First timer cruise review - Ventura N515 Mediterranean

Just returned from my first ever cruise and thought id post a bit of a review. Having never done a cruise before I didn't know what to expect and I hope this review is useful for any other first timers..

Generally speaking we really enjoyed the whole experience, but there were a few negatives which I shall cover. These aren't particularly complaints, just my observations. We are a couple aged in our 40’s with an 8yr old son.

Im posting this review in sections as forum rules state only 6 images are allowed in each post. Here goes…

Booking

We wanted a cruise that departed from Southampton to avoid having to fly anywhere, and decided on a Mediterranean cruise. We defiantly wanted to see Monaco and Rome, which narrowed our options but discovered that P&O did a cruise covering both these destinations - Ventura N515.

Southampton - Vigo (Spain) - Lisbon - Gibraltar - Monaco - Pizza/Florence - Rome - Ajaccio - Cadiz - Southampton

We found booking our first cruise to be a minefield, until you have done a cruise you have no idea what choices to make i.e. cabin type, dining options etc, so we were cautious not to choose any overly expensive options that we wouldn't end up appreciating. We booked with Bon Voyage purely because we found their website easy to navigate, and the telephone staff were very helpful, and everyone seemed to be a similar price anyway. By chance we booked in February 2015 which is when P&O were offering double On Board Credit (OBC), so we were given £410/adult - totalling £820. This became extremely useful during our cruise. Heres what we did..

Cabin choice - We wanted a cabin with a window to allow daylight inside in the mornings, to give a perspective of time, so that ruled out an inside cabin. For a Med cruise I didn't thing a window with a clear view was particularly important for us, so we booked a cabin with an obstructed view. I wanted it to be in a quiet area of the ship, and took advice from the Travel Agent and chose a cabin directly above the Photographic area and fairly midship to reduce any ships movement.

Dining - We opted for Freedom dining which we thought would suit us better, having our young son with us. This proved to be the correct choice for us. I was concerned that selecting a fixed dining time would be unsuitable for us.

Pre cruise info

Documents, luggage labels - Once we had booked out cruise we were emailed access information to P&O’s Cruise Personaliser website where a week or two before the cruise we were given our boarding papers and luggage labels to print off.

Pre Booking Excursions - These are able to book online via the Personaliser site, but you have to pay at time of booking so cant use any OBC. Visiting the Colosseum in Rome was a must for me, so we booked the Glory of the Gladiators excursion to guarantee a place and secure seeing this land mark. I shall cover this excursion later.

Accommodation - We decided to stay over the night before our cruise so there was no danger of being held up by roadworks etc, so booked the Holiday Inn at Southampton which is right next to the dock, and paid for 1 x night with breakfast and 14 nights parking and free taxi transfers to/from Ocean Cruise Terminal included. This was a perfectly acceptable hotel for what we wanted. On arrival we had been given a top floor room with a sea view..

Hoilday Inn..

View from window..

Embarkation

P&O had allocated us an arrival time at Ocean Cruise Terminal of 2:45pm. I arranged the hotels free taxi transfer to get us there at 2pm. Its only a 5 minute drive from the Holiday Inn.

On arrival at the terminal…

Luggage porters immediately took our luggage from us and whisked it away, leaving us to go upstairs to the first floor to check in. On arrival we were given a coloured and number card and told to wait for our card colour/number to be announced over the tannoy before approaching the check in desk. It was crowded with nowhere to sit initially, but eventually we found a seat. There is a very small cafe inside the waiting area which we didn't use.

We weren't called forward to the check in desk until about 3:45, then passed through security and eventually boarded and arrived at our cabin at 4pm, our luggage awaiting us outside the cabin.

Continued......

Cabin - Our cabin, though not large, was certainly bigger than I had expected and was perfectly suitable for us. It had two single beds with two bunk beds above (which we had requested), 1 x english plug socket on the dressing table, about 18 clothes hangers in the open wardrobe, a fridge and adequately sized toilet/shower room. 6 large bottles of water were provided at a cost of €1.5 each.

Heres our cabin..

Our obstructed view wasn't as bad as I had expected, it was blocked by just the front of one of the tenders so allowed a partial view out, perfect…

View through window beyond the tender..

