Britannia Review

5.0 / 5.0
1,066 reviews

Rule Britannia!

Review for the Western Mediterranean Cruise on Britannia
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Charlotte_cotterill
2-5 Cruises • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Jul 2016

We have just returned home from a 2 week Western Mediterranean cruise on the P & O Britannia, their ‘flagship’ boat. Upon booking the cruise, we were eager to see a new, modern boat, designed specifically for the British market. Having been on 2 previous cruises, one being on the P & O Azura and the other on the Celebrity Silhouette, of which the latter was very impressive, we expected this boat to be full of innovative technology and stylish décor seeing as it was only launched less than 18 months ago.

However, upon embarkation onto Britannia in Southampton, our mind-set quickly changed, as it felt like we were being loaded onto the boat via the back door, with no up-lifting welcome from the staff or complimentary drinks, which was not the best start to our holiday on board what is regarded as the front runner in the P & O fleet. Our first glimpse of Britannia was the Atrium or in other words the central area of the ship which was like a shopping mall with a Costa Coffee and a range of other shops which, despite constant advertising of sales and additional reductions, the items were not in fact much cheaper than high street stores.

This moves us nicely onto the attitude, friendliness and professionalism of the staff which particularly amongst the Officer ranks and certain members of the Entertainment team was virtually non-existent, with many choosing to ignore and simply not acknowledge passengers, creating an air of superiority amongst some members of the crew. Also, some seemed to forget that their duty was to ensure the safety of the passengers, for example when embarking on a tender operation to reach St. Peter Port, Guernsey, many officers had their sunglasses on and were chatting amongst themselves rather than ensuring people got safely on and off the tender boats and further to this, whilst on a tender boat we witnessed one member of the Britannia Show Cast thinking it was amusing to take control of the tender boat from the designated driver whilst it was in motion on the sea – surely this is deeply unacceptable as passenger safety in this moment should be of the highest priority? The same cannot be said for the waiters and bar tenders, as they never failed to welcome you and look after you whilst on-board the ship.

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