we estimated just before Hamburg. We arrived at 13.12 and drove 180 km per hours for the last part, we had to be on the right side lane because we kept being overtaken.The boat was not full at all and we think lots of people missed it. We had dinner at 20.00 because all other slots were full when we booked, but the restaurant seemed half empty, It would be nice of Color line to warn people for these extreme roadworks on the last 100 km to Kiel. read more

Just got back from a 2 night cruise to Kiel and I honestly expected way more. I have been on both Stena Line and DFDS and had been told how much better Color Line was. Yes, the look of it is nicer. The main floor looks like one from a "real" cruise. However, when you go on a cruise, you expect good food and Color Line definitely lacked that. We had a "4 star" class room which included a free mini bar and breakfast. The breakfast was so bad. The eggs were mushy (why can't anyone get eggs right??), the sausage tasted like plastic, the meatballs (for breakfast??) were dry, the hard boiled eggs were way overcooked and the soft boiled eggs were way undercooked. The pastries were quite good however and the fruit was relatively fresh. The bread was store bought and is what I ended up eating both mornings for breakfast with the normal toppings. We ate at the Grand Buffet for dinner and wow, NOK 350 per person for the smallest buffet I have seen in my life. Nothing was hot. All the food was cold or luke warm. The desserts were dry except the cloudberries in cream, which were heaven. DFDS is way better, however. For the same price we paid for a 4 star room on Color Line, we got a room with a jacuzzi on DFDS as well as really nice breakfast buffet and access to the lounge with unlimited wine, beer, water, and snacks. DFDS doesnt look as nice around the boat, but you definitely get waaaaay more for your money. Oh, and to add to it, when we got to Germany, we decided to get off the boat for a couple of hours. Their computer system wasnt working so everyone had to give up their boarding cards. When we wanted to get back on the boat, we have to wait in line for 20 minutes and instead of just printing out new boarding cards, they had alphabetized the ones that were handed in. It was chaos. Granted this is more a problem with typical German efficiency (look at Frankfurt airport--still can't figure out where Germans got the reputation for efficiency) than Color Line, but still didnt make the trip any better. read more