Cahpek

TBH it is only the lack of a really good lunchtime buffet because the dining room and speciality restaurants are good as is the rest of the ships.

 

43 cruises and counting.

With respect, it's not just the lunchtime buffet. The dinner buffet needs improving too. As for the MDR, it's much better than the buffet, but even there, the standard could be quite inconsistent - you could get very good dishes and then very poor ones as if they were prepared in a different kitchen. As someone mentioned, sometimes, dishes mentioned in the menu did not come out as described. That could do with a bit of attention too. Food issue aside, then, P&O has done very well. Hope senior management will work just that little bit harder to make this a great cruise line with improving food standards and quality control. We are sure they can do it, whether they will, that is up to them.

Back to this original question whether P&O takes passengers for granted, we really do not know. On the one hand, you could argue to do (especially when certain things irritate you), and then when you look at it from a wider angle, perhaps, they don't. For us, the jury is still out.

I've only sailed more than once on P&O, Cunard and Celebrity, so can't say across the board, but can certainly say that those three lines suffer from the same issue. Cunard is significantly more marked in its decline than P&O in my opinion, probably because they were starting from a much higher place with the QE2, which in the late nineties was supreme and unlike anything you see these days. Celebrity have always focussed towards American tastes of significant meat portion with accompaniments mostly as garnish, so that was always much easier to produce and serve, but they have dropped the more intricate dishes now and have far less variety than before.

P&O have a lot of good points about it (as seen in another thread). It's such a pity the cuisine standard has not match up to their other high standards (OK, some may not agree, but quite a number of posters here have mentioned about its food being somewhat "lacking"). If P&O could address its food quality issue (maybe they could learn from "sister" Princess?) , P&O could be one of the best cruise companies anywhere.

They do raise prices for drinks etc from time to time without telling passengers just like every retail establishment does. Should Tesco inform every regular customer every time the price of an item increases? I don't see why any cruise line should be any different.

Thanks for your thoughts.

The only time I've been past the Lofoten Islands was the cruise where the ship went up to Svalbard, then further north to the Polar Ice Cap.

Yes, they were special to see; we had scenic cruising with commentary. But I have never gotten there on any of my fjord cruises.

Sorry. :(

Thanks for your response RuthC.

Gosh, you have been to the Polar Ice Cap? My word, you are a really great traveller, lucky you !

Cannot believe the whinging about an extra 50p . Get a life. It is still so much cheaper than any USD based cruise line. Gives us Brits a bad name.

 

 

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You are right that is only 50p. And it is really tiny relative to what you have to spend on a cruise.

But if you were to try and look from Alaunis' point of view. it was most probably not the money but the principle. You could argue, if a cruise company can raise gratuities without informing customers directly, what is there to stop them for raising prices of other things (drinks prices, charges for speciality restaurants, excursions, etc, etc) without informing customers and wait for them to find out when they get on board? Is that still going to be alright? Or would you say, who cares? Just a thought.

If you read some of the other boards like Celebrity you will find stories about loyal passengers 'bumped off' cruises at the last minute... and I mean within days of boarding.

 

We too have just found out that our cruise on Celebrity next year has been cancelled as someone else has chartered the cruise ship. Well good for them! Just as well we hadn't booked pre night stays and flights.

 

P&O may not be perfect, but all cruise lines are in the 'let's make a profit' game so what really does it mean to be 'loyal' to past cruisers ???????????????

No cruise company is perfect, everyone of them have something or other that they could do better. Also, they are all in for a profit. And why shouldn't they? After all, they are all businesses, aren't they, they are not a charities! I think most people would agree about that. However, there are some cruise companies that listen to their customers views more , always trying to find out if there is anything that they could improve on, address those issues and find solutions for them. For us, from a customer perspective, that is what make those cruise companies the better ones. It is up to you to decide whether P&O is one of them.

You can have cold, icy rain, and warm to hot sunshine---and a whole lot in between. You need to be ready for anything and everything in Norway. Gloves and a jacket, with a sweatshirt underneath, and slacks with a knit top are both useful. Layering is key.

Norway is probably my favorite destination that's easy to get to; I've been there more times than I can count, in all months from May through September. I'm going again this June, as it's been too long since I've visited.

Hope you have as good a time there as I have.

Hi RuthC, post member Debsjc referred us to you as you seem to be a very knowledgeable person regarding HAL cruises, especially to Norway.

