Tom Burke’s Blog

First thoughts from Oriana (written before dinner on the first day): very attractive! So far we haven’t seen anything like all of the ship, of course. Our cabin (C288) is fine, perfectly comfortable and inhabitable, especially for just 4 days. Lots of drawer & wardrobe space, and roomy enough. And the bliss of having a kettle & tea-making facilities!

Other than the cabin, we’ve spent time at the Terrace Bar (for the sailaway & the obligatory glass of champagne), the Pacific Lounge (for the muster drill), on the Lido & Sun decks, and in the Crow’s Nest. The latter is exceptional – I’m happy to agree with all those who have sung its praises. And so different from the Stratosphere Lounge on Galaxy, which is the equivalent space on that ship – always deserted, very unfriendly. We sat in the Crows Nest after we passed Cowes and the wind drove us under cover and had a difficulty dragging ourselves away. (Actually, it was mainly difficulty dragging the wife away.)

Later this evening we may have a cocktail – well, we will have a cocktail, the question is simply ‘where?’ – before dinner, and then we’ll sit and enjoy our first P&O dinner.This cannot help but be an improvement on the quick lunch we ate at Rowney’s services on the M27. How a sandwich can be at once freezing cold and soggy beats me. And expensive!  a sandwich + a cuppa, for two = more than ten quid!

During the sailaway we left Southampton behind Independence of the Seas. Well, she’s probably not my ideal type of cruise ship, but she certainly looks impressive. She came past us – she was berthed at the Mayflower, we were at the QEII – and to be honest towered over us.

Anyway, more tomorrow about dinner tonight!

I have a couple of excellent (in my view) images of Oriana, taken as she was leaving Southampton. They were taken last October by John Adams, are his copyright, and are used with his permission. Thank you John!

We’re ready to go! Well, apart from packing; but as the cruise is from Southampton, and is for only 4 days, we don’t have to go through the ‘is the bag under 20 kgs?’ dance that we’ve done on many other cruises. This time we just drive to Southampton and hand over as many bags as we feel like taking with us….. But all the other things are done: we’ve decided on our excursions (not taking any, in fact); we’ve got our € currency; we’ve got car-parking sorted out (indeed, that’s been done for months – because we booked this cruise a long time ago, we qualified for free parking with CPS); and we know our route to the port. So roll on the 31st of May.

I keep doing the ‘this time next week we’ll be….’ thing. This is silly, because in just a few more days it’ll be ‘this time next week the cruise WILL BE OVER!’ So, here’s a memo to myself: try to live in the moment – after all, there are fewer moments to come than the number of moments you have had….

Yes, in two weeks’ time we shall be aboard Oriana, P&O’s 13-years old, medium-sized ship. It’ll be our first cruise with P&O and we are looking forward to it enormously. It’s just for four nights, and is completely port-intensive: we leave Southampton on Saturday afternoon; on Sunday we will be in Rotterdam, Monday is Zeebrugge, and Tuesday should be Guernsey. That last call might not happen, of course, as it’s a tender port and for some reason it’s quite common for captains to decide that the weather isn’t good enough to support tender operations. (We experienced this last September on Braemar; I blogged about it here.)

But I’m really looking forward to experiencing Oriana. In the years she’s been cruising she’s captured a great deal of support, and has also been very well maintained and upgraded – she had a refit just a couple of years ago, at which time a new signature restaurant (Oriana Rhodes) was added to her facilities. Here’s a link to P&O’s page about her.

I hope to blog from the cruise.

I posted a couple of entries here earlier this year on this question. These were prompted by the fact that because Ventura, P&O’s new liner, was delivered a week or so early, an extra very short (2 night) cruise was scheduled at the last moment to take place before the ‘Maiden’ cruise, and indeed before the naming ceremony. There was quite a bit of discussion about this issue on various boards. Opinions were split. Some felt that as P&O had advertised Ventura’s 14 night cruise on 18 April as ‘The Maiden Cruise’ it was a bit naughty of them to suddenly announce a pre-maiden cruise a week before. Others argued that the whole concept of a ‘Maiden Cruise’ was only marketing speak anyway; by the time you took into account the voyage from the shipyard, the crew shakedown voyage, the whole concept of a ‘Maiden’ voyage was silly.

It seems that some passengers on The Maiden Voyage – the official ‘Maiden’, that is, on 18 April – have decided to take P&O to court to seek compensation. Among their arguments are the fact that they paid (they claim) a premium price for the privilege of sailing on The Maiden Cruise which (they argue) wasn’t; and also that Marco Pierre White, whose name is used for the signature restaurant on Ventura, the White Room, was not actually on board for The Maiden Cruise, but was on board for the earlier two-night party cruise.

This might turn out to be interesting.

Here’s a link to the story, in a UK newspaper.

Is it just me, or has there been more marketing pressure than normal this year to book early for 2009? And don’t next year’s schedules seem to be available very early this year? When we we cruised with Celebrity in early June 2006 we visited the future cruise lady on Galaxy and enquired about cruises for 2007 – and in mid-June of 2006, all she had about the following year were some photocopied summaries & dates. This year, we already (mid-April) have received a printed mini-brochure for Celebrity’s 2009 European cruises. And not just Celebrity: we’ve had similar marketing from P&O, Cunard & Fred. Olsen – all during April.

This blizzard of material has been accompanied by another blizzard of leaflets and flyers from both cruise lines and TAs advertising this year’s summer cruises, in some cases at considerable reductions over the original brochure price. My perception, admittedly without any serious analysis, is that early summer 2008 cruises on Fred. Olsen ships, especially Balmoral in the Med, seem to be available at very low rates.  I wonder if  their Fly/Cruise experiment with Balmoral & Braemar this summer isn’t generating the business they expected; perhaps regular Fred. Olsen customers prefer cruising ex-UK, and the line isn’t winning new customers for the fly/cruises. In contrast I gather that business for P&O this year is very nice indeed, thank you, especially on Ventura. And they’ve stuck to their traditional ex-UK programme, with all six ships sailing out of Southampton until the early winter.

But back to next year (2009). I definitely detect a hint of desperation in the lines’ intense early marketing; given the economy, house prices, etc, perhaps they want to make sure that passengers have made their commitments for 2009 as early as possible. We shall see, but I have a feeling that early summer next year may well bring a huge number of late offers as passengers cancel their bookings. I think that the message is, don’t book for 2009 yet unless you get a really good deal.