Upon embarking there wasn't any time to settle in or grab a meal from one of the restaurants as our cabin steward came knocking to tell us we needed to attend the 4:15pm safety briefing. This was compulsory and covered details on what to do in the event of an alarm sounding, seeing someone go overboard and putting on our life vests etc. This lasted about 40 mins when we then returned to our cabin to unpack. Then onto one of the outside decks to watch the ship depart…

We had been allocated a meal in the Cinnamon restaurant for that evening but decided instead to use the Waterside buffet restaurant on deck 15 (more about restaurants later) as we had missed lunch and were starving.

First night

An evening was spent wondering around and getting lost on the ship which is massive!!!! A few drinks in the bars and then to bed. At 3am in the morning we were awoken by an extremely loud THUMP sound, to discover our 8yr old son had fallen out of his top bunk. There was a safety guard around the head end of the bed but he had wriggled about and fallen out at the foot end. Screams and tears followed and a phone call from our cabin to reception requesting an additional guard. Seconds later our room was filled with concerned crew members and an additional guard was fitted. Thankfully no injuries, just one of those things that happens I guess?

Due to being awoken and the constant humming sound from the air con unit which couldn't be switched off (but want noticeable after the first couple of nights) I couldn't get back to sleep, so I went for a wander around the ship, and got lost yet again.

Horizons news letter

Late each evening a newsletter was left outside everyones cabin detailing the events for the following day, including restaurant opening times and times for shows etc. It also included timings for anyone who was booked on a ships excursion explaining where and when to meet to get the coach etc. We read this each night and planned for the day ahead. Also available from reception.

Tipping

Automatic Gratuities - I had decided to leave the automatic tipping in place, but seeing as P&O had increased this amount in the weeks after we had booked the cruise I attended the reception desk and asked to change the amount back to the original £3.95/day/adult. I was given a simple form to fill out with no questions asked and later that day this transaction was viewable on the in-cabin TV. Easy peasy lemon squeazy!

As we were on Freedom dining I didn't tip anyone in the Cinnamon or Saffron restaurants as we had different waiters each day. I allowed the auto gratuities to deal with this. We did tip in the Epicurean and East restaurants.

We also tipped our cabin steward who was fantastic. He cleaned our cabin perfectly each morning and returned in the evening to turn down the beds and leave chocolates. After a few days we told him not to worry about tuning down our beds as it wasn't important to us and he had enough on his plate, so instead he would just leave the chocolates on the dressing table.

I was impressed enough to leave him a tip, though I had no idea how much to give him so decided to give him £10 cash during the first week, and £20 at the end of the cruise. he appeared very grateful for this but to be honest i have no idea whether this was a suitable amount?

On Board Credit

I kept tabs on our OBC each day via the TV in our cabin. Our £820 OBC saw us through our two week cruise, allowing us to pay for an excursion to Florence, a few evening meals in the restaurants with cover charges, soft drinks and Costa coffees during the day and a few alcoholic drinks during the evening. We only exceed our OBC on the last day when buying photographs and a jewellery purchase for the wife.

Continued....

Restaurants

We ate in every restaurant except the Glass House as this seems more oriented to the wines that came with each course, which I had little interest in. Food was always very good and with sufficient choice. Heres my thoughts on the restaurants we used…

Cinnamon & Saffron- These were both restaurants for Freedom Diners only, they both had the same menu and had waiter service, though you could ask for additional servings (one day I had two deserts). They both opened for breakfast, lunch and evening meal. They both had a menu that remained the same each night (steak, chicken etc) but also had another menu that changed each evening. I noticed that some of the meal choices were identical to what was available in the Waterside buffet, but also had additional choices.

When entering the restaurant we were asked if we wanted our own table or if we were happy to share with others. We did a combination of both. We were always shown to a table straight away, even when wanting to a table on our own (3 of us) though I did notice the buzzers they handed out if a table wasn't ready, allowing you to go and have a drink whilst you waited. I didn't see anyone having to use these.

On Black Tie nights there was also a posher menu which often included lobster etc.

Continued....

Waterside (Deck 15) - This is the self service buffet restaurant which we used for breakfasts, lunch, afternoon tea and evening meals, as well as snacks during the day. Ford was perfectly good enough for us with a reasonable selection. Each night had a different theme such as Indian, Mexican, Carvery etc. There always seems to be 3 or 4 different main meal choices as well as bread various deserts, bread rolls, cheese & biscuits etc. Waiters took away your used plates & cutlery allowing you to return for more food. You can eat as much as you like in here, and as often as you like. It seemed to be open 24hrs.

