Brittania July 22nd-5th August

[Selbourne]

We were on Britannia in June Selbourne and we gave our cruise 5 stars. Your ports seems a bit lack-lustre than ours certainly (The Baltic) but I have to say we find Marseilles a perfect base to explore the area and indeed have spent a holiday there as a result. Sorry you didn't enjoy it.

 

We also found the entertainment to be head and shoulders above any other ship we've been on and we've done a lot of cruises with P&O. We used the Limelight x3, the Live Lounge where we had an Adele Tribute, Jimmy James and a Gary Barlow tribute who were all fantastic. We also enjoyed the Headliners shows and The 4Tunes in the theatre and it was a treat to end our evening listening to Adam Allison in the Crows Nest. There wasn't a night on our 14 days we didn't enjoy.

 

The big down side was the soot on our aft balcony - just along from yours, F727- and we took this up with P&O when we got back. We certainly felt we should have been warned that this was a serious problem and in fact we stopped using our balcony because of the constant threat of soot failing on us. I don't know who your steward was but our poor steward appeared every day with a hose and wellies ready to wash our balcony down. Shame as it was a decent size compared to regular balconies.

 

We prefer the Baltic, which we did in May on Aurora (and gave it a 5 star review). The Med in high summer was really for our daughters benefit and I think we would prefer to go there out of season. We clearly didn't see the best of Marseilles, as you are now the 2nd respondent to say how much you enjoyed it. We will need to do some more research on where to go if we go there again.

 

As with most things, entertainment is subjective. One persons outstanding is another's appalling! The Headliners troupes seem to vary considerably. The group we had on Aurora were dreadful - they could dance but couldn't sing for toffee. The troupe on Britannia were far better, but, in our view, didn't do enough shows over a fortnight. Of course, they move around between ships and individuals come and go so, as you will know, you never know until the cruise whether you have struck lucky or not. In general, we find that the other entertainment on P&O ships is of a style and type that doesn't really appeal to us. Sometimes we are pleasantly surprised, but more often than not underwhelmed. The best evening entertainment we've had in recent years were Harmony Duo, a violinist and pianist who did 4 or 5 different performances on our Aurora cruise in May. They did classical and modern music (Ed Sheeran etc) and were outstanding. I get a bit bored on sea days so good guest lecturers are a big thing for me and we only had one over this two week cruise giving talks on basically one subject which didn't appeal. All other daytime activities seem to be targeted at retired folk or are a bit holiday camp style for me.

 

Yes the soot was a pain but even without it we wouldn't go aft again on Britannia. We love the ship (in particular the restaurants and the cabin furnishings and facilities) but preferred the forward suites we had for our two previous Britannia cruises. We have an aft corner wrap balcony suite booked on Arcadia (B deck) next year, which will hopefully be OK as there isn't a soot problem (as far as I know) and we are too high up to hear the music from the show Lounge. Vibration may still be an issue though - we shall see.

[Spike11]

I share your views about the aft cabins on Britannia and would not book them again because of the soot and the vibration. However, Arcadia is a very different ship. I don't remember there being any soot on the balcony when we sailed on her a couple of years ago. In addition there is no show lounge at the back of the ship to possibly generate noise and the ship has azipods ( which if they are working correctly keep any vibration to a minimum).

[Selbourne]

I share your views about the aft cabins on Britannia and would not book them again because of the soot and the vibration. However, Arcadia is a very different ship. I don't remember there being any soot on the balcony when we sailed on her a couple of years ago. In addition there is no show lounge at the back of the ship to possibly generate noise and the ship has azipods ( which if they are working correctly keep any vibration to a minimum).

 

Many thanks - that's reassuring. I had forgotten that there is no aft show lounge on Arcadia. There is a separate thread on issues with Arcadia and somebody else said that they had stayed in a B deck aft cabin and had no issues, so I'm doubly reassured.

 

It will be our first trip on Arcadia. We were booked to do a Fjord cruise on her last year but we did a ship visit before and decided that we didn't like her so changed the cruise to Britannia. As we are cruising more regularly now, we thought we would give her a go, especially as she is due a refit in a few months time and, along with Adonia, is the only P&O ship we have yet to cruise on. The other reason is that we want to go to Flaam and Olden and our port calls to both of these ports were cancelled a few months before the Britannia cruise. We also found out that this has happened 6 times with Britannia so we are hoping that Arcadia, being a smaller ship, is less likely to be 'bumped'!

[Eglesbrech]

I would concur, no soot or vibration issues on Arcadia aft. Generally a nice ship and very stable.