Pacific Dawn Review
Rating by category
Additional details
We have cruised P&O many times from Brisbane as we do not have a lot of options for local ships - until 2020 at least.
We were blown away by the service of almost all groups on this ship. The folks running the Edge program are AMAZING, and everyone we encountered in the dining rooms / stateroom attendants/ restaurants were fantastic.
Sadly there were too many issues with this cruise to recommend anyone travel on the Pacific Dawn. The water supply to our cabin was polluted (*see cabin info below). The food was ordinary at best - with the exception of Salt Grill which was amazing. My wife has coeliac disease, and sadly the labelling on items in the buffet was either incomplete or factually incorrect. An example was a soup at the asian area that said Gluten Free - but when I quizzed the staff I was told no - there is soy sauce in this. The waterfront restaurant made attempts to modify some dishes (dinnertime only) and these were of an ok standard. We had a lot of photos taken as part of a photo package, sadly when we checked the USB drive once at home only a fraction of the photos we selected were actually on this USB disk. This was heartbreaking as we had some wonderful dress-up shots taken of our children. I can only put this down to lazyness of the staff in the photo area.
Cabin Review
The cabin was as expected for an old ship. It was well maintained and clean, but the bunk layout is very impractical and cramped for a family of 4. Storage was excellent and the bathroom was adequate. Thankfully there were no toilet blockages. However, something gross happened a few times where the water coming out of the tap and shower was a filthy black colour. We were told a pipe was replaced - why would a new pipe inject filth into a system people drink from? My children were totally revolted by this filthy water forcing us to use bottled water for teeth brushing.
Port Reviews
Mare
Lovely bus trip to the beach :)
Port Vila
Transfers were fast and easy, and the tour was great. It was not cheap, but my children loved it.