Dining Quality

Cabin Quality

Staff Quality

Entertainment Quality

Excursions Quality

Childrens' Facilities

P&O Oceana is a super ship. We are in our sixties, and this was our second cruise (previous cruise was 31 nights in October 2007, from Seattle to Sydney on the Sun Princess, which has the same layout as the Oceana). Our inside twin cabin was quiet, comfortable, quite spacious enough for two; the anytime dining produced excellent food with few queues; the mainly Indian crew gave top-notch service; the Caribbean itinerary was an excellent introduction to the islands and we would most certainly sail with P&O again.

Flight: We flew from Manchester to Barbados with Thomsonflight and could not fault the service. The seats offered 33 inches of leg room, the meals were very good, the transfer by coach from airport to dock was very quick and efficient, no need to queue for immigration, our suitcases delivered to our cabin within a couple of hours. We were on the ship at 5.30 pm, within an hour of landing. The decks were strewn with sleeping passengers who had a delayed flight home. Similarly, many of our fellow passengers didn't arrive from the UK until the early hours.

Embarkation: Quick and jolly, with plastic leis and the first of many posed photo calls, though most people did not feel they were looking their best after 24 hours of travel. The Barbados Police Band greeted us on the dock. We dined at 6 (no anytime dining on the first night) in an almost empty restaurant: other diners were the delayed ex-passengers waiting for their return flights, who had virtually an extra day on the ship.

The Cabin: We had a balcony cabin on the Sun Princess but found the inside cabin on the Oceana suited us just fine. No windows meant no early waking by the sun, though it was disconcerting not to know if we had arrived in port, or what the weather was like. Public announcements were broadcast in the corridors and did not intrude into the cabin. The cabin was very cleverly mapped out with ample storage space, plenty of hangers and more drawers than we needed, with space under the beds for the suitcases. A small television is perched on high. There is a fridge and a combination safe. The bathroom is equipped with soap, shower cap, gel eye mask and body wash, but no shampoo. The shower was consistently hot, much better than on the Sun Princess, though bathrobes are not provided with this grade of cabin. Towels were not bathsheets but perfectly adequate and replaced twice daily. Pool towels were provided in the cabin. The bed was very comfortable. made up in the morning and again at night, with chocolates on the pillow! There was little noise from the air conditioning, the ship's engines or the adjoining cabin and we would definitely be happy with an inside cabin again.

There is an inbuilt hairdryer (worked well on my fine hair), coffee and tea facilities and a supply of cookie-type biscuits. Plenty of mirrors but none where I could see myself full length. Only one electrical UK 13 amp wall socket, plus a 110 American style socket for electric shavers. Might be sensible to bring a socket extension plug if you use lots of chargers. The only minor drawback was that the hangers are the type welded to the wardrobe rail with a metal ring. Very frustrating and noisy, and no use when you want to carry ironed clothes from the lauderette. The very worst aspect was the cabin lighting, it was appalling. Wall and ceiling lights and a desk light all failed to provide enough illumination for reading, or sewing, or anything requiring the equivalent of natural light. The bathroom on the other hand was brightly lit and the mirror particularly unforgiving!

Cleanliness: The ship is clean but not quite so clean as the Sun Princess, fingerprints on glass partitions etc. Our cabin steward, Joseph, was excellent and beautifully discreet, he only once disturbed us when we were in. The crew seemed very thorough in their housekeeping efforts on deck, constantly cleaning, painting and varnishing, and one in particular was very charming, though another dropped a bottle out of the lifeboat onto the deck where we were sitting. Luckily it missed our heads - and lucky it wasn't a hammer! We would have reported that! A lot of noisy maintenance was carried out on the lifeboats and one woman passenger asked why the work wasn't done at night!!

Dining: We ate breakfast (and occasionally lunch) in the Adriatic restaurant, very nice menu, fruit juices, cereals, porridge, a special of the day, combinations of egg, sausage, bacon, mushrooms etc, plentiful tea and coffee. Each lunch offered a curry of the day, and the usual three plus courses, all attentively served by the extremely courteous and hard working Indian waiters. We were also very happy with anytime dining in the Ligurian restaurant. Very few meals fell below excellent, some were marvellous. Petit fours every night were a nice touch and all delicious, plus free specialist coffees and teas. We prefer to eat at a table for two and by reserving meals at either 6 or 9 pm we were always able to get one, though there are very few available, and similarly obtained one just by asking at breakfast and lunch, the waiters were very accommodating. I did overhear other passengers complaining when they were placed at tables for six or eigtht, the moral is, if you don't ask you won't get!

There was a special Valentine's Day menu, with balloons hung over every table, and the gala dinners were always superb. On formal nights most people donned dinner jackets and many of the ladies wore full length dresses, it seemed more 'dressy' than on the Sun Princess, and there were 4 formal evenings out of 14 nights, compared with 5 out of 31 nights on the Sun. One was 'black and white' night, though we had no prior warning and I saw several ladies heading back to change out of coloured dresses.

