We are experienced cruise travellers in our mid 60's having previously cruised with a range of companies from Silverseas, Oceania, Celebrity Royal Caribean and Ocean Village. We chose this cruise on the Adonia, because we had been on one of the sister ships, Oceania's Nautica. We also wanted to try P & O as we have found that many of the US dollar based ships are getting ridiculously expensive for all their "extras". Overall we found a much older age group on this cruise (average 71). We had 6 formal nights on this cruise which we now find a bit of a bore! We much prefer Oceania's Country Club Casual dress code -particularly if you are restricted by weight allowances on fly cruises. Similar to a previous review we were surprised to find that the Conservatory Buffet restaurant was only open on the nights of theme buffets (4 in all which were 2 Indian Buffets (very good), an Asian and a Mediterranean). The 2 premium restaurants, Ocean Grill and Sorrento were very good and we ate there 6 times in all and thought they were good value for the quality and service we received.
We thought the entertainment was good for a small ship. In particular the Headliners resident group were extremely talented and versatile. In fact we would put this group as some of the best we have ever seen on a ship. Pity that this group were finishing their contract at the end of this cruise and were all going their separate ways-a great loss to P&O!!
However, some of the other visiting entertainers were poor. One comedian went back to Crackerjack days and was an embarrassment!However it was nice to see the brief visit and demonstration from the professional ballroom dancers Darren Bennett and Lilia Kopilova. The 2 West End performers Petrina Johnson and Nik Page and the veteran pianist Bobby Crush were very good but the enrichment lectures were also somewhat disappointing with the exception of Edwina Currie who took time out from her preparations for Strictly Come Dancing and the ex BBC journalist Peter Hobday who sadly only did one talk as opposed to a Tax expert who spread his knowledge out over about 6 sessions- most of which were irrelevant to this audience! P&O missed a trick in not placing on board an expert who could have helped to enhance our visit to Istanbul and the Black Sea ports of Yalta, Odessa etc.