5 Night New Year Cruise on Arcadia was without doubt our worst cruise ever.
Started with a 2 hour boarding delay due to Norovirus on previous cruise to allow deep cleaning (not sure how they could manage that with just an extra 2 hours? ) Surprise there was an outbreak on our cruise that the Captain (who didn’t apologise for the initial delay) then said was brought on during our embarkation!! First night they lost our luggage which didn’t turn up until 10.30pm despite having 2 tags with our cabin number on.
Couldn’t get changed for dinner and kept having to go back to reception and the cabin….first night spoilt.
Long, long queues to access freedom dining, creating waits of between 1 and 2 hours.
Once inside dining room service was slow and inattentive.
Main dining room food was average to say the least (steak pie and fish and chips 1 night!), not quite 5 star dining.
Buffet food was very limited in choice and quality was just 1 step up from school meals…..oh and the queues for food and tables were long! Bars were understaffed leading to long waits for drinks.
Cabin steward only came in once a day……balcony was dirty and he explained this by saying it had been windy on previous cruise and was likely to be on this cruise.
There was no Cruise Director on board, all entertainment was run by members of the entertainment team.
Apologies for the length of this review….I could go on about the cut backs, lack of staff (evidenced by the fact once you got into the dining room there were plenty of spare tables….not enough waiters to serve them!), poor attention to detail, apathetic staff on a ship that is showing its age.
We would certainly not go on Arcadia again and probably not sail with P&O who were happy to charge us a lot on money for a short cruise but not staff the ship to the correct level or provide the quality of service they advertise.
It takes a lot for me to complain, I know we were not alone everyone we spoke to onboard had also had a poor experience.