Big Stevie

Insurance - Try and ensure it covers the issues suffered if the following happened to you, including onward flights home...

On my recent Ventura cruise last week we made an unscheduled emergency deviation to a Spanish port aparently for an elderly passenger with norovirus to disembark. We were met by a Spanish coastguard ship who took him ashore.

Suit/tuxedo - I put mine in a suit carrier and on the day we embarked I folded it in half and put it inside my suitcase. When we got to our cabin a few hours later I removed it and hung it up, it was fine. Certainly no creases in it the when I wore it the following day.

Does anyone have any photos of the topless ladies so that I can form my own opinion please :D

I would recommend going purely as somewhere different to eat. We ate there twice on our cruise last week, I thought the food was ok but not considerably better than the MDR. The Beach House is simply a section of the buffet restaurant that is sectioned off at night for the cover charge meal. You can read my thoughts on some of the restaurants I visited by clicking on my Vetura review in my signature at the bottom of this post.

On the first visit I had coconut battered prawns for starters which sounded gorgeous, but they were dry and tasted plain. For the main meal I had the beef ribs, which were very fatty.

On the second visit I had nachos for starter, which as expected was just the same as if you'd emptied a bag of nachos onto a plate at home, added grated cheese and some chillies. Nothing special at all. For mains I had steak on lava stone (£3 extra) which was really nice. Basically its a thick seared raw steak served on a sizzling hot stone, so the steak keeps on cooking until you've eaten it. It was served with onion rings and oven chips. Reminded me of something you'd knock together from Iceland.

But as I say, it was an alternative to the buffet or MDR and it it was fine.

If theres one tip id give myself on my next cruise it would be this..

If theres a port destination that really means something to you, then don't risk missing out an seeing the landmarks by trying to save money (like I did at Gibraltar). If only I had paid to do the tour bus taxi up the rock when the touts approached me upon disembarkation then I would have got to see the apes etc.

Instead I assumed they would be overcharging the tourists and so I walked into town to get a better price (which was the same). Then we decided to get the cable car instead but on arrival our son refused to go on it. By this time we only had 2hrs before needing to return to the ship so missed out on it completely.

That'll teach me for being a tight fisted Yorkshireman :)

There were times when I found them a bit annoying - they wanted to take photos when disembarking, when eating in restaurants, when walking past them in the atrium.....

There 'special offer' of 4 x photos for £80 is bloody expensive as well.

Would love to cruise with you one day. :)

If your paying then I'm happy to come along with you anytime :D. But I do snore and I eat a lot!

Monaco

The Royal Palace

The famous F1 hairpin...

Casino

Cafe Paris opposite the casino where a bowl of chips cost €21

Some folk will do anything to get onboard the top deck of the 'Hop on Hopp off bus' without paying...

Lisbon answer to the Golden Gate Bridge of San Fransisco (design by the same people). Does the Ventura actually fit underneath?....

Another photo of our cabin dressing table with tea/coffee making facilities, replaced each day, together with the 6 x bottles of water provided by P&O. They cost €1.5 if you had one..

One of my many greedy moments. at the self serve buffet...

After putting meat pie & chips on my plate I then discovered they were also serving curry & rice, so piled some of that on my plate as well...

When on Ventura we purchased some photos that their photographers had taken of us, along with a P&O photo frame. Imagine my surprise when getting home to discover the photos are fractionally too large for the frame, requiring me to cut them down to size!!:mad:

I expected P&O's 10" x 8" photos to fit perfectly into their own 10" x 8" frame.

The mind boggles, especially as they cost an absolute fortune.

Royal Caribbean Anthem of the Seas was docked next to us at Vigo Spain. They were on there way home from the Canaries where they had sadly had bad weather.

At Vigo there was an extremely long queue to get back on board, probably because the Anthem was docked also...

can I just ask one question... the meal you posted a pictures of, what was on the plate looks very nice...

If your referring to the one below then I think it was pork & veg, treacle pudding with custard & ice cream and then a chocolate mousse with ice cream...

Did you try the main dinning room for breakfast? We much prefer to buffet restaurant, especially on sea days. Much more relaxed. Last cruise we also used for lunch most days as well.

Yes, but only on one occasion. It appeared to me that the food was exactly the same as the buffet, but with waiter service. We also much preferred to use the buffet and go back for as much food as we wanted.

Thanks for everyones comments about my review. I created it because it wold have been very useful for me had someone else already created one.

How did you find the sun loungers? we never had a problem. It was often busy round the main pools but we wanted peace so we always found one up on the sun deck.

Sun loungers around the outdoor pools were usually busy, I prefer to lay in the shade so I normally got a shaded lounger by the pool. My wife preferred to lay out in the sun and watch our 8yr old son in the pool, finding a single unoccupied lounger in the sun wasn't too difficult for her, but to get 2 or more together couldn't be guaranteed.

Folk did seem to be reserving them with towels/books etc, then wander off for a while. But the Horizons newsletter constantly reminded passengers not to do this, stating towels would be removed. I never saw this happen though.

Great review - but £820 OBC? How did you get all that?

I booked in February 2015 when P&O were running a double OBC promotion.

For anyones first time on Ventura, I recommend spending time during your first few days proactively trying to get your head around the layout of the ship. I never did and after 2 weeks I was still getting lost.

If it helps, all of the elevators (except the glass one at the atrium) face toward the front of the ship, so at least you know which is port/starboard when stepping out. This is useful at night when you can't look out of the window to see which way you are going.

The main decks are...

Deck 5, 6 & 7 have bars, restaurants & shops

Deck 8 - 14 are just cabins.

Deck 15 has swimming pools & restaurants.

So apart from the sun lounger deck (19) you really only use decks 5, 6, 7 & 15.

