Still our favourite holiday

This was our 4th Caribbean cruise with P&O – on 4 different ships and the only reason for the lack of 5 stars for everything was due to the flights not the cruise.
The pre-cruise service from Bolsover (the 1st time we have used them), could not be faulted.
The flight with Thomson was not so good. While we had a reasonable amount of leg room on a standard seat, we had booked a seat with extra leg room on the way back for the overnight flight – not cheap! We used hand wipes to clean the trays for our food as they were filthy and found that mine was broken and unuseable. This was really inconvenient, not just when eating – but in trying to find somewhere to put a drink. Overall, the cleanliness of the plane left something to be desired and there was a definite attitude problem with the stewardesses.
The cruise was brilliant, weather great and we found the ship overall to be excellent. Our waiters on club dining in the Peninsular could not do enough to ensure that the 8 people on our table were happy with our food and service. Waiters in the other dining areas were also brilliant – though we never used those venues which had a cover charge. This contrasted with the Ventura 2 yrs ago when we found table clearance was a real problem in the buffet areas.
Our cabin steward provided a very good service although we did not see him as much as stewards on previous cruises.
We dont like the new automatic tipping system and will opt out next time. Only 1 couple on our dining table had opted out this time and we felt distinctly “mean” not giving tips to show our appreciation so along with the other 2 couples we gave additional tips to the waiters and subsequently to the cabin steward.
Finally I have to comment on those passengers who persist in unacceptable behaviour in the self service dining room. On a number of ocassions we observed passengers pushing their used water bottle up onto the dispensers to obtain “free” water and fruit juice. No doubt these will be the same passengers who will blame P&O for the spread of infections including the norovirus. We raised this with an officer who said that despite the notices on the machines referring to the health risk involved and asking the culprits to take clean glasses of juice to fill their bottles – they were ignored and actually faced verbal abuse at times.
Now looking forward to our trip on Aurora in Feb 2014