On the last evening we were given a complete set of menus and you can see the entire dinner menu collection for the Ligurian restaurant here (and if you want to study the pages do not run it as a slideshow but click on individual photos to zoom in):

We rarely used the buffet on deck 14 (the Plaza) as the breakfasts and lunches in the Adriatic were so good. The Plaza had limited opening hours and turned into the specialist Horizon Grill and the Plaze Bistro at night, neither of which we tried. There was usually a theme of the night, with Tropical, Indian, Best of British nights etc. There was a good range of seafood at lunchtime, far better than the Sun Princess, with beautiful green-lipped mussels, prawns, smoked salmon etc. On one lunch occasion it was almost impossible to find a seat in the Plaza and people were eating whilst standing, but that was rare. Unfortunately the buffet closed daily after lunch, only offering a 'tea' of sandwiches and (superb) cream cakes at 3pm, with no icecream or healthy fruit alternative available, except in the Cafe Jardin. Tea was also served in the Adriatic, and from trolleys on the Promenade Deck. This latter was a welcome service but the waiters made the passengers come to the trolley, when it would have been just as easy to serve them at their loungers, doing away with the need to walk the deck balancing cups of tea!

On several occasions we ate at the 24 hour Cafe Jardin on deck 8, which had a very good menu of seafood, soups, antipasti dishes, pizzas, pasta, salads and desserts, tea or coffee (the menus changed weekly). There was also a buffet for pick and mix salads, meats, fruit salad etc if none of the set dishes appealed. The cafe was very well attended (far more than the equivalent cafe on the Sun Princess). The Terrace grill seemed popular, serving good hotdogs, burgers and chips. Room service was free but we didn't use it. The Magnum bar served champagne and caviar at a price, again we didn't use it. Drinks in Tiffanys occasionally took some time coming, but all the drinks were priced very reasonably.

Entertainment: Cannot really talk about this as we didn't go to many shows. The performances at 7.15 and 8.45 coincided with preparation and consumption of dinner, and the late show at 10.45 was just too late for us. We saw one dancing/singing show on deck (energetic) and the pleasant after-dinner talk by the actress Brigit Forsyth, but did not partake in trivia, or bingo, or suchlike. The bar singer was good but the noise too loud, the pianist George was excellent but competing with too much audience noise in the atrium, the steel band seemed more wooden than steel on the occasions I passed them. I did not hear the classical pianist, who gave several concerts. The TV service was not good, few channels and no BBC News channel at all, only CNN. Movies were shown in the theatre frequently but were either not ones I wished to see, or on too late for us, but they were bang up to date. The ship did make an effort with a printed newspaper of highly edited British news, half of which was sport of course. The Horizon paper was not as good as the Princess Patter, being very complicated and hard to follow, with numerous unnecessary additional loose pages. The introductory edition can be viewed in the folder with the menus.

The port talks were recorded (we only went to one actual presentation) and shown on the cabin tv, but frustratingly the same ones were repeated ad nauseam, leaving other ports out. On two occasions I was unable to watch the talk about the next port, whilst the port beyond that was being covered, and tours being promoted.  There seemed to be a lot to do during port days (seminars on health and beauty for instance) but of course we were not on board to take advantage! Deck quoits were popular, there were two golf practice areas and a golf pro on board, the pools never seemed overcrowded. The Cruise Director was conspicuous by his absence, we never ever saw or heard him, in complete contrast to Dan Stein on the Sun Princess who managed to be here, there and everywhere, meeting and greeting, had his own tv show, hosted innumerable activities, all with charm and complete professionalism. P&O would have benefited from a Cruise Director of his calibre. On the last day we were presented with a Cruise Log, beautifully printed and with all the amendments to the itinery recorded (you can see that also alongside the menus). 

Shops: Very good quality, reasonable prices. Pleasing to note that toiletries and medications were not at all overpriced, very fair considering passengers are a captive audience. I bought some cheap costume jewelry (cheaper in Barbados airport however), a smart pair of leather flipflops in an emergency, and some perfume, but the watches, t-shirts, bags etc on offer were uninspiring. The art auctions were run by an American with the ability to speak for a couple of hours without once pausing for breath. We did not use the casino.

Photographs: There were far more photographers than on the Sun Princess though they were very pleasant and not pushy at all, could easily be avoided or refused. The prints were very expensive. The DVD of the trip did not appeal to us as it appeared to comprise 90% of passengers cavorting and waving at the camera. I think the idea was to capture as many as possible so they would be inclined to buy, but it made for a very boring video and we were not tempted to purchase it. A marked contrast to the Sun Princess DVD - coverage of the ports was excellent, a brilliant souvenir.

Internet cafe: Expensive (and very slow) though there were packages (about £21 for 100 minutes, or a bit less than double that for 200). It worked out at about 20p a minute, without the package is was approx 30p. We miscalculated and had to buy a second package. We found internet cafes ashore much cheaper and with fast connections. The Explorer cafe has been fitted out with extra computers (I did not see anyone using them) which seemed a shame, the equivalent on the Sun was our favourite bar (tables next to the windows, very cosy corner). The computer classes seemed competently run in a separate block of machines so they did not disturb other users.

