I decided to go on a 3 day cruise departing Sydney to celebrate my 20th Birthday. It was a P&O sampler cruise which has no stops. Having been on 2 carnival cruises before this was simply just a weekend escape. Being my first time on P&O I didn't expect too much, but it was even lower than my expectations. Besides boarding time being 3 hours delayed, when first entering I thought how beautiful and classy the furnishings were, but my satisfaction started to diminish. When we got into our room we decided it was average, however the TV barley worked. Overall we found that the staff were not near as friendly and welcoming as the staff on carnival which really made us not enjoy ourselves as much. We found that there weren't alot of activities on offer throughout the day and many were at an extra cost. We couldn't access the wifi from our room as it was a weak signal. When on a Carnival cruise all guests have the opportunity to have dinner in the restaurant whereby you are given a dining time. At P&O we were not given a dining time and were told to book or show up at 7.45pm for walk-ins. We arrived at 7.45 to be told to come back at 9pm to see if there were any cancellations and if not we couldn't have dinner in the restaurant. This is disgusting that they didn't have the decency to 1. Tell the guests and 2. Have enough room or food to feed all their guests. This lead to us having to eat upstairs in the buffet! Now this wouldn't have been a big issue, if the food hadn't of been sitting there for a while. I had beer battered fish which alter gave me food poisoning. When in pain and calling the nurse, it took 30mins to receive medication whereby they covered it up as 'gastro'. This led to them not letting me leave my room for 24hrs as a risk to other guests! It was my last day on the ship and I was forced to stay in my room due to their lack of food preparation. Not impressed! Let alone the fee it cost to see the nurse.

If you didn't eat the specified lunch and dinner times there was no other 'fee free' food available. This made us spend up to an extra $100!! on other food! They also didn't have enough staff to run all the tables in the casino. This lead to high demand and long waiting times to get onto a table! They're more than happy to take your money in every other part of the ship!

Overall it was a highly unsatisfying experience and I will not be returning to P&). Will stick with carnival.