Having cruised on 5 lines but never before on P&O, my wife and I did a Noumea cruise to get away from winter and later a Melbourne Cup cruise. We chose them because of timing and price. We had seen the wide variety of opinions about P&O on Cruise Critic bur decided to give them the benefit of the doubt. We found P&O to be a strange mix of good and bad.

On the good side, the cabins were spacious and well appointed and the crew was friendly and helpful. The Pacific Entertainers were first rate with stunning female vocalists and excellent theatrical productions. There was certainly no steak on the menu but the chefs did some very clever things with economy ingredients. The specialty restaurants were enjoyable, especially the Thai. We enjoyed Chefs Table on the Pacific cruise and looked forward to repeating it on the Melbourne Cup cruise. However, it was not offered despite being advertised as available on that cruise – no apologies and no reasons given.

On the bad side, there was nothing disastrous, just a consistent lack of attention to detail. At one of the specialty restaurants, the chosen white wine was not readily available so they sent to the storeroom and served us a hot bottle. When we complained, they offered to put ice in our glasses - not restaurant standard ! . Cheese plates had small plain cheeses about the size of a postage stamp - I felt quite insulted to be served this. My wife ordered a boiled egg at breakfast - it came without a spoon to eat it. When asked for a spoon, the waiter brought a table spoon. Booking dining times was difficult and could not be done in advance, resulting in a knot of people each day trying to get reservations for the next night. The booking table was set up in the main access corridor, resulting in a traffic jam of people entering and leaving the dining room. .The public rooms were crowded. The clocks which showed local time and GMT were both brought forward an hour when we crossed into the next time zone. Lining up in the Pantry and having apple crumble slopped into my plate reminded me of Army in National Service days. Read more