Library: well appointed with comfortable chairs but a limited range of book titles to choose from, and very restrictive opening hours (the cupboard doors firmly locked),8 till 8 (plus a two hour lunch break between 1 and 3 pm), unlike on the Sun where you could go at any hour of day or night, and were trusted to take and return books. The library was also totally out of action when weddings occurred (there seemed to be quite a few) on sea days, and the system was run by an indifferent librarian who seemed to have little interest in books or passengers. There were lots of books for sale, and the usual selection of board games, cards, puzzles, etc and cds and dvds to rent. The cupboard for passenger 'swaps' was also kept locked when the librarian was not on duty.

Launderette: One on each deck tucked away forward, each with two machines, no soap dispenser, soap must be brought with you or purchased from the shop. Two dryers. Ironing board/iron. Everything free but - no chairs. This is no good for elderly or infirm passengers. It can take a lot of long trips to find out if the launderette has available machines, to go buy soap when you discover there is none, to check if the wash cycle has finished, to load the dryer, to return when that finishes, etc. Because you cannot use the ship's hangers, I would recommend taking a handful of wire hangers with you (or maybe the ship would provide them). I discovered that the laundry on deck 5 was often empty, when four others had long queues.

Destinations: Cruising gave us a wonderful opportunity to get a taste of Barbados, St Lucia, Antigua, St Maarten, Ocho Rios (Jamaica), Aruba, Grand Cayman, Cozumel and Curacao. The ship could not tender passengers off in Mayreau (rough seas) so we chugged on to Grenada. Tendering was well organised. The shore excursions seemed well run, we were satisfied with ours and heard no complaints about any others. We saw dolphins in St Lucia, took a coach journey in St Maarten and went 135 feet down in the Atlantis submarine in Aruba (a let down in more ways than one, as all the best 'viewing' seemed to occur on the starboard side and we were on the port side!) We did our own thing on all the other islands, caught local buses to unknown destinations, took taxi rides to local sights, a boat to a beach, or just mooched around exploring.

In Ocho Rios we went ashore too early before many shops opened and were hassled a bit by the locals, but found a pretty little park to sit in before heading back to the ship. In future I would book a ship's tour in Jamaica for safety in numbers. Similarly, we found Grand Cayman full of duty free shops crowded with the many thousands of passengers (from the total of six cruise ships moored there), and retreated to lunch on board and a relaxing lounger on an empty ship. Again I would book a tour on Grand Cayman, as the port is not inspiring. We enjoyed our last day in Bridgetown, Barbados, despite an altercation with a taxi driver (always ascertain the return fare before getting in!) - it was nice not to have to rush off the ship and into the airport. We went to see George Washington's house which has been restored and made into a sweet little museum. You get a film show and your own personal guide.

Our favourite destinations were Antigua, St Lucia, Aruba, St Maarten, Cozumel and Curacao, where we enjoyed the stunning scenery, the friendliness of the people, the lovely weather and the sheer ability to visit and experience so many new places. This seems to us to be one of the main advantages of cruising - to visit nine destinations in the Caribbean by arranging flights/hotels yourself would be difficult, expensive and tiring. This way we had only the flights to and from Barbados to cope with, plus a floating hotel to return to at the end of each exhausting day ashore.

Disembarkation: It was very well handled and very good to be able to use all the restaurants right until our coaches arrived - on the Sun Princess no refreshments were available, and everything closed down (though in fairness it was moving on to a refit). We were allowed to hold on to our large cases until well after the final evening meal, so we could dress nicely for that last Valentine's Day dinner. We had to vacate our cabin by a civilised 9 am and then were able to deposit our carry on cases in the Footlights Theatre while we went ashore. On our return it was pleasant to enjoy our last luncheon and to see the new passengers arriving - lucky things. The reverse transfer to the airport worked as well as the arrival: we did not see our suitcases from the last night on board until the carousel at Manchester. We were given the same seats as we had travelled out in and the flight was excellent.

Odd tips: I discovered that it is definitely worth putting your name on the waiting list for tours, as a few that I had wanted to go on but were fully booked online were re-offered once we boarded eg an extra submarine in Aruba, an extra catamaran in Mayreau. Make an effort to smile for your security photograph when you come aboard, the photo is brought up on the screen every time you leave or return to the ship! At the end of our cruise there were dozens of cans of hairspray, suncream, shampoo etc left in the ladies' toilets by people unwilling or unable to pack them! Finally, the time between vacating your cabin (by 9 am) and leaving the ship can be spent checking out other grades of cabin (now empty)!

Photographs of this Oceana cruise can be seen at:

Conclusion: the Oceana is a lovely ship. My husband preferred it to the Sun Princess, I felt the Princess just had the edge, in food, entertainments etc. but would be happy to do a repeat cruise in either. However our next trip is booked with the MSC line and should be in complete contrast to both Princess and P&O.

Age: 50-65
Number of cruises taken: 2-3 cruises
Traveller Group: Couple
Stateroom: Inside

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