Was slightly apprehensive when booking this cruise – 3 years of Covid, lots of negative comments on various review sites about the state of the cruising industry, but we had enjoyed cruising so much pre Covid we decided to give it a go to see how the experience stacked up.
The first thing to do is acknowledge that the world has moved on, things are different now and so one needs to assess things accordingly.
We booked our usual Caribbean fly/cruise with P&O for Feb 4th this year on the new ship Arvia – apparently things did not go completely according to plan during her Xmas cruise but my wife and I can only judge on what we experienced during our cruise.
I can honestly say that the cruise exceeded our expectations – it was brilliant.
The ship is beautiful, the crew were on the ball and very attentive.
The food was excellent and the drinks reasonably priced – not much different from when we last cruised in 2020.
The App worked fine – yes it occasionally logged off and you had to log on again but that’s a two second operation.
Before we embarked we had booked a few events (2 x Sindhu, Limelight Club and a few nights in the main restaurants (mainly Zenith) Once we were on board, we were able to walk up to the restaurant on the night and get a table for 6 for ourselves and our 4 friends with no trouble – didn’t have to queue once.
Plenty of room, lots of spaces where you can get away form the crowds and just relax.
Sunbeds were an issue (we didn’t need any – we much prefer our balcony in the sun) but people insist on abusing the system and leaving towels etc on them and then walking away – hardly surprising that genuine sun-lovers find this frustrating.
We had a great cruise and would certainly go again – in fact we’ve already got one booked in the summer in the Mediterranean.