My wife and I were hoping for a special Christmas so splashed out on a P&O Christmas and New Year cruise. In reality we the cruise proved to be dull, underwhelming and not so very good value for money. To be fair to P&O the public areas of the ship were dressed for the festive season and the crew all donned santa hats. The food was up to P&O standards and overall the night time entertainment was good. But ! that's where it ended during the day and especially sea days the atmosphere was dismal in part because the average age of our fellow passengers was around 80 years old, most of whom occupied all of the seats in the atrium to either sleep or read books. Other seemed to form convoys of disability scooters, clogging up the lifts and causing mayhem in the dinning areas. There also appeared to be a distinct lack of Christmas cheer from the entertainments team, in fact on Christmas Day afternoon all but a handful of crew disappeared to there quarters, where from the noise level there Christmas party was the best gig on the ship, with fare paying passengers left to there own devices.

Having had a not so good Christmas we looked forward to a fantastic New Years eave party in Maderia. P&O advertised a deck party starting at 10.00pm until late with the fireworks display at midnight. In fact the fireworks were spectacular unfortunately P&O provided only 20 tables each with 4 chairs to serve circa 2000 passengers ? Come on P&O you let your self down and sold your passenger short. Other than that we enjoyed the Canary Islands and a little winter sun on our backs. Overall the cruise was overpriced and a let down.