The ship does not live up to the previous cruises with P&O.
Put simply many many cost savings by the company gave the feel of a floating “budget” holiday rather than the luxury experience we had expected.
The menus in all the inclusive restaurants have been severely cut back and there was a lack of staff leading to poor service.
A common issue was that wine ordered with dinner would often not arrive until mid meal.
The dining experience isn’t relaxing in Zenith or Meridian.
The onus being to get dinners in & out ASAP to free up the tables.
I.e no gaps between serving courses, no refills of coffee, rush to clear plates.
The buffet Horizon was a complete nightmare, an absolute free for all, no trays provided meaning several trips to collect food and drinks.
Now where near enough staff, lots of tables left uncleared.
In the end we resorted to ONlY using the “pay” restaurants where the food quantity & service standards were excellent.
We were annoyed that in order to get good food, relaxing service and nice service we were forced to pay! Our room steward was excellent, but please note the evening turn-down service has also been abolished clearly to save costs.
The “My Holiday” app used to book restaurants & entertainment was a complete nightmare!! Even if you booked at 6.30pm as soon as the “virtual” queue opened we often had to wait at least an hour to be notified our table was ready.
We are fortunately IT savy but lots of elderly passengers were very flustered and confused by this method.
Worse, it meant having to have your phone with you at a time when many of us want to leave the phone behind to relax away from the office.
Port days were also very busy with queues & delays to leave the ships and long queues in some ports to get the shuttle services into town.
Same queues awaited in return to pass the bag X-ray to get on board again.
Finally, despite the ship requesting guests not to “reserve” sun beds this was completely ignored by a large number of guests, thus on sea days there were no beds available due to most “reserved” with towels.
P&O said they would remove unattended towels after 30 minutes, but they failed to implement this policy.
In summary, if you are looking for 3-star floating accommodation with disappointing food, poor service and long queues, then this is your ship!! We personally will not be returning, to be honest, it spoiled our holiday!