Beach House (Deck 15) - This was pretty much identical to the Waterside but maybe had slightly different opening times.

Beach House Diner (Deck 15) - This was simply an area of the Beach House above that was turned into a separate restaurant each evening. Cover charges applied but it wasn't expensive at all. Certain dishes had additional cover charge, steak served on a lava rock was about £3.

Epicurean - We treated ourselves to a meal in here on one night as to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary, leaving our son in Kids Club. The cost for two of us including a bottle of wine was £74. Food was quite high end and I would describe it as very fancy, with extra courses being brought out as chefs treats. Service was very good.

Continued....

Bay Tree - This is a restaurant for passengers on allocated meal times, with 6:30pm or 8:30pm. Freedom diners were not allowed in here (I tried but was refused). It had the same menu as the Cinnamon and Saffron.

East - This was an eastern inspired waiter service restaurant which served very nice food and had a cover charge of £15 each. Food was styled around Indian, Chinese and Thai.

Glass House - We didn't eat here.

Black Tie Evenings

When booking our cruise I had no intention of participating in the black tie nights, simply because I didn't own a suit. But a few days before we sailed I bought a cheap £130 tuxedo from Debenhams, along with a bow tie and formal shirts. We also purchased the same for our 8yr old son.

Im glad I did, because the black tie nights were very nice. Most people seemed to adhere to this dress code, with men wearing either a dark suit or dinner suit, but you weren't forced to. Some didn’t.

It was nice to eat in the restaurants with everyone else dressed up, and drink in the bars afterwards. Lots of ladies and gents approached our 8yr old son commenting on how smart he looked in his tuxedo, which was nice to hear and pleased him no end. I would have been disappointed to have missed out on these nights, being dressed in jeans wouldn't have been the same.

Entertainment & Shows

Most of these were excellent apart from one (see below). The entertainment we saw included…

Paul Eastwood (comedian) was excellent and very funny and appeared in the havana bar.

Mark Walker (comedian/singer) was good until he started insulting a member of the audience which we thought was appalling. Arena theatre.

Manuel Martinez (comedian/magician) absolutely amazing and our favourite. Our son loved him also. Havana bar.

Phil Collins tribute - good but not my thing.

Tom Jones tribute - good but not my thing.

Witney Houston tribute - I didn't see this but the wife sad she was very good.

Strictly Come Dancing - I have no interest in Strictly and we didn't bother seeing the first show. But we heard the second show was really good, so we went to see it and agreed with what we had been told. Arena theatre.

David Pybus - very interesting and engaging man, and a Dragond Den winner. He gave talks on sea days throughout the cruise on subjects such as The lost city of Atlantis, Jack the Ripper & Dads Army tv show. I thoroughly enjoyed them all and I could listen to him all day. Tamarind bar.

One thing I was told by other cruiser was that each P&O ship repeats the same entertainers each cruise. If this is true then this would put me off doing another P&O cruise as I wouldn't want to see the same entertainer twice. The frustrating thing about seeing these shows was that in order to get a good seat we had to be at the venue about 1hr prior to the show starting.

Oasis Health Club Presentations - Despite being advertised in the Horizons newsletter as interesting presentations on subjects such as back pain and other health matters, they were always trying to sell a service fro the health club. I stopped going to these.

Port Talks - Talks were held on forthcoming destinations of the cruise, these were worth attending for bits of useful info but really they were an opportunity for the ship to sell their excursions, put there was never any pressure to purchase.

Arena theatre…

Kids Club

Ventura has 4 different kids clubs for different age ranges. Our 8yr old son was in the Surfers Club for 5-8 yr olds. I can only comment on his club as I have no knowledge of the others.

He absolutely loved the kids club and wanted to go every day. They were open from 9am to 11pm, but closed for an hour around meal times. Staff were really great. They held different activities each day, from sports to console games.

