I heard loads of good things about this operator, I wondered what all the fuss was about, no new fancy ships in the fleet, only just heard about the Britannia, so I thought, give it a go and booked onto the Oriana, as I always thought of P & O as being our ferry company. Well I set off for Southampton QE2 dock , all went well, check in was efficient. Then we saw the ship, my wife commented on how dated and tired it looked, I gave her hope and reminded her that Oriana had a refurb 2 years ago, wait until we get inside. We entered from deck 5 and a quick glance around assured us the inside was better than the outside. I was struck by the lack of wow factor, it was very ordinary. (we paid a heap of money to get 'ordinary'). Now it started to go wrong.

We found our cabin C100, it was a cupboard, it was approx 2.5m wide...yes TWO and HALF METRES wide and approx 3.5m long, My wife put on a brave face and refrained from crying, I went to reception and requested a move.'We are full but I will put you on a waiting list'...what a patronising statement. So we had to stay in there. We as others do go straight to the buffet to get a flavour of whats to come and walk around the open decks, it was awful, all the hand rails were bare wood as the varnish had been worn away there were oil marks from oil that was leaking from the life boats, which were looking well tired and lacking TLC. The whole ship was shabby.I digress, the food we were looking forward to, was, well, my wife said it was ok! I thought otherwise. We were 'Free Dining' which is good for us, as we like to meet new people. The menu was very, ordinary, very English, you know how, you get 2 for a £10 deals in a pub? well that's exactly what they serve on the Oriana. It must be said, the best breakfast at sea I've ever had, spoiled only by the garbage bread they serve. I like to try everything so we had actually booked into the specialty restaurant, SORRENTO's, save your money it too is rubbish, why? I hear you ask, well we ordered steak fillet, or Fillet Steak we say in England. We actually got the scraggy ends of the fillet steak and spent most of our time cutting tendons out of the meat and paid an extra £6.50 each on top of the £7.50 each to book, what a swizz.

But what I found totally abhorrent with P & O was the total lack of women working in the restaurants the ship was very nearly totally male, no/few ethnic origin women interfacing the passengers, this alone speaks volumes about how P & O treat people, they totally lack respect. Read more