P&O Cruises, Ventura Review

Overall Rating

Plenty of bars and the 'cocktails of the day' were good value for money.

Everything was just about average. Considering Ventura is the largest ship in P & O's fleet we were quite disappointed.

We recently returned from a Norwegian fjords cruise aboard Ventura. Unfortunately, the ship did not live up to our expectations. If you have never cruised before you will probably think that all cruise ships are the same believe me, they are not! We have cruised 3 times with RCI aboard Freedom, Liberty and Independence of the Seas (the 3 largest cruise ships in the world) and Ventura comes no where near in comparison.

The food is very average, except in East where we ate on the first night. For first night diners the surcharge is half and so it only cost us £10 each extra and was well worth the additional cost. One night we really did not fancy anything from the dinner menu and so chose from the regular menu (poached salmon, chicken, steak etc). We opted for the poached salmon which was very dry, the peas and carrots were tinned and the new potatoes were very greasy and mine had lots of black bits in them!

We had the soup course most nights and they really tasted of nothing. The waiter forgot our croutons and the night we opted for roast pork, the apple sauce appeared just as we had finished our meals!! Some of the meals onboard reminded me of eating at the Little Chef.

Lunch in Waterside became very monotonous with virtually the same food being served every day. There definitely needs to be more variety. We did enjoy the afternoon teas though! Sandwiches, scones, toasted teacakes and lovely cakes.

Entertainment was average. We did however very much enjoy the guest speaker. She was very entertaining and the theatre was packed on both days she was performing. The evening shows, in the Arena Theatre, lacked the glitz and glamour of the RCI productions. We went to see the mind reader but walked out after ten minutes!

The one good thing was that the weather was glorious which was quite unexpected for Norway. In the 70's and 80's every day. Unfortunately, we were ill with stomach pains for two days and were unable to go on our excursions. We were very disappointed as that had been the whole point of our trip to see Norway. P & O did come good though as they refunded our money, otherwise we would have been nearly £300 out of pocket. If you are ill and unable to go on any booked excursions, make sure you visit the doctor on board and they will stamp your excursion ticket which you then take to the excursion desk where they will refund the money on to your onboard account.

Our cabin was clean and adequate, again compared to RCI, the cabins are very average.

Like I said at the beginning of my review, if you have never cruised before and have nothing to compare Ventura with, you may well believe that this is the norm for cruise ships and possibly you will have a great time. We had never cruised with P & O before sailing on Ventura and whilst their other ships may well come up to standard, we are not willing to risk sailing with them again.

RCI here we come!!!