We registered our son on the first day by attending he club and handing over a form I had already completed from the Cruise Personaliser. Registering is compulsory before your child can use the club. Parents have to take their child to the club and sign them in, your signature is checked against your cruise card. to collect your child yo have to attend and sign them out. A

At 9pm the kids would vote for which film they wanted to watch, then all sit on bean bags watching the film which lasted until about 10:45pm.

Ventura has a kids dining area near the kids club where they serve a children's menu - curly fries, chicken nuggets etc. You sit with your child and can then return them to the club, allowing parents to spend the evening together if desired.

Cinema

I didn't attend the cinema as the only films I was interested is seeing where shown on port days when I was off the ship. Films shown on sea days tended to be classic musicals (perhaps because it was a Strictly come Dancing cruise?) which didn't interest me. From peeping my head into the cinema I didn't thing the picture quality was very good.

Continued....

Swimming pools

Ventura seems to have about as many swimming pools as it does restaurants! By the end of our 2 weeks there were still swimming pols I hadn't used.

There is an outdoor family pool midships on deck 15 as well as a similar indoor pool. There is a small outdoor pool for adults only at the front of the ship. There were also pools at the rear of the ship that i never got to use.

Sports

Deck 19 has an outdoor netted area with one basketball hoop and a tennis net. Tennis clubs, cricket bats, footballs and basketballs were stored here and available to use. There was also a separate netted golf pitching area.

Laundry

Our deck had a laundry room, I assume other back had one also? Ours contained 3 ironing boards with irons, washing machines and dryers, all free to use. We used these often throughout the cruise..

Continued....

Shopping

There were a few shops located together midships around deck 6 & 7. I didn't visit these except to buy a model of the Ventura ship for my son from the gift shop. From memory i noticed a watch shop, jewellery shop, handbag shop, a shop selling bowties etc, Costa Coffee and an Art gallery.

Photographs

Photographers seemed to wander around the ship quite often, asking if folk wanted their photo taken. If you said no as we did then they walked away without applying any kind of pressure. They also appeared in some of the restaurants we ate in, along with being located outside the ship on port days. That also set up their studios on Black Tie evenings.

At the beginning of the cruise the Photography shop on deck 7 advertised certain offers for different packages, which weren't cheap…

Photo

On our final black tie night we decided to have our photos taken and we were quite impressed with them, so much so we decided to purchase 3 x photos and a frame which came to about £63. This took us over our OBC limit, but the photos were very nice.

Port Days & Excursions

We only purchased two excursions with P&O, one being Glories of the Gladiators in Rome (which we had pre purchased prior to the cruise) and the other bing Pizza & Florence On Your Own. We purchased these because the destinations were about 9- mins from port and we didn't want to risk missing the ship at the end of the day. Both were very good.

Vigo - A small town with nothing much to see, but we walked to the top of the hill to the castle walls for a nice view of the port and our ship docked with Royal Caribbean ‘Anthem of The Seas’. Upon returning to our ship we were met with extremely long queues to get through the port security terminal. This was because there were also 3000+ Royal Caribbean passengers who had the same idea. It took about 45mins to get through the terminal in very hot weather. Not pleasant.

View from top of the hill…

Lisbon - We were very disappointed with Lisbon having walked into the old town through the back streets which were covered in graffiti, litter and dog pooh.

Gibraltar - this was our most disappointing day, but was more my fault than anyone else. We were only in dock from about 9:30am to 2:30pm which wasn't much time at all. We really wanted to go up the rock to see the apes. Id read that this is a port you can explore on your own so we walked off the ship to do just that. Im never a fan of jumping on the first taxi/tour bus I see, I refer to wander into town and get better prices.

We were immediately met with tour buses selling trips up the rock for €22 each which I assumed was a rip off. They also told us that a power cut meant that the cable car up the rock wasn't working (which turned out to be a lie). We walked into town only to discover all the tour bus prices were the same, but still thought they were expensive. So we caught a taxi to the cable car, which was working. This is when our son refused to go on the cable car due to him not liking heights. By this time there wasn't sufficient time to do the tour bus trip, so we missed out on going up the rock. Instead we did some duty free shopping as alcohol is really cheap here.

A very disappointing day.

Monte Carlo - This is a place I've always wanted to visit, and I wasn't disappointed. We docked offshore and were tendered into port. Learning from the Gibraltar disaster we jumped straight on the Hop On Hopp Off bus and did a couple of laps of the town. This cost €21/adilt and €8/child. Not cheap but worth doing. his enabled us to familiarise ourselves with the land marks we wanted to see.

