12th P&O cruise in 18 months (my last!!). Oceana is being allowed to "rot" in the Med with rust everywhere. The rusting balconies are well documented. The hull is a disgrace with rust along just about every weld line. Try sitting in the outside grill and just look up slightly and around - dirt and rust everywhere. Shamefully, rust is all around the lifeboat winches and on other related equipment. Carnival Miami's apparent push via Carnival UK to move P&O further and further downmarket is certainly succeeding! I thought they had settled for 3 star for P&O with Cunard as 5 and Princess as 4 star. Nope! Going after 2 star quite successfully!

As a single pensioner I get ripped off by cruise lines so have to look for special offers. As P&O seem to be losing more and more regulars the email offers just keep coming. I picked up a very good late deal on Oceana on a 14 night fly/cruise sailing from and returning to Venice. Virtually everyone I spoke to on Oceana had picked up similar offers. Itinerary was perfect: Venice, Kotor, Corfu, Monaco, Civitavecchia for Rome, Genoa, Livorno for Florence, Naples, Dubrovnik, and overnight in Venice. Wow!

At one port we were alongside a NCL ship plus "something" of the Seas. Both had dark blue funnels identical to P&O's new blue. NCL ship was like Dolly P; sparkling but top heavy. P&O ship was off-white, scraped, not touched up, AND so rusty. I was ashamed that it is nominally a British ship and relieved when an American couple thought it was an older NCL ship. Read more