Selbourne

Doubtless there will be plenty of tempting prices, especially on Iona and Arvia. There may also be one or two cruises with tempting itineraries, but these will almost certainly be on Aurora or Arcadia at top dollar prices. I guess we can all live in hope that a surprise might spring up where there’s an unusual itinerary at a low price, but I shall manage my expectations 😂

Thank you! I had assumed that there were different options each night, but I now assume that this is a fixed list of items available daily? With the caveat that I hope that this doesn't result in even less choice of the ‘included’ items, I have to say that I welcome this. All three very much appeal to me and the first two appeal to Lady Selbourne! There are always at least a couple of nights during a cruise when nothing on the MDR menu massively appeals, and we tend to try getting a last minute booking in a speciality restaurant. This gives us another option. We usually find the MDR dinners to be perfectly acceptable. However, when they arrive, some items don’t always quite live up to the description in the menu! That will be less easy to get away with when they are charging supplements for them. I shall look forward to trying all three of these items when we are on Ventura next month.

I hope that you are enjoying your cruise. As extra charge items in the MDR are a brand new thing, if you were able to post a photo of a menu or two, so that we can see what it’s all about and how the remaining ‘included’ items stack up, I’m sure that many of us would be extremely interested to see them, especially those of us who are going on Ventura soon. Presumably they are just for dinner?

Funnily enough, I had a sushi starter at lunch time on both Britannia and Iona and they were both absolutely fantastic - and that was in the MDRs! I would have happily had larger portions of them as a main course.

I hope that you enjoy your cruise. You will have the same staff numbers as we had on our cruise, but with 10-15% fewer passengers, so I’m sure that you will find it OK. My top tips would be; Norwegian Tasting Menu in Epicurean (best meal of the week) Epicurean generally The Olive Grove - all food good, but the Crema Catalana and Sicilian Lemon Tart desserts were fantastic. The Signature Plate in Sindhu 710 Club (we went 3 times to 3 very different performances and enjoyed them all) We also found the Pearl MDR to be very good (both food and service) and the virtual queuing worked well. Enjoy!

I had assumed that this was a wind up? If true, the supplements seem quite steep in comparison to the speciality restaurants, where the supplements also allow for the better ambiance & service. I’m also surprised that nobody has flagged it on here if it’s happening. We are on Ventura in 5 weeks time, so I will report back. If it’s true I’ll probably try it out for market research purposes (😂) but we are in the minority who generally find the standard MDR meals to be OK. I’m all for extra choice and don’t mind paying more for better food, but my concern would be that this could lead to even less ‘free’ choice in the MDRs, with the better choices each night carrying a supplement.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a comprehensive and balanced review. We enjoyed our cruise on Britannia in July (our first since Covid) but can relate to some of the points that you made. Freedom Dining did not work at all well for us as well. In fact it was far better on Iona, even though the ship was packed. I put this down to the fact that on Britannia most passengers were seasoned P&O cruisers who either couldn’t or wouldn’t use the app, so several systems were in operation, which seemed to cause chaos. On Iona, with most people being newbies, everyone used the app and, as a result, it worked much better. Neither of us are vegetarian, so we didn’t have those challenges, but we were also unimpressed with Sindhu. It was much better on Iona. It’s interesting how someone who is new to P&O spots all sorts of shortcomings that those of us who are ‘old hands’ just tolerate or now don’t even notice 😂 Thanks again for a very interesting review.

I was thinking the same. Even with a wheelchair we found (on Iona) that around 15 mins before was sufficient. On Britannia 5 mins was enough! On Iona, with the exception of most of the restaurants (where service was generally very good) we noticed that a lot of the staff didn’t seem terribly happy. We put this down to them being overworked. The ship was incredibly busy and they seemed short staffed in places, particularly the bars and the coffee shop. Thinking about it, a cruise ship can’t ‘flex’ up staffing levels in peak periods in the same way that a land based hotel can.

There were no such offers on either Britannia or Iona recently. I recall these offers years ago and then they morphed into a free bottle of wine and, from memory, even that got diluted to a condition that you had to dine early to get it. We are on Ventura at the end of October, so I can check for you (unless you are on her before us).

