My Azura cruise review

After my last cruise on P&O (the Oriana), I was a bit dubious as to how I would find the Azura.  There was 4 of us (myself, my partner, my mother and father) sailing out from Southampton on the 15th October for the 10 night Iberian Coast Cruise – calling in at Lisbon, Gibratar, Malaga, Cadiz and La Coruna (some of you may recall I did this itinerary last year on the Oceana)

We had booked on the early saver fare which meant that our cabin was allocated about a month before travel, we could specify our preference for dining but likely to get second preference and that if we required any shuttle bus transfers then we would need to pay for these. We had booked and been allocated inside cabins although the bookings had been linked together – P&O were a bit sneaky and allocated us cabins on the same deck (which was great) but at complete opposite ends of the ship – and I can assure you those cabin corridors are very long but were a great way of burning of the calories and making sure we reached the 10,000 steps a day you are supposed to try to do.

We had been given our first choice of dining which is 1st sitting and i had requested a table for 4 but we had been allocated a table of 8. This caused a bit of an issue for my mother where she is diabetic so having to wait for others to arrive would cause a problem if they were late joining the table, but also because she is partially deaf so sitting on a large table means she would not be able to keep up with the conversation and be to much noise for her hearing aid. So at 2.20pm me and my father joined the already long queue to try to change the table. After queuing for 35 minutes it was then our turn to speak to the maitre’d. First of all he said there was nothing he could do, then he tried to blame it on the travel agent having booked it wrong – his face was a picture when I told him I was the travel agent and he suddenly started to back pedal. After some further discussion he said to go back at 6.30pm and if he didn’t have  a smaller table he would change us to freedom dining (which is actually my preference) Even after lifeboat drill the queue for the restaurant was still massive and I would guess that at least a third of the ship had joined that queue throughout the day to try to make changes. We went back at 6.30pm as requested  and the maitre’d said he had no table for 4 and then just moved us to Freedom dining.  So even I don’t get given my dining choices. However we then went down a floor to the Meridian Restaurant and shown a lovely table for 4 with a fabulous waiter called Desmond and we managed to get the same table throughout the cruise.

Check-in at Southampton was very easy and we had arrived early as we knew it was going to be a busy day with the Oasis of the Seas in port. I was even the first person to actually board the ship – which for me being a cruise geek was very exciting. As we walked through the Atrium we were greeted by members of staff and then advised to make our way up to deck 15 for lunch which was being held in the buffet restaurant – Verona and Venezia, I thought the buffet was much better than the one on Oriana and there was a choice of salads and cold meats, various hot dishes including the daily curry and desserts. Have to admit after a few days the food was getting very samey, but other lunch time venues to choose form on board the Azura is the Pizzeria and also the Poolside grill serving burgers and hot dogs.

We were able to go into our cabins at 2pm and the cabin was of a good size with a walk in wardrobe area which I liked. The only downside to our inside cabin was there was no other seating area apart from the chair at the desk. On the Oriana we had a nice little corner sofa and although I don’t spend much time in my cabin it would have been nice to have had this on Azura.

As we were walking around the ship I realised that this was a very similar layout to the Emerald Princess I had looked over earlier this year, with the one wide corridor through deck 7 which took you through the bars and the photo gallery. The ship was clean and despite it having the norovirus on board only a couple of weeks previous I was very surprised that the Hand gel was very relaxed and almost non existent. The Ship itself has a pub on board called Brodies and this is where majority of the quizzes, karaoke and Bingo is held. One side of the room was the casino and for the size of ship I was quite surprised how small this was – the casino did have the usual slot machines and also the tables for roulette etc. On board Azura they have the Glass House which was a great place to try new wines hand picked by Olly Smith and also the option to have a meal at a small charge. We only went one evening for a drink and although was a great venue we felt a bit out of place as we were among diners who were trying to have a nice meal, and we were sitting there having a chat and probably came across as being noisy. There was a two tier theatre for the Headliners shows, and the Manhatten bar became a show bar in the evening and where they showed the tribute acts and any other guest performers such as the Comedians or Shaun Williamson. For those who wanted to learn to dance or enjoyed dancing in the evening we did have some dance hosts on board and in the evenings the Malabar became the venue for the dancing.

The crossing over through the Bay of Biscay had some movement and overall I didn’t feel it was that rough, however there were lots of people suffering from sea sickness and the shop did a roaring trade in selling the seasickness bands when they opened. We had beautiful sunny days in Malaga, Gibraltar and Cadiz with temperatures reaching up to 30 degrees.

The highlights of my cruise were the 60/70’s night where we all dressed up – me and my mum as Hippies and my partner and dad as the Construction workers. They were pulled up on to the stage and made to dance to the YMCA which won them each a Pina Colada, we then danced the night away under the stars sailing out of Gibraltar to Clem from the Foundations. Other highlights and a very high recommendation is Sindhu’s – we booked there for the first formal night and the food was delicious so we re-booked there to go there the last evening of the cruise which was my partners birthday. I will write a separate blog about Sindhu’s next week.

With regards to the port of calls which I will cover in more depth in a later post, the shuttle buses ran in Lisbon and Malaga and were £3 per person per journey. But in all honesty it only took up to 15 minutes to walk into each port so we decided to save our money and walked.

My main disappointment of the cruise laid with the Entertainment on board, firstly provided by the Entertainment team, and just felt the daytime activities on sea days were the same and even at the same times, there seemed to be lots of unhosted events whereas on other ships this would have been hosted and the golden stickers could be won, the sailaways were disappointing and especially the last one in La Coruna – we were in port with Independence of the Seas, and the sail-away on Azura would not have had the Independence running scared, it was very tame and the music playing was quite quiet.  In the evening we had Shaun Williamson aka Barrie from Eastenders and he was very good, as was Clem from The Foundations( although his microphone could have been turned up when he was out on deck  for the 60/70’s as he was drowned out by the Orchestra), we had a tribute band to the Police called the Police Force and they were quite good, we also had a tribute to Elton John and he was dreadful. The other main disappointment was the Sea Screen was broken for the whole cruise so we were unable to watch any movies out on the deck – however miraculously as soon as we arrived in Southampton the screen was working ready for the next sailing which happened to be the half term cruise.

Overall we found the staff very friendly and all very helpful, I did like the ship and would sail back on the ship again. My only other criticism is the amount of seating or lack of during the sea days, and also how cramped the sun deck became with all the sun loungers bunched up together.