I managed to walk the F1 circuit, visit the Casino and the Palace, and strolled further around the town. An enjoyable day was had.

Continued.....

Livorno (Pizza/Florence) - We paid £142 for the Pizza/Flarence On our Own excursion whilst on Ventura, using our OBC. This entailed a 90 min coach drive to Pizza where we stayed for about 1 hr which was more than sufficient time. The area surrounding the leaning tower isn't particularly pleasant and there are hoards of black en selling tat you dont want. They were very annoying.

Then an hours drive to Florence with 4hrs free time to wander around. it was blisteringly hot with hardly anywhere in the shade to sit. Still, a very nice place to see.

Civitavecchia (Rome) - Another place I've always wanted to visit, hence why we pre booked this cruise man weeks in advance.

Another 90min coach drive into Rome in very hot weather. With our tour guide we were whisked straight into the Colosseum bypassing the queues where we spent an hour or so, with free time to wander around, though there isn't a great deal to see, but I really enjoyed it.

Then we walked over to the Forum, this tour lasted about 1.5hrs in the blistering heat and nowhere to purchase water. It was an interesting place to see.

After we boarded the coach and went to a a square whose name I forget, and saw the ruins of the Gladiators training camp. Then we had about 3hrs free time so grabbed a meal and walked over to the Vatican. By this time it was time to return to the meeting point to board the coach and return home. Frustratingly we drove past the Vatican which we had already seen. Had I know we would have gone to see the Trevis Fountain and Spanish Steps instead. Never mind.

Ajaccio - This was our 3rd port day in a row, and I could really have doe with a day at see instead to recover from the tiring two days in Pizza/FLorence/Rome. Frustratingly there were issues with the tenders and only a small number were in use. We were told this was because of an accident?Everyoe was instructed to gather in the Cinnamon restaurant and were given raffle numbers and told to wait for our numbers to be announced. We waited an hour but other had been waiting 2hrs!!

We were tendered off the ship and we then walked left, around the headland and found a very nice beach. Due to the tender problem we only had a couple of hours ashore so sadly had to return to ship. A very nice looking town but not enough time allowed ashore to discover it.

Cadiz - Our final port day. Cadiz is a nice enough place, and you dock right in the centre so can simply walk off the boat into town, But to be honest due to the cruise coming to an end I just wanted to get home. We wandered around for 2-3hrs and decided to return to ship to eat. We didn't bother getting back off the ship, instead we sat around the pool.

Cadiz was followed by two days at sea, with the weather now changing from lovely hot & sunny to cool and cloudy.

Norovirus

During these final two days our ship made an emergency unscheduled stop somewhere in Spain for a medical emergency’. We weren't told anything further about this. I watched as a Spanish coastguard boat came alongside, a passenger stepped onboard, with the boat then then returning to shore.

However, a fellow passenger later claimed to have been informed by the ships doctor/nurse that the patient had norovirus and that a further 4 passengers were also affected and confined to cabin. i can say of this was true or not, but I now know that another P&O ship had norovirus at the same time.

Continued....

Disembarking

A notice was left in our cabin the previous night informing us of our disembarkation time of 10:15am. We were to leave our cases outside our room by 8:15pm that evening. A further case could be put out during the night if needed.

We went for breakfast about 8am and then sat around with everyone else waiting for our announcement to leave the ship. Something had gone wrong with the air bridge and the whole disembarkation process went to pot with everyone being allowed to simply get off the ship as they pleased.

We were guided to the luggage area where cases were grouped according to deck numbers. We grabbed our cases, left the terminal and phoned our free taxi back to the Holiday Inn to get our car.

Southampton port from top deck of Ventura

Luggage collection area

My post cruise thoughts

So with our first ever cruise is at an end I can say that we did really enjoy it, but there were a number of frustrations….

The ship was predominantly elderly folk, maybe because of the Strictly Come Dancing theme?. Nothing wrong with that, but a ship with younger passengers would have been preferable and a few more kids for our son to play with. We always seem to be stuck behind some elderly folk in the corridors and walkways, often taking ages to get past them. Not their fault of course, but it did get a little frustrating.