We are going on a Norwegian fjord 14-night cruise on the Koningsdam on June 11. It goes from Amsterdam, all the way north to Tromso and then to North Cape, and then returning back to Amsterdam. We were wondering if you know whether the ship might pass through the Lofoten Islands, close enough for us to take a view. We have seen pictures of these islands and how breathtakingly beautiful they are, so it would be great to be able to see them in reality.

It would be great if you could help, we would be grateful , but if you do not know, that's okay. Just thought we'd ask.

And in that vein....has anyone use Shore Excursions Group.....lots of reviews on that site.

We went to that website and we could find no reviews. All that seems to be is an AGENT selling shore excursions - and even that, the excursions they offered were not very extensive compared to another Cruising Excursion site we tend to use.

However, for shore excursion reviews, Cruise Critic has its own rather extensive reviews contributed by members.If you wish to take a look, it is at::

http://www.cruisecritic.co.uk/memberreviews/shoreexcursions/

I am watching this topic carefully as well, because we are on the cruise before you Stella1250, on 11 June!

 

Thank you for all the useful information RuthC :)

 

I am planning on taking a hat, gloves and a scarf for the Northern Cape at least. When we did scenic cruising in Greenland in August we needed them.

Since you are going on the same cruise as we are, have you any idea if the ship will be cruising past the amazingly beautiful Lofoten Islands? We realise the itinerary shows it is not stopping there but the route map shows it could be sailing past those islands.

Sometimes Dai you have to ignore the ridiculous comments that people make and just let others judge. What surprises me is that these same people continue to cruise with a company that to them is so bad. More fool them.

If you read the posts properly , some of these same people will not continue to cruise with a company who seem to take them for granted, because they felt the food was so bad (at least so often bad/mediocre/inferior). They have decided to sail with other companies - in fact, they have already booked another cruise with another company. How about that?

By the way, it was not just one person mentioning the poor quality of the food on one P&O ship, it was several. And then, there were others too who mentioned the poor quality of food on other ships within the P&O fleet.

Sure, food is subjective, but if quite a number of people seem to come to that conclusion with their experience from different P&O ships , instead of "knocking" these people, shouldn't we instead try and encourage P&O to do better? Or is that too much to expect? After all, if P&O improves (its food quality especially), everyone benefits, both the passengers and the company itself.

It is true that you judge for yourself and do what you want. On same note, the rest of us should have the right to express our views too especially when we feel it is true. Or are we only allowed to mention "glossy" things about P&O and nothing else? And if we don't, that you would try to shoot us? Isn't that equally ridiculous???

It is hoped that we should accept that different posters have different views , and it would be good that we show mutual respect and decency, even if we do not always agree with each other.

Thank you.

Did you use an agent for your booking rather than booking directly with P&O? If so, P &O may have sent notification of the increase to your agent who has not passed it on to you.

Like all cruises, P&O ask for the API (advanced passenger information) of the passenger weeks before the passenger boards the ship, don't they? And with that, as a passenger, you will usually provide your email address or mobile number, don't you? If so, that means that if P&O want to, they can contact and inform the passenger directly. So why didn't they?

 

Pinnacle grill:

.... Later we found out the Pinnacle meal delivered to your stateroom is only $15 a person and includes anything off the menu you want. So lets see I can get my complete dinner in my room for $30 or sit for two hours in your restaurant and pay $70 for the same thing. Looks like room service Pinnacle grill on any future sailings.

 

Thanks for your informative review. It is so helpful and interesting.

We are pleasantly surprised to read that you could order your complete dinner from the Pinnacle to your room for half of what you have to pay in supplementary charges if you were to eat in the restaurant.

Do you know if we can have similar arrangements and order dinner from other speciality restaurants on board too, for instance, Tamarind restaurant?

We will be cruising with the Koningsdam on a two weeks cruise in June, and we hope that the arrangement you mentioned will still be available .

We read their new "improved" room service menu which came into effect in (Dec?) 2016 and they only listed a very limited choice of dishes which one could order from the specialty restaurants. The choices in the room service menu is so limited . The new room service menu, seems quite disappointing (in our view, it is not an improvement, but a backward-step/cost cutting measure(?), when compared to HAL's previous and more generous room service offerings,).

And tell us please, do they have a free soft-ice cream vending machine on board the Koningsdam? And what are its opening times please?

Really?

 

Probably one in every three meals myself or partner will send something back to be replaced.

