Bad experience

This was our 6th cruise with P+O and the second on Azura. It was a short break visiting Bruges and Guernsey. The first couple of minutes in our balcony cabin was not good as we found a large smearing of blood on the wall and one of the drawers was full of the previous occupants paperwork (including names). We also had to ask for items normally found in the bathroom on arrival. Our first stop in Zeebrugge was ok until we had to go back on board ship and the queue leading to the single gangplank was massive taking over 30 minutes to get on board. The same happened in Guernsey where we waited even longer to board using the ships tenders. The worst part of the trip was that Azura had advertised that Jonathan and Charlotte were performing. This was a good show for the passengers who were willing to queue halfway round the ship. There would have been a fairer chance of seeing this couple if there had been some form of ticket allocation so people could only go to one of the shows and not all three shows. The restaurant also had its faults. The captain welcomed us all to his ship with a speech about using the bacterial gel. Ours did not have the usual waiters waiting to give you this item and we had to ask. This happened every meal. There was also no aperitifs offered at the end of meals. Perhaps this is the norm for mini cruises. We also did not have a head waiter which was the norm on our past cruises. Once again is this because it was a mini cruise. The best parts of the cruise were 1) the food as always was excellent. 2) Entertainment was good. 3) Disembarkation was the fastest ever. All in all not the best of cruises. I think the management team need to get a grip as they have let P+O down on this particular cruise. Hopefully Aurora in June will be to P+O’s normal good standard and Azura was just a one off