So we drove home from Southampton and after a 5 hour drive we made it back to the end of the world, Cromer on the Norfolk coast.

Here my review of the cruise and my verdict.  Let me first  emphasize again that what follows is my VERY PERSONAL  view of  the cruise.

Partly born from what I have learned and experienced  in the last 42 years at sea and by being involved in the progress of the cruise industry and partly of what my personal preferences  are. And then there is of course a certain amount of knowledge in understanding of how it all works behind the scenes. Plus I am learning a lot now we are hopping from cruise company, to cruise company.

Did Lesley & I enjoy this cruise ? Very much. Would we hesitate to come back? Not at all. Will we come back? May by in 2028 after we have finished the list with”to do” ships and “to do” cruise company’s not yet tried. But the captain announced that P&O will invest in the good ship “Aurora” for the next 10 years, so that is hopeful.

P&O is a cruise company who hovers somewhere between 4 and 5 star. Five star for the  shows, speciality restaurants and service in the bars; Four Star for the “too fast” service in the dining room and the quality of the food. (The food is not bad at all, it just lacks that little extra that comes with a less rushed service)

Let’s starts with all the positives:

1.If you like an older ship, with a very British atmosphere, this is a great ship. It has plenty of bars and nice lounges for whiling the day away and to have cocktails. Just avoid going to the dining room on the first night. Manic pace, including a long waiting line and once in we were out within the hour.

2.This is a very good world cruise ship. Again due to the ships lay-out and the more laid back and “gentlemen like” ambiance.

3.Very good tender service in Leknes. If P&O wants to pay for having soo many crew involved, that is up to them, but it did ran very smoothly, and I like the announcements given with the counts of how many guests are ashore, so the guests waiting understood that is was going smoothly. 1100+ guests between 08.15 and 11.00 hrs. for a 4 tender distance run is not bad at all.

4.The speciality restaurants are very good. With tasty food and unhurried service. Well worth the surcharge.

5.The Cast Shows were the best I have ever seen. Certainly on all the cruises we have done in the last 2 years. Princess Cruises came close but the current cast is very, very good.

6.A very personable captain with very good microphone and communication skills. He reminded me of myself with having the guests listen without curling their toes.

7.No announcements in the cabins (Saga & Fred Olsen please take note) unless really necessary.  Only for explaining the tender service and disembarkation procedure.

8.Various brands of Ale/Craft beer in the various lounges. Neck-Oil in the Crowsnest, Jolly Olly in the Glass house, Sam Johnson in Carmens, Ghost ship in the pub Champions. Very, very nice.

9.P&O still has formal nights, we had 3 this cruise and a bit of style is something we very much like. Officers & Crew were quite good in keeping the dressed and not-dressed groups apart, except on the last formal, when there was a glass of free wine to get from the bars. Still people seem to be on their best behavior when dressed up, so for the ms Aurora (she is different to the rest of the fleet anyway) keep it up.

10. Classical duo in the Play House. They were very good, but as the Playhouse was full for each performance, disappointed guests were forced to walk out again; it would have been nice if the recitals would have been screened on the Cabin TV’s.

Things that I would consider improvements to the product:

1.Directly for P&O office and NOT directly  for the ship:  Could you please issue a clear listing of the regular duties of the Butler in the Suites on the ships? Add it to the paperwork in the cabin?

1a. What is on the website is not correct as it states, among other things, a butler can help with packing and unpacking. Luggage arrives at the suites around 13.00 hrs. The butler only shows up at the cabins around 16.00 hrs. There are only 2 butlers on the Aurora and they cannot help with 14 cabins. So they are not doing it anymore but it is still on the website.

1b.. In the latest brochure for 2028 page 20: What is an optional butler? You either have a butler or you do not have one. If I buy a new car, I can decide for an optional sun roof, against extra costs. If that is what optional means, then I would have to pay extra to get the butler going. Or is it that the ship decides whether the butler is optional and we might have it or might not have one during the cruise?

1c. On board nobody could tell me what the exact duties of a Butler were. The standard (middle management) answer was, he can do all sorts, just ask and he will do it. But that is not fair, because one cabin might ask for something so far out and monopolize his time (and that was the case the cruise before us, and other cabins suffered). Then the work might carry over into their personal time and with 10 hrs,  a day available  according to MLC 2005, that day is already pretty full.