I was like you too, I have to send something back quite a number of times. And for so many of the dishes, I had to have tomato ketchup to cover the lack of taste, or sauce that tasted like they were instant gravy made from granules or the dryness of the meat etc.

Still, I was very nice to the waiters, and they were kind to me too for which I was grateful. They were a friendly and likeable bunch of people who worked hard. It was not their fault their chefs created such poor dishes.

I like the waiters/waitresses because they have a sense of humour. Once, I even joked with one of the waiters, and said, "Can you please give my compliments to the chef? The TOMATO KETCHUP was particularly delicious!" . We both laughed.

That is my complaint.

 

On a two week cruise there is usually one good formal menu, one reasonable, and two 'really?' menus.

 

 

If the argument is that people will splash out on more expensive wine, etc, they are hardly likely to do so with some of the second rate menus, that feel like a mid week 'can't be bothered' at home.

We understand exactly what you mean. So much of the cuisine gave one a feeling that there was no "passion" in the cooking. It somehow either lacked taste, not warm enough, quality not right, and so on. It was as if the chefs did not have any pride in their cooking or they simply did not care.

As mentioned above, the quality of cuisine , or the lack of it, has been discussed quite extensively in the other P&O threads currently. Seasoned P&O cruisers have commented how the standard of cuisine on P&O has fallen. It was not just on the Ventura, but unfavourable comments has been made recently of cuisine standard on the Azura, Britannia and Arcadia as well, which is 4 out of 6 ships in the entire fleet!

Issues has been raised which questioned if the company was doing too much cost cutting thus lowering cuisine standard, and whether it should increase its fares and maybe hopefully raised back standards; to perhaps P&O should not pretend it is a "classy" operation any longer and that it should instead promote itself as offering "value" cruises rather than "luxury" cruises. The food was so poor on P&O that when someone complained about the stampede to the food in the buffet , someone else answered jokingly that the poor quality of food would soon put a stop to that ! Another passenger posted here who mentioned that on one of his formal nights, the dish offered was fish and chips. Some of our biggest bug-bears were the watery custard and the meringue that was so hard it did not break even when it was knocked on the table - but there was a lot more . Now, surely P&O can do better than that!

On our cruise, we have raised some of the food issues with the Food and Beverage manager to no effect.

For us, we have totally given up hope that the standard of cuisine on P&O would improve any time soon now. We will vote with our wallets, and we have booked our next 2-weeks cruise in June, and it is NOT going to be a P&O cruise.We feel strongly that P&O should not take passengers for granted, and we are not prepared to spend thousands of £££ more, just to be given questionable standard of cuisine . Enough's enough.

Hi, the answer is yes! On formal nights those who do not wish to participate in formal attire often dine in the buffet area.

 

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You could go to the buffet area, but depending on which ship you are going, the buffet could be very poor. At least, the MDR could be "hit and miss" (on formal nights, the MDR cuisine standard does not necessarily always match up to the level of the dress code). We had bad experiences especially with the buffet recently on the Ventura - that was probably the worst buffet cuisine we have had on our 10 cruises. The buffet dinner was so bad that after taking the food, we tasted it and we simply could not swallow any more . We just left it and walked off.( This has been discussed extensively in other P&O threads, so will not go on any more here). So, really, going to the buffet is not always a proper alternative.

On our most recent cruise the black tie and gala dinner nights were out of synch. Certainly once, possibly twice, out of 5. Now that seems crazy to me. Best bib and tucker and you're offered fish and chips rather than lobster. Next night, back to smart cas and it's the full monty, complete with sorbet. Most odd

 

(There were no meteorological or other problems to change any pre-planned formal nights)

I know. It seems odd that they have to make passengers take the trouble to dress up (especially the ladies who took such a long time to dress themselves up to look so elegant, and them men looked so handsome in their tuxedos, etc), and then, all they come up with is food that might just pass for a chip shop or a school canteen!

If I remember correctly,, one evening , in the dinner menu, the "chef's speciality" was Cornish Pasty!!!! I nearly fell off my chair. Were they trying to insult passengers or what???!!! Talking about racing to the bottom.

Perhaps P&O should stop pretending it is a classy operation and do away with those formal nights. They could still suggest for passengers to dress smart, if they wish.(They could promote themselves as offering "value" cruises rather than "luxury" cruises).

