Eastern Med Disaster

We had to queue for almost 2 hours to board the ship which, as 80 year-olds carrying hand luggage, suit bags, etc, was no joke!!! We arrived at Southampton just before 2 Eavesway coaches but were held back to allow their occupants to join the queue ahead uf us! Thus, we boarded just before the safety briefing and had to wait ages for our luggage to be delivered so that we could settle in. We wrote to Carol Marlow in July after a 3-hour-wait fiasco on Adonia for their 175th Anniversary Cruise and eventually had a very non-comittal reply from Customer Services which gave the impression that, if you travelled with P&O, you must be prepared for this treatment.

As to the cruise itself, we ‘lost’ one port because they needed to do essential maintenance on the ship; they gave ?œ50 compensation each, added to our onboard credit but this was effectively reduced by up to ?œ5 for Peninsular club members because of their discount system. Daytime entertainment was very poor for two weeks, after which extra lecturers were introduced. The port lectures were full of wrong information, which stopped us from booking trips to places for which we had originally booked the cruise.

There were other features which spoiled the cruise for us but the Company’s attempts to extract the most money as possible from passengers was a major factor; if we were silly enough to buy 330ml bottles of water, we were paying ?œ4.40 per litre ( Tesco 2 litre bottles – 25p) and a tour of the ship was ?œ75 per person!!!

We have another cruise booked with P&O in 2013 but are now considering cancelling it.