This was our second cruise on Britannia, chosen because we were disappointed with cruise on Ventura in 2017. We had a terrible journey via Intercruise from Durham to Southampton. Despite efforts of Hays Travel and ourselves to make P & O and Intercruise understand that because of my disability I am placed under extreme pain having to climb any more than 2 steps and, in fact descending stairs is even worse. When our coach arrived we realised the only downstairs seats was a cramped row of 3 seats which were behind driver and 2 of those seats were already occupied. There was no way I wanted to travel 7/8 hours in that cramped seat without my husband(also my full time carer). However, we decided that I would have to try to climb the stairs of coach, with help from my husband and fellow passengers. I was in a lot of pain at end of journey, but hopeful that the rest of holiday would be ok. Our cabin was very good (same as we'd had on previous cruise on Britannia).

Weather was not too good for first few days of cruise but food in Peninsular restaurant was still very good . As weather improved we realised that immediately after breakfast everyone made a mad dash for pool area, as I'm disabled it takes me such a long time to walk, get myself ready etc. One morning my husband went upstairs placed our towels on sunbed and was immediately told by an Officer to remove them as it was against P & O policy. My husband pointed out a number of other sunbeds were reserved with towels, books etc., and pointed this out to the Officer, but did not receive any sensible answer. During the second week I was very pleased to find out that Jimmy James was on at the Theatre. My husband and I turned up in good time at the disabled section of the Theatre and took our seats. A young lady employee came over and said that my husband could not sit there, as she had promised the seat to someone else. We reminded her of the P & O policy and during the ensuing discussion she used the words reserved and promised again. By this time I was aching from having to now stand and very, very embarrassed by the situation and as the discussion was going nowhere I walked away and with the help of my husband and sympathetic fellow passengers we found seats. However I had to negotiate some ill lit stairs. I was so upset that we left after a short period of time and I went down to Reception to report the incident. We subsequently received two calls regarding the incident, neither of which provided any answers about what had happened. Britannia is a lovely ship with some great facilities but policies regarding disable need looking at. We'll probably not cruise with P & O again