We tried cruising for the first time 2 years ago, aboard Britannia, and it was absolutely brilliant. Modern ship, lots of entertainment, great technology in the cabins and despite the volume of people queuing was not an issue. We fancied going to Russia so thought we'd again use P & O this time aboard the adult only ship and the only one with an indoor pool, what a terrible mistake that was.

Embarkation aboard the ship was great, very easy and smooth. Cabins were ready at 2pm which we were very impressed with. Straight to the cabin and unfortunately we were really disappointed. The cabins was very clean and the balcony was bigger than on Britannia, sadly that is where the positives end. The bathroom suite is canary yellow, not a big problem but outdated to say the least and the bathroom had a bath as opposed to a stand alone shower. If you are taller than 5' then the bath is of no use what so ever as you must choose between bathing your legs or torso as opposed to both. The cabin itself had only 1 electricity socket ( amazing that that is possible in this day and age), the tv was terrible (yes you don't go on holiday to watch tv) and the information channel regularly down. You also couldn't watch things when you wanted, ie presentations aboard the ship or films etc. The cabin was decorated in a 1980's style, complete with faded marks where pictures had once been hung on the walls. I was astounded to hear that the ship was only commissioned in 2005 !.

Onto the dining and this was the worst of all. We as a family are definitely not food connoisseurs and are more than happy to eat simple food rather than something fancy. We on several occasions ate dinner in the horizon buffet and to compare it to school dinners would be insulting to schools nationwide. The food was bland, tasteless and at best lukewarm. A sampled a sticky toffee pudding one night and there was no sugar in it, just bland over cooked sponge. The meat was suspiciously past its best and one occasion the staff got a thermometer out and swiftly all the meet was removed from the counters. It was genuinely terrible, lunchtime food was not much better and breakfast was a daily competition to try and find a table amongst the hoards of people sat occupying tables and not partaking of the delicious food on offer. The alternative was the main restaurant, which I have to say was excellent, but because it was so good (and the buffet so poor) it was always busy. We were freedom diners so this inevitably meant each night we had to join a queue to get a buzzer and wait for a table. Whatever time you went this happened (so there was no way of avoiding it), on average we waited around 20 mins for a buzzer and then up to 40 mins for a table. Read more