Standards slip

We have done a number of P&O cruises before but the standard of this cruise has been the worst . The ship itself is ok the entertainment was ok but the quality of the food was a big let down and loads of people said the same, we eat mainly in the buffet restaurant as we like to see the shows but did try Meridian restaurant but was not impressed the food in buffet was very repetitive with roast beef and yorkshire puddings being served 9 times during the cruise . We booked excursions in some ports to use up the on board credit we had 3 of these were a disaster. 1 you couldn’t go in the sea at st Vincent as the sea was brown sludge, 2 St Lucia we booked a trip which included 2 sunbeds when we arrived at the beach no sunbeds were available and were told we would have to wait up to an hour for one at that a coach load of us decided to return to the ship a day totally ruined so we saw nothing of the island ,the next trip on Antigua the same happened this time we decided to stay as we didn’t want another day lost! These trips aren’t cheap and we expected better from P&O . The shops on board are very poor and very expensive there seems to be a shortage of staff with the result being to go to the bar and get served yourself, although the staff work very hard and we’re always polite. The sunbed situation on sea day was a joke with people putting towels on sun beds as early as 6 am and then leaving them for hours even though the policy is towel should be removed this was never adhered to causing arguments and violence and people being thrown off the ship in total 4 families were expelled from the ship!  In all p&o have let the standards slip in a big way and at the moment I would not recommend anyone to book with them until they up their game. This cruise was booked for my wife’s special birthday but has left bad memories instead of good and will have to consider future bookings .