That’s not entirely correct, especially if travelling at peak times. It’s true that the Norwegian Tasting menu sells out very quickly (I booked it at midnight and when I looked again the next morning it had already sold out), but peak time slots at Epicurean and Sindhu had also all gone within 24 hours of launching on our cruise. As we have discussed before, I believe that you dine very early, so your experiences of dining, both in speciality restaurants and MDRs will be entirely different from those of us who dine later. Many very early slots were indeed still available up until the actual cruise, as were some very late slots, but if you wanted to dine at around 8pm (as we did, and as the OP does) then you had to be quick off the mark. Had I not made all of our bookings as soon as they launched at midnight then the only one that I could have still made at the times that we wanted just 24 hours later was the Limelight Club. As I say, that was a school holiday cruise. Hopefully things are less frenetic at off peak times.

Good luck. My sense is that as you are cruising off-peak, rather than in the peak school summer holidays (as we did), you won’t have any difficulty, but worth checking regularly as you say.

Seems to be a bit all over the place at the moment. Some bookings open at the stroke of midnight and others a day or two later. As I’m sure you know, when it says ‘Coming Soon’ bookings can be made pre-cruise, but when it says ‘Enquire on board’ you can’t book until you embark. It’s worth checking regularly though, as the most popular times are likely to be snapped up quickly. Admittedly it was school holidays, but I made our Iona bookings when they opened at midnight and by lunchtime most of the slots we had booked were gone. There was still availability for very early or late bookings, but we prefer to eat at around 8pm. Much before that is too early for us and 9pm or later risks missing the late show. If I hadn’t booked as soon as they opened we would have been making compromises with regards to timings. However, if like many on this forum, you like to eat very early, I wouldn’t panic. Those slots seemed to remain available for ages, as did many of the very late slots (9pm or later).

These conversations make me appreciate the fact that P&O dispensed with additional charges for gratuities.

That’s interesting. I’d suggested that one to my wife as a little ‘filer’ cruise as we haven’t been on Aurora since 2019, but she didn’t bite. Probably just as well. Not sure that ice rinks and wheelchairs are a good combination, although at least I’d have something to cling on to 😂

I’m in Andy’s camp. No sacrifice for me either 😂 Did we need it? No. Was it a lovely experience? Absolutely.

Good for you Andy. We’ve only tried Princess Grill so far, but good friends of ours use both Cunard and P&O, both standard balcony cabins, and whilst they like both lines their view is that Cunard is far better. The afternoon tea in the ballroom is a lovely touch and ten times better than the one that P&O used to do in the MDR. Even if you don’t eat much it’s a nice experience.

Yes, we do. We dined there 4 out of 14 nights on Britannia and 3 out of 7 nights on Iona. 6 of the 7 meals were excellent, the best being the Norwegian Taster menu on Iona. Couldn’t dine there every night though as the menu is a bit too restrictive.

Like you, I think we will end up with a mix. From all the reviews that we had read about P&O since Covid we thought that our days with them would be numbered, but we were pleasantly surprised with our two recent cruises. Our issues with Iona were due to my wife’s mobility challenges and the different passenger profile being less than accommodating to this. We had none of these issues on Britannia and don’t envisage them on Ventura next month either. MDR food and service were great on both ships (really important for us) and whilst we had some issues with Freedom Dining on Britannia we have switched to Club for our future P&O cruises to avoid similar problems. Most of the widely reported cutbacks didn’t affect us and we have revised the maximum price that we are prepared to pay for a P&O cruise to reflect those things that do. At those prices it’s a great value product and P&O definitely remains in the mix for us. I shall be happy to let you know how we find Britannia Club on Queen Anne. We like the club concept, as it gives you the best aspects of both Freedom and Club dining. Our QM2 cruise probably wasn’t fully representative of a normal Cunard cruise, but it didn’t feel overly formal. I took a jacket in addition to my dinner suit, which I wouldn’t do on P&O, but that was primarily because we were in Princess Grill. However, I didn’t really need to. They are apparently more relaxed than they used to be and I suspect that will be even more the case on Queen Anne. It was certainly a lot more formal than Iona but probably no more than say Aurora. We didn’t feel that the drinks prices were particularly bad, but the service charges and extra charge tips are a definite negative with Cunard. We are more than happy to pay top dollar if it’s a top quality product, hence my desire to try Saga, but we don’t need WiFi (as we can get free coverage in ports), we don’t like doing organised excursions, my wife drinks very little alcohol and the shared chauffeur service may not work for us, so I need to be certain that the MDR experience is far superior to warrant the price premium.

