Oriana christmas and new year cruise

Not long before our cruise. Has anyone been on a Christmas and New Year cruise before? If so what can we expect different from other cruises?

The ship will be beautifully decorated throughout, including a small decoration outside each cabin door. Many cruisers bring their own decorations to adorn their cabin doors. Christmas music playing, lots of Christmas-themed activities, carol service, Midnight Mass, festive meals (different timings to usual on Christmas Day), special Christmas activities in the children's club, including Santa's grotto and Santa appearing on the ship's funnel on Christmas Eve, presents for the children, deck party on New Year's Eve (if you're in warm climes)...

Hope that gives you a flavour of what to expect. Two years ago I was very apprehensive about being on a cruise at Christmas as I had never been away from the UK at that time of year, but I had a wonderful time. Certainly on our cruise (Britannia maiden season in the Caribbean) I thought P&O went all out to make it special and festive.

Many thanks Groovechick , very helpful. We are really looking forward to it now.

We took a Christmas and New Year cruise on Oriana in 2011. In addition to everything stated above I also have happy memories of mince pies and mulled wine on the Southampton sailaway and a general upbeat atmosphere throughout the ship leading up to Christmas day. In particular I have a strong recollection of the officer's Christmas Carol service which was fantastic (and to be fair I wasn't that bothered about attending it but my wife wanted to go).

Our cruise was to the Mediterranean and it was warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine whilst we sailed down the Iberian coastline so hopefully you'll experience something similar. Our Christmas eve was in Cartagena and after sightseeing we were able to sit in the port for a drink just wearing t-shirts. A simple enough thing but we really enjoyed the change from a typical Christmas eve at home.

The only negatives were that we missed a couple of ports due to fog but that was just one of those things that can happen. Hopefully you'll be fine in the Canaries.

Of course things may have changed but I hope you have as good a time as we did.

Happy cruising

Damian

We have cruised twice at Christmas. I don’t recall having any decorations on the cabin door and on one of the cruises, the captain requested everybody to remove their own decorations from the doors!

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We have cruised twice at Christmas. I don’t recall having any decorations on the cabin door and on one of the cruises, the captain requested everybody to remove their own decorations from the doors!

 

 

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Shame, we’ve done the last two Christmas’s on Aurora and we had P&O decorations on the door ‘letter box’. Also people’s own discrete decorations remained too (I put up one small lightweight wooden one on our door too, to stop me keep walking past the cabin as I kept doing!)

We are also on this cruise, which will be our third Christmas on Oriana.......of course there will be no children....but it will still be good fun. We enjoyed the carols on deck on Christmas Eve, the Headliners Christmas show, the festival of nine lessons and carols and the wonderful food....formal dinners on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve.......there was also a passenger choir who did a variety of Christmassy songs.

We did this itinerary two years ago and the weather was warm enough for us to swim in the sea!!! So we're really looking forward to it.