If they lowered the expectations of passengers, when something nice comes up in the menu, at least, passengers would be "pleasantly surprised". At the moment, they seem to be raising the hopes of passengers with those glossy adverts on tv, and then when we got on the cruise expecting gourmet cuisine (after spending thousands of £££), often, we were left with the feeling of being badly let down.

I think if P&O were to apply anything approaching a 25% or 40% increase they would more than likely be charging more than the premium lines, as well as having to cruise half empty.

But if you check their pricing you will find they already charge higher rates for Oriana, Adonia, Aurora and to a lesser extent Arcadia, which is one reason we rarely consider cruises on these ships.

For me please don't give P&O management any extra reasons to increase price or add extra revenue streams, I am struggling to get them to improve service standards up to Celebrity quality within the current price structure, so any daft ideas that passengers might be prepared to pay more should be avoided.:cool:

My concern with this is P&O management may just increase the fares but still not improving the quality of their product.

If that were to happen, it would be the worst of both worlds.

Currently, the cuisine may be poor at worst, and "hit and miss" at best, but at least, the drinks prices and gratuaties and fares relatively affordable. What would be worse is they are not doing anything more to improve the standards of catering (or maybe cut costs and lowering standards even more) but at the same time, they up the fares and charge you more. For the passenger, that would be a "lose-lose" situation, and that would not be good. Hope that would not happen.

We will be going with Holland America for the first time. The cruise will be 14-days on the Koningsdam.

In February this year, we had one of the most unpleasant cuisine experience on the P&O (Ventura), especially in the buffet where the quality of the buffet was so very disappointing. It was not just one dish but a series of them, and that affected our 14 days cruise so much we were so pleased the cruise was finally over and we would not have to eat their food!

Trouble was , on Cruisecritic, we found that there were recent complaints not just about one P&O ship (the Ventura) , but (from others) about the Arcadia, the Azura, and the Britannia too. That's 4 out of 6 ships in their fleet!

Our worry is the level of catering on HAL would be as disappointing as on P&O (Ventura) and it would be great if experienced HAL cruisers could give reassure us that this is not going to be so. We do realise both P&O and HAL are companies under the Carnival's stable. We particularly like buffet dining but we are also interested in the MDR, room service and other complimentary venues. We are not quite so keen on speciality restaurants.

We have also cruised with Princess, Azamara, Celebrity, Fred. Olsen, and Oceania.

If you know how the cuisine is like on HAL compared to any of the above cruise cruise companies, we would appreciate if you can share your experience with us.

Thank you.

I was recently on Ventura and a new executive chef came on board while we were in Madeira on 17th March.

He was present when they did the Behind the scenes tour and he struck me as a hard no nonsense guy from UK. Noticed a couple of days later that the waiters were calling him 'sir'.

Don't know if any of the comments in the previous posts are pre or post this change of head chef.

I only used the buffet once and it was OK for me

The comments, or at least our comments, were pre 17th March. In fact, we returned on 7th March.

It sounds promising , because when we were on board, it seemed the cooking department, especially in the buffet needed someone strong to get those guys (and gals too? ) to pull up their socks.

I was going to mention this earlier.

Its human nature. I see it here on CC all the time. It's actually very common.

There are always views from both ends of the spectrum on food/experience/entertainment etc on Princess cruises.

Yes, but usually, it would be two different persons with opposite views. But this time, it was from the SAME person

who travelled on the same ship on two cruises and he had opposite opinions of the food. You could not even say that taste for food is "subjective", because it was the same person tasting the food on both occasions.

Got off the Ventura today after an excellent cruise to Spain, Portugal and France. I'll try and write a full review later in the week but as this thread has focused on the food, I'll just say that we were very impressed. We dined inn the Cinnamon restaurant each night and every meal was faultless, as was the service. And the salt and vinegar ice cream was delicious! If I had a gripe, it would be about the breakfast buffet bun fight where passengers were pushing and shoving and running to get their breakfast and find a table. Better organisation is needed here. Other than that, no complaints about the food - and I certainly didn't hear of any either.

That's great to hear. Did you have any lunch and dinner in the buffet? That was one of the biggest gripes about food on the Ventura. And in the Cinnamon restaurant,one evening, did you order their special dessert, their "Eight Layers Molten Chocolate Cake" - and did it come only in two layers? Looking forward to read your comments. Hopefully, P&O might have done something to improve their catering after our previous comments online. That's encouraging.

Thank you for your honest review! Our first cruise on Royal was great! Our last cruise on Royal was not! Kind of turned me off cruising for awhile after 27 cruises.