The incredibly short days at port were frustrating, only having 2hrs ashore at Ajaccio was a real shame. The long queues to get through port security when getting back to the ship were annoying and reduced our time ashore.

Ventura is so large that I never fully found my way around her. Just as I thought I knew where I needed to go, i’d get lost.

Having to arrive at an entertainment venue 1hr before the show to secure a seat was also annoying.

Crew - The visible crew is almost 100% foreign and they provided faultless service. They were extremely polite and nothing was too much trouble, referring to us as sir/madam all the time and constantly stopping to allow us toppers in front of them if we met in a walkway etc. Now heres where I have a bit of a problem, and this isn't a criticism of the staff….

Whilst they were incredibly polite to passengers, I did get the feeling that they were frightened of putting a foot wrong, as if there are perhaps hundreds of other people ready to fill their position if they did something wrong and got sacked. This made me a little uncomfortable to be honest, especially being called Sir all the time. Im a working class bloke and the staff tended to view passengers as being above them, no doubt they are told to do so? I told our cabin steward he needn't refer to me as Sir as I'm just an ordinary bloke, just like him. I always insisted on allowing the crew in front of me if we met in a walkway, seeing as they have work to do whereas I am at leisure. As I say, not a criticism of the crew, more of P&O’s policy?

Maybe if we cruise again we might try a different cruise company just for a change of scenery and a different experience?

The above are just my observations from my holiday, and not complaints or criticisms. Others will no doubt be along soon to tell me i should have done things differently!!

Thanks for reading

Thank you very much for the review and pictures. Very good.

Ah wonderful memories of the luggage hall and trying to find all our luggage, even though it has straps and ribbons on.

I understand what you mean about the Sir/Madam. I think if lets say we wanted a drink we always gave our Christian names..so we tended to get called by that after a while.

As I do not know was your cruise during term time or break time. Usually P and O have quite a few children on board during the holiday breaks.

Glad you enjoyed the formal nights. I agree the dressing up is worth it.

Who do you think you will try next?

I think the American ships may have more whiz bang, and the lead in cruise price may be cheaper, but things like drinks etc more expensive.

Whatever you decide, you are now hooked.

Good report Steve. Glad you enjoyed it. Now,which ship and where to next?

Brian

Good report Steve, thanks for that. I've just got home from Azura and great to see all your photos! (the ships are very similar!)

Shame you didn't go to the Glasshouse as it serves very nice food - we went there a lot on our cruise - and you don't have to drink wine!

Shame you didn't enjoy Lisbon as it was a highlight of my cruise. We got the Hoho bus and got off at Belem and went up the Monument to the Discoveries which was only 4 Euros and had a great view.

I agree about the shows though - normally had to get there half an hour early to guarantee a seat for a popular show. Manhattan show lounge we never seemed to find a seat! Another time we went to a Headliners show only 10 mins before curtain up and got seats!

You don't get the same entertainers on every ship but the Headliners do tend to do the same shows.

How did you find the sun loungers? we never had a problem. It was often busy round the main pools but we wanted peace so we always found one up on the sun deck.

Great review - but £820 OBC? How did you get all that?

We got the same OBC when we booked for Oriana - it was just a short lived offer.

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Great Write up Steve, as in two weeks this will be my first cruise ever with my Girlfriend, We also will be on Ventura and are also doing the Glories of the Gladiators tour in Rome I shall no doubt take some bottled water with me!! And love the pictures, looking forward to getting in some of those pools and can I just ask one question... the meal you posted a pictures of, what was on the plate looks very nice...

Thanks for the write up, will be excellent for any new cruisers.

We were on The Ventura during the Easter Holidays and the age group was much younger than you encountered.

We (like most frequent cruisers) always aim to get to the terminal around 11.30 to 12 regardless of time suggested on documents that way you get onboard, have lunch and a good look around before cabins are ready. Also normally, depending on when cases arrive, have time to unpack and freshen up before muster drill.

Did you try the main dinning room for breakfast? We much prefer to buffet restaurant, especially on sea days. Much more relaxed. Last cruise we also used for lunch most days as well.

On our last cruise we met a couple who didn't realise they could use the dinning rooms for breakfast and lunch as they were allocated Cinnamon on freedom dinning and Cinnamon wasn't mentioned in the Horizon for these meals. Once someone told them the restaurant allocation was only for evening meals they said they started to enjoy themselves as they didn't like the self service buffet. I feel P & O should make this clearer to people as apparently many others have been caught out like this.

