This was our second cruise for my wife and I, our first was Western Med on Azura in 2012. We're in our early 50's.

We flew from Gatwick, on BA scheduled service. This was decided by P&O (we'd booked a Getaway deal in August 2012 so had no say, but we did save a lot of money!) Flight was fine on our Boeing 777, landing on time at Barbados 5.30pm. Unimpressed by BA's food though, pretty poor for an 8 hour scheduled flight - a bland pasta meal about an hour into the flight, and one (yes, one) sandwich prior to landing, and that was it. On the plus side was the free bar and good entertainment system - note, take your own headphones, BA's don't work. We had to queue for an hour to clear Barbados customs and then retrieve our suitcases. We subsequently discovered that charter flight passengers didn't have to do this, they went straight from the 'plane to the ship.

So, on the bus to Ventura, and a speedy boarding once we'd been allocated our cruise cards. We were in a balcony cabin on B deck, which P&O allocated, and we were happy with the location. Didn't see much of our steward, but cabin was always clean and well stocked (we didn't get any towel art though!). A minor point, the biscuits that P&O put in the cabin were always broken and not as good as we had last year. Read more