 

Just did a land based Vaca It was great! :)

 

 

Reader

That's interesting. One ship, getting two opposite experience! Shows perhaps the Princess ought to look at the issue of quality control for their ships.

We agree with you that after doing a number of cruises, doing a land vacation can be quite enjoyable. At least, for the latter, you get to enjoy the place you visit for more than a few hours, and you won't get to have to rush back to the ship in a hurry!!! For us, we now take a mixture of cruises and land based vacations. We also try different cruise lines and are not "stuck" to just one.

A documentary?? (n) More like a badly written soap opera. :(

OK, OK. I was trying to be diplomatic!!!!

thanks - hope so.

 

To be honest, I had heard that Princess was a step up from Royal Caribbean (as someone else mentioned in this thread), I think that is why my expectations were so high.

 

I don't think that one is higher than the other, just different.

 

HAL's food was better than either Princess or Royal Caribbean, but HAL lost in other areas (for us).

 

I am sure that there is good and not so good with each line, some people love Carnival, but it isn't a cruiseline I am interested in trying.

 

I do want to stress again, the crew were lovely.

Thank for your honest opinion of your experience on the Royal Princess.

We are interested that you did not find the food to be too good. We have not been on the Royal Princess, but we cruised with the Regal Princess last year.

Initially, we were disappointed because their food was pretty poor. But surprisingly, after a few days, the standard improved . And then, it got better and better. It was quite amazing. The buffet started with "uninspiring" offerings, but it got better later on, and towards the last few days, we felt as if they have pushed the boat out! Think huge prawns, smoked salmon, loads of meat, and great tastes too. We joked that perhaps the chefs knew that a questionaire would be coming along towards the end of the cruise and they did not want passengers give their cooking negative comments!

However, what was consistently poor was their pastry - its taste reminded us of card-board ! We even mentioned that to a chef on board, but to no effect. The trouble was , their pastry for both savoury and sweet dishes were similarly poor. So , you could imagine any dish with pastry, whether sweet or savoury, would have been affected by their "terrible" pastry. Their desserts were a bit of touch and go, and often, they were rather "samey" (same varieties come out time after time). Their American cookies were crunchy, not chewy.

What was surprising when we read your comments was, in the past, when we complained about the desserts and pastry on the Regal, someone indicated that the desserts on the Royal Princess were different and that it was better than on the Regal Princess. Apparently, the Executive Chef on the Royal, we were told , was very good and the pastries and desserts that came out were excellent. Wonder what happened?

Lately, we saw on British TV a documentary about the Royal Princess. And there was a scene when the Executive Chef told off his pastry chefs for the poor quality of the desserts/pastries(?). And he told them to pull up their socks. Looks like they have yet to pull up their socks, or if they had, they had let them down again!

We have one question for you. You indicated that on HAL, the food is better but it is lost in other ways. How was the food better. And what were the other ways which HAL was "lost"? You see, we will be sailing on the Koningsdam in a couple of months, and it will be our first time on HAL. It would be great to know beforehand so we would not be sprung with any unexpected surprise!

Thanks again for your review above. We would now think twice about going on the Royal Princess . Before, it was one of those ships we were looking forward to cruise with, after having been on the Regal.

I think you are trying to be diplomatic but my original thought was that because of all the free and cheap unlimited drinks packages,and free food you might attract the Magaluf,Benidorm,Ibiza crowd was who you were meaning.

I'm sure they are generally nice people but not your normal cruise crowd.

 

 

43 cruises and counting.

Hahaha.....my lips are sealed!

Just a hint....It did occur to me that the buffet on the ship reminded me a bit of a buffet in a 3-stars Spanish hotel!

As for the crowds, you take your pick !!! All I can say is they were nice people.

By the way, someone accused me of being snobbish (In my initial post, I even "begged" for people not to shoot me, but this person could not resist it, what a nice person, I must shake her/his hand !). H'mmm, I wonder if that comedy show "Benidorm" on telly were produced by" snobbish" people too ? After all, they made fun of the behaviour of "typical" visiting Brits of a "certain class" to Benidorm, didn't they????!!!

I do believe most Brits have a sense of humour, and not get too uptight nor getting upset easily, which is probably one of our best traits!

(But then, if you look at my location, I am supposed to live on the Moon, and there, we do not know the meaning of snobbery! Green cheese, anybody? Lol.)