Happy future cruising.

Congratulations on posting an excellent review Stevie. One of the best reviews I have ever read.

We sailed on Ventura around the med four years ago on our first cruise with our 14 year old son and will be on her soon to cruise the fjords and even though we have been on her before I am sure we will again get lost :)

Great review - we have had 3 great cruises on Ventura

out of school hols, you wont find many school age children (especially now with fines and 100% attendence scrutinised) in the school hols the same cruise on ventura could have 600+ under 18s on.

if you try a fly cruise - these tend to attract less elderly and infirm (not that I have any issues with this) just an observation.

Thanks for an honest and enjoyable review. Having done one you now know some of the things to watch out for and/or do differently. Enjoy future cruises!

An excellent review - well balanced, well written and informative. (Puts mine on the Azura to shame!)

And so glad you enjoyed your first cruise along with the dressing up on formal nights - hopefully that might encourage a few more to think again about not joining in. It is after all , all part of the fun of cruising!

Your comments about disembarkation were interesting as many people lately have had things to say about this - me included. It used to be so orderly and civilised but recently seems to have been reported to be a bit chaotic. Not what you really want at the end of a lovely cruise.

Do let us know which cruise you decide to book next!

a good balanced review Steve, enjoyed looking at your pictures too.

As it was your first cruise its good to at least use as a learning curve to what you felt you liked or disliked about cruising.

I think on all cruise lines the staff will refer to you as Sir/Madam and on the American lines the staff will seem even more eager to please. I was uncomfortable at first but have learned that its just the way it is. as long as I don't feel they are beneath me its okay.

You have got plenty of cruise lines to choose from, and it will be fun trying them out, but don't forget P and O as a different cruise will have a different age demographic. Also, your next cruise is unlikely to have such a huge OBC!,and now you've got a cruise under your belt , consider joining the roll call and going on private excursions. We met some lovely americans on our last cruise roll call and did some amazing trips in 8/10 seater mini buses with a great company that took us where we wanted to go.

Great review Stevie, thank you.

Only one thing to do now..... book another cruise:D

For anyones first time on Ventura, I recommend spending time during your first few days proactively trying to get your head around the layout of the ship. I never did and after 2 weeks I was still getting lost.

If it helps, all of the elevators (except the glass one at the atrium) face toward the front of the ship, so at least you know which is port/starboard when stepping out. This is useful at night when you can't look out of the window to see which way you are going.

The main decks are...

Deck 5, 6 & 7 have bars, restaurants & shops

Deck 8 - 14 are just cabins.

Deck 15 has swimming pools & restaurants.

So apart from the sun lounger deck (19) you really only use decks 5, 6, 7 & 15.

There are maps by the lifts which I took a photo of on my phone and referred to it often...

Thanks for everyones comments about my review. I created it because it wold have been very useful for me had someone else already created one.

How did you find the sun loungers? we never had a problem. It was often busy round the main pools but we wanted peace so we always found one up on the sun deck.

Sun loungers around the outdoor pools were usually busy, I prefer to lay in the shade so I normally got a shaded lounger by the pool. My wife preferred to lay out in the sun and watch our 8yr old son in the pool, finding a single unoccupied lounger in the sun wasn't too difficult for her, but to get 2 or more together couldn't be guaranteed.

Folk did seem to be reserving them with towels/books etc, then wander off for a while. But the Horizons newsletter constantly reminded passengers not to do this, stating towels would be removed. I never saw this happen though.

Great review - but £820 OBC? How did you get all that?

I booked in February 2015 when P&O were running a double OBC promotion.

can I just ask one question... the meal you posted a pictures of, what was on the plate looks very nice...

If your referring to the one below then I think it was pork & veg, treacle pudding with custard & ice cream and then a chocolate mousse with ice cream...

Did you try the main dinning room for breakfast? We much prefer to buffet restaurant, especially on sea days. Much more relaxed. Last cruise we also used for lunch most days as well.

Yes, but only on one occasion. It appeared to me that the food was exactly the same as the buffet, but with waiter service. We also much preferred to use the buffet and go back for as much food as we wanted.