Background We embarked on a 22 day roundtrip of the Caribbean from Southampton. In our party was myself, wife and ten year old son, in addition to my step-son and his partner, both 29. We have cruised a number of times with our son, since he was born.

Travel To Port of Embarkation For the first time we took the Eavesway coach from Manchester which was a revelation. Being the main driver normally it was really nice to be able to relax into my holiday immediately. No problems with luggage but leaving from a service station on the M6 did require some booking of a minibus.

Ship Info Oriana was the first ship we ever sailed on. She is a lovely small vessel (~1800 passengers) with a really small friendly atmosphere but P&O's trademark large amount of public rooms. We have travelled RCI in the past and found the 3,000+ ships to be terribly large and impersonal. Our preference in hindsight is Oceana, which does have more public spaces without a significant increase in passengers. Oriana is classically good looking thought with a real stepped stern. Read more