the anytime dining was a joke 35 minutes to wait for a table for 4 the queue was nightmare every night no matter what time you went....service onboard not a patch on royal carribean sorry no more p and o for us back to royal carribean

Lovely ship staff great could not help you enough only 3 poor quality meals returned,dinner table guest exclent Ronnie& Ann from Edinbrugh Morris & Jean from Worcester & Bill from Darlington all great company,only thing wrong is no quiet areas on board,and too many children some as young as 6 Months old and 12/16 yr olds running through the cabin areas after midnight who wants that when on holiday this is slowly becoming a floating Butlins Arcadia here I come

It was nice to read so many complimentary reviews regarding the P&O Ventura Caribbean cruise, many of which I agree with, but not all. Unfortunately, my wife and I were two of 250 souls who had to remain an additional 27 hours in Barbados due to aircraft failure for our Thomson flight back to London, Gatwick.

The arrangements during this very long period were left to P&O as agents and with responsibility for our well being. Rather surprisingly, this was a first time experience for P&O and the lack of planning became very obvious as interminable hours passed without any updates. Many of us resorted to telephoning the UK where there appeared to be more detail then from the staff on board who were more concerned with the new passengers boarding.

The latter point became more of a problem for P&O when it became known there would be no flight on the 30th. In short the object of the exercise was to get us off the ship as quickly as possible, with representations of a 5 star hotel for the evening with food and drink, as it was all-inclusive.

We left the ship only to find a 3 star hotel with no food and some fruit juice....water had to be purchased at a shop 5 mins walk from the hotel, at night!

So beware of the 'Pontius Pilate' treatment if everything does not go according to plan on these cruises. One poor old lady actually fainted from the stress and it took until the next day via calls to London to reach the ship and demand P&O staff come to the hotel and explain what was going to happen and when....nothing short of a disgrace.

Coming back to the cruise, compared to a cruise taken on the Arcadia 5 years ago the Ventura was good but far from excellent and unfortunately the final 26 hours did not help matters.

classical music being the cruise theme was quite good from the somewhat aloof performers and host. Disadvantaged passangers eg. those in whelchairs and electric wheeled buggies were for the most part thouroughly rude and obnoxious, there was only them on board after all, (I thought the cruise was only for them and that we had booked eroneously),presumably all of ther other passengers who had also paid to have equal rights to an enjoyable holiday were expected to be second class passangers.by this group. (then again unless you were a Porteneous passengeror whatever it is called when you appeared to be quietly lured to quiet little corners to be singled out for specialist little treats. Come on P&O that went out with the arc, are all of you passngers not entitled to be treated well or are they just there to be constantly hassled to order drings etc. Cabin was nice enough and well looked after. Destinations and info on these were very good. Food unfortunately was not at all good and not up to what one might have expected from P&O. Would not return to P&O on any ship or reccomend it to friends or collegues