So I think that it would greatly beneficiary  for the service to the suite cabins, if the guests knew what the butler exactly could mean for them. Cunard can do it, MSC Yacht club can do it, so it cannot be that difficult.

2. On board discount due to Repeater status in the Peninsular Club. It is very nice to get 5%, 10% or 15% discount for your loyalty to P&O, very good and very nice.

BUT it is very NASTY that  that loyalty discount only kicks in after you have depleted your On Board Credit. That credit is a cruise arrangement for booking, so it is VERY NASTY that you penalize loyal guests for a extra arrangement  they got when booking a cruise.

On Board Credit is not always available and only offered to get the (early) bookings. So P&O is really saying, that On Board Credit does not really belong to you “in being your own money”. For us it is not about the money we save, as it is not that much;  It is the principle that a company’s Sales System,  that it gives something extra to “rope you in”, once they got you, they do not want to recognize it as part of the cruise contract.

3. Dining room service, too fast. This is going “to eat” not going  “for dinner”. It did not stop us from enjoying our time in the dining room, but it is a bit much, when one waiter takes away the empty soup cup and the other waiter slides the next course on the table at the same time. Stay away from the first night in the dining room, it is chaos with long liens in front of the door, before it opens. P&O is aware of this, and thus offers a FREE bottle of wine, if you go to a Speciality restaurant the first evening. We were more interested to see how it all run, so we observed the process.

4. Hot water out of a coffee kettle.  I drink green tea, so every night the dining room waiter pored hot water for my green tea and then it tasted like coffee (or close to it). On the 3rd night we realized that the  teapot he used, after going through the dishwash, was stored somewhere and then the next day taken from the hook/shelf and then randomly used for coffee or hot water.

Our waiter solved it on day 4, by managing ” to find” a  brand new kettle and guard it with his life against other waiters (who also wanted a new shiny kettle)  and supervisors (who did not understand where such a brand new shiny kettle came from and wanted it back) But for the remaining 8 nights, our whole section had hot water that tasted like hot water. So P&O / Aurora can you find a way to separate hot water kettles from being used for other purposes? It will take some leadership from middle management but it could be done. Also Most company’s use different model kettles for hot water and coffee to avoid this problem. A coffee pot looks like a coffee pot and a hot water kettle looks like a hot water kettle, so easy to recognize and easy to keep apart.

5. TV programming.  This is to a certain extent very shameful. If as  a P&O guest you come from the newer ships, you will not be impressed. The company put new T.V’s in the cabins but did not update the software.  There was no TV program in the cabin when we arrived but the butler found one but they seemed to have been very scarce. When Lesley checked it all, a number of the programs did not run in synch with the times listed. Nor were the channels numbered, named but that did work either.   We had every day to flip through all the channels to find the lectures (first sea day lectures, only appeared on day 3). Lectures  on the 2nd sea day appeared the next day. Lectures on the last sea day, never showed. Can you not do direct streaming and recording ?  There is no digital movie library that you can choose from and that is now standard on 5 star ships. Maybe all the money is spent on the shows but for the longer cruises, this is now standard to have certainly on 5 star ships. There are DVD’s in the library (not manned) but no DVD player in the cabins, so that does not work either. Hopefully somebody in the P&O office will bring Aurora into the modern day.

So as said we really enjoyed the cruise, The few niggles did not deter us but they could have been avoided.

Note: I know that a number of officers on board have followed by blog this cruise. Thank you for doing so, much appreciated. I also hope that you will read this last one. And please pass my observations on to the office. Those who make the decisions are often “layered” away from a direct connection to the “work floor” as every company has a middle group of managers who have no interest in listening to observations that do not fit in their personal” vision”.  So keep pushing.

To all my readers as usual, thank you very much for reading my blog, There are 2900 direct recipients and quite a few more who get  the blog “passed on”  (last year the Google pings reached close to 10,000 on some occasions).  I hope that I have not bored you with my observations and sometimes “ravings and rantings”.  I try to make it as interesting as possible.

Note : My website will go off line for a while, as more and more coding mistakes and software hiccups  are creeping in. Hence the site is going into dry dock and a qualified designer will give it a face lift.

I will be back on 14 October with our next cruise  on the Regent Seven Seas  Voyager as we have not tried that company yet.

Thank you and “smooth seas and following winds” wherever your own travels might take you.

Captain Albert.