Plumbing issues on the Oriana

So after the excitement of our engagement, I will now let you know how many short break on the Oriana, at the beginning of December went. You may recall I wrote about the new embarkation procedures P&O have put into place and the dilemma we were faced as we were on different decks which meant different check-in times. We decided to chance it and arrived at the port at 12:45 to find check-in empty and we were shown straight to a desk and then told to go straight to the ship – think we got lucky that it was so quite that no-one checked our paperwork and we could board immediately.

I wasn’t a fan of the Oriana after sailing on her last year and am sad to say this cruise did not change my mind, but infact made my mind up I would not be sailing on this ship again unless it was doing an itinerary no other ship was doing. Obviously I don’t want to write this to sound like I am a moaning minnie however I have now cruised with P&O 9 times (and this was my 25th cruise so do know what to expect).

The oriana is well know for its plumbing problems on board, and when one of the basic things you expect is a flushing toilet in your cabin -its not good when our one was broken for 4 hours one day, and with water rising – we reported it 4 times to our cabin steward and twice to reception and got told the plumber was busy. Flushing toilets in the public washrooms is again something you would expect but again more often than not they were “closed for maintenance”, as they also didn’t flush.

Not long after leaving Southampton the Captain announced that the ship would not be docking in Amsterdam at 3pm the following day as planned, and it would be later on as we would be riding out Storm Desmond.  Now other ships I have been on have been quick to change the following days activities and put extra things on. Not on Oriana – it appeared that the entertainment team were non existent on this cruise or had been given a few days off, they did put an extra film on in the afternoon and that was it. I hate to say it but I have been more entertained on a Fred Olsen cruise then I was on this one.

Service in the bars was slow and one night we watched the steward take our card, swipe it in the machine, to open up the order (but didn’t enter it) then continued walking round collecting the orders, 25 minutes later she went back to the till and started to enter them in, by this time others after us had been served by someone else and had their drinks so we went to cancel our order and try another bar, to be told the bar manager had to void the order and he wasn’t about.  They were advertising drinks on the bar and coffee menus but didn’t have them in stock (and this was before we even left Southampton !)

So enough of the moaning and think of the good things about the ship – the restaurant staff looked after my diabetic mother and my partners allergies well. Its a nice size ship to get around – although the middle lifts for some reason do not go to deck 12. We did like the festive drinks they had brought in (or rather the ones they had in stock) and the festive martinis were good to try. The Crows nest is a great place to sit during the day and watch where you are sailing too and this is whats missing on the new Royal Caribbean ships.

My next cruise is again with P&O but on Ventura in March, so looking forward to a much better cruise than this one was.