We're looking at an October cruise out of Venice to Greece, Dubrovnik and back to Venice. I can't seem to find out much about this cruise line. Can anyone help me out? I'd love to know experiences on The European Vision if anyone has been on that ship particularly. Thanks!

do a search on "vision" on this general cruise board and you will find a few posts on it

You don't want to do anything with First European (Festival) right now, if ever.
Their ships have all been arrested since mid-January and they are having big financial problems.
We were on a 12 day cruise on the European Stars in January. The ship was arrested in Barcelona on the third day and all of the passengers were sent home on day four. All passengers were given a letter from First European (Festival) that said our money would be returned. We have since been fighting with Festival's european office and their lawyers and an insurance company to get our money back.

John is right. We too saw a First European Cruise Line ship in a small Caribbean port in January (maybe it was St. Kitt?) where the passengers were basically being held hostage and not allowed to fly home for days. It was a small port and obviously their airport was not equipted to try to accommodate a whole ship full of people. I felt so sorry for the passengers stranded! The creditors had cut off everything.

CANCEL ASAP!!

Thanks to both petlover and johnt! After your comments I was very worried and started to search more for info on First European. I found Seatrade Insider.com and found all of the info that you provided and more. Fortunately our group of 40 plus people had not yet paid a penny to First European (which uses that name only in the U.S. for marketing). They are known as Festival Cruises in the rest of Europe and have a horrible reputation. Our proposed ship is apparently arrested in port in Barbados, the company president has resigned and bankruptcy is imminent. We're scrambling to rebook on a different cruise company but on behalf of all of us, thank you for your postings here!

We went on First European a couple of years ago - Sept of 2001 - it was a nice small ship, the staff was good, the food in "First Class" was great - we had a balcony room in the "First Class" section which entitled us to eat at the First Class restaurant. We really enjoyed it. Compared to Carnival it was much nicer and had a classy air. The only problem was if there were 8 more Americans on board there was a lot - couldn't find many English speaking passengers and of course the French weren't very friendly which there were many of - but we really enjoyed the ship and basically stayed to our self - not many in the First Class areas. I was not surprised to hear about the seizing of the ships !! Sorry

Randy, so happy to hear you hadn't paid anything yet. My husband reminded me that it WAS Barbados. We were on the Radisson Diamond and docked next to them. It was VERY sad when we sailed away that evening and all of these "stranded" passengers were standing outside waving good bye still not sure of just when they'd be leaving Barbados

Excerpt from 4-1904 THE CRUISEMAN e-Letter:

Not A Good Thing!
Telephones went unanswered at First European Cruises' U.S. offices this week, raising agents' concerns about the future of the cruise line's parent company, Festival Cruises. A recording directed callers to leave a message and said the First European offices were closed. No one answered the door at the line's New York offices when a reporter visited one afternoon. Festival, which was the second-largest cruise operator in Europe, halted operations in January after a creditor said the Genoa, Italy-based cruise line had failed to meet financial obligations.

Uniworld cruises is also having financial problems--caveat emptor!