I was 31 when we did our first cruise and we were definitely in the youngest 1% of passengers at the time. Like you I still feel quite young when we go on Aurora! Interesting what you said about the age profile on Saga. Knowing that Aurora was full of pensioners, I had wondered if Saga was where their parents cruise 😂 We prefer the passenger demographic of the adult only ships, although when we took our daughters on Arcadia they described it as a floating nursing home 😂 Your brilliant review has certainly made us think. I was really keen to try Saga, but the issues that disappointed you would also frustrate us. A relative has recently done their first Saga cruise and I will be interested to hear what they made of it when I next see them. I don’t suppose you can knock it until you try it, so I’m sure that we will give them a go at some stage, but I still struggle to get my head around their prices - even at the maximum 35% discount and even allowing for the all inclusive aspects.

I’m sure that the experience out of school holidays would indeed be very different. 10-20% fewer passengers would make a massive difference to the demand for lifts. Those with wheelchairs and scooters who have been on off-peak cruises on Iona also seem to echo this. The issue of people barging ahead of us, that you are also experiencing, was a new experience for us. Ironically, the most courteous and considerate people were the children and young adults. I’m very interested to hear that on Arvia there was a request in Horizon to give priority at the lifts to wheelchair users and those with disabilities. After a couple of days of struggling to get around on Iona I asked reception if they could make this request in Horizon (there being none of the usual notices requesting this in the lift lobbies) and they steadfastly refused. My wife was really upset about the lack of consideration shown to wheelchair users, both by the reception team and fellow passengers, so she is still of the view that she has no desire to go on Iona again and, by association, Arvia. It’s a shame because there was a lot we liked (food, dining venue choices, 710 Club etc) but I have to respect the fact that if my wife doesn’t feel comfortable then it’s not an enjoyable experience for her and she has enough challenges in life not to be knowingly subjected to additional ones. Maybe her stance may soften with time, but as of last week, when I mentioned a few possible cruises, she was still dead against even considering Iona and Arvia. Thankfully we’ve still got four 14 night cruises to look forward to over the next year, two with P&O and two with Cunard.

I wasn’t counting the ‘en-route’ ports, hence why I said ‘Caribbean ports’. We like port intensive cruises, and would probably only do it once, so would choose Ventura with 14 Caribbean ports over one with half that number, but I fully appreciate that for those who consider the ship to be the destination Iona has much more to offer. I look at these cruises every so often but the long runs of sea days put us off. A maximum of 3 sea days in a row is more than enough for us and unfortunately we can’t do fly cruises.

As you say, the ‘port light’ itineraries on the new mega ships are most noticeable on the longer Caribbean cruises. There are three 35 night Caribbean round trip cruises on sale at present. The two Ventura cruises (Jan 24 & Feb 25) have 13/14 Caribbean port calls each. The Jan 25 Iona trip, which is exactly the same duration, has just 7 Caribbean port calls. Quite a difference.

That mirrors our experience on both Britannia and Iona this summer. Embarkation for both was very quick. Iona was a buffet lunch and Britannia a waiter served one. Glad to hear that Ventura is waiter served as we prefer that and are on her next month.

That phrase seems to be replacing the ‘Operational reasons’ excuse and is equally unbelievable. Customers who booked these cruises for the destinations certainly won’t have given feedback that they want the itinerary changed and there is no mechanic that I know of where the rest of us can provide feedback on itineraries. 🤔

Our boarding passes also have ‘Priority Boarding’ on them. If yours don’t it sounds as though there might be an error in the Peninsular Club database that isn’t recognising you as Caribbean tier for some reason. I’d call the loyalty team first, as it’s far easier than having a battle at the terminal. Do your marketing emails from P&O and / or Cruise Personaliser show you as Caribbean tier?