There are maps by the lifts which I took a photo of on my phone and referred to it often...

If its your first time on Ventura, I recommend spending time during your first few days proactively trying to get your head around the layout of the ship. I never did and after 2 weeks I was still getting lost.

If it helps, all of the elevators (except the glass one at the atrium) face toward the front of the ship, so at least you know which is port/starboard when stepping out. This is useful at night when you can't look out of the window to see which way you are going.

The main decks are...

Deck 5, 6 & 7 have bars, restaurants & shops

Deck 8 - 14 are just cabins.

Deck 15 has swimming pools & restaurants.

So apart from the sun lounger deck (19) you really only use decks 5, 6, 7 & 15.

There are maps by the lifts which I took a photo of on my phone and referred to it often...

I really didn't have any faith in the young lad that was selling them on Ventura. No way would I spend that kind of money with someone I won't be able to track down again. Far better to go to a local professional.

My orthotics are best used in shoes with a flat inner sole. A shaped contoured sole that is fixed inside the shoe would interfere with them. I wear mine inside my work boots, but they don't fit in some of my other shoes.

I think the main point to the thread is that some kind of orthotic sole can be very beneficial and shouldn't be dismissed as a gimmick.

Even arriving at your allocated time doesn't help. We arrived at the terminal the other week at our allocated time, the check in lounge was crowded with all seats taken and folk standing. It took almost 2hrs before we were called forward to check in. B the time we boarded we had missed an opportunity to have lunch on the ship.

I can fully understand why folk arrive early, but maybe if early arrivals were refused entry to the terminal this would stop it happening?

I attended one of these talks on Ventura last week. I didn't buy any as I already wear orthotic insoles. They were selling them for £120 whereas mine are much much better and cost a similar amount...

After hurting my back a few years ago I end up struggling to walk and being bent over double for a few days. In desperation I went to see a chiropractor, but without any realistic expectations. 30 mins later I was walking perfectly upright and my back pain instantly disappeared. What happened during those 30mins I would never have believed.

After observing me trying to walk, the chiropractor asked me to hold my fists out infant of me whilst he pressed downwards on them, with me struggling to resist him and falling forwards. He then started working on my right foot. I thought he was a fruit cake as the pain was in my back. Then he performed the test again and I was able to resist his pressure on my fists, and remain standing upright. I told him that maybe he was tricking me and not applying the same pressure. His reply was 'why is it your standing perfectly upright then'?

He was right, the pain had gone and I was standing straight. The chiro told me I had a fallen arch in my right foot, causing my knee to bend in when walking, which in turn had weakened my back. After correcting my foot I was mended.

I then agreed to have a pair of orthotic insoles made in order to keep my arches supported. Wheres on Ventura they were getting folk to walk over a kind of ink pad, my chiro had an electronic mat which I walked over. On the computer screen it showed how my foot impact with the ground, compared to how it should fall. A pair of bespoke orthotic insoles were them made for me. These are much more substantial than those sold by P&O and the computerised foot fall analysis seemed much better than the Venuras ink pad.

To summarise, I would phone a few local specialists/chiropractors and see if they offer this service. They may seem expensive but when suffering with my back pain I would have happily paid ££thousands for a cure.

I think there is a point to the invitation as it lets ALL passengers new and old know there is a party going on. Take the case of Big Stevie (by the way' date=' great first cruise review), he's a new cruiser and had no idea that the Welcome Party existed, or why! so passed through the throng taking a drink or two with him - an invitation might well have said to him and others new to cruising with P&O, here is an occasion to attend. Thing is it must be very easy to miss out on an event when only listed in the Horizon paper, especially on the second day out.

It is interesting to see from comments that Ventura seems to be the only ship dropping the invite - perhaps testing the water as to eventually dropping it altogether throughout the fleet, which would be a shame as it is an opportunity to see who the senior officers are.

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111 P&O cruises - 12 in the pipeline[/quote']

 

I fully agree with you Victoria. Even the Horizon newsletter highlighting the following days schedule isn't available until around 10pm. Surely most of the events are planned well in advance and so could be advertised to passengers right from the beginning of the cruise, with maybe a nightly newsletter with any additions?

For someone just wanting convenient stop over the night before a cruise then the Holiday Inn is more than adequate. But as somewhere special for a birthday then its a no. Our room looked a bit dated but was perfect for what we wanted. Id look somewhere else for a posh room to help celebrate a birthday.

Ahh, yes I did see the Captains talk in the atrium. We only realised about it as we were walking through the atrium whilst lost, and were handed a complimentary drink (or two). We listened for a short while but quickly lost interest and wandered off to get lost on a different deck.

No such invites for us first timers on Ventura. I thought the Captain visiting the kids club would be a great idea and a memory that would stay with the kids forever, maybe even gaining future new cruisers in years to come.

Disembarking

A notice was left in our cabin the previous night informing us of our disembarkation time of 10:15am. We were to leave our cases outside our room by 8:15pm that evening. A further case could be put out during the night if needed.

We went for breakfast about 8am and then sat around with everyone else waiting for our announcement to leave the ship. Something had gone wrong with the air bridge and the whole disembarkation process went to pot with everyone being allowed to simply get off the ship as they pleased.

We were guided to the luggage area where cases were grouped according to deck numbers. We grabbed our cases, left the terminal and phoned our free taxi back to the Holiday Inn to get our car.

Southampton port from top deck of Ventura

Luggage collection area

My post cruise thoughts

So with our first ever cruise is at an end I can say that we did really enjoy it, but there were a number of frustrations….

The ship was predominantly elderly folk, maybe because of the Strictly Come Dancing theme?. Nothing wrong with that, but a ship with younger passengers would have been preferable and a few more kids for our son to play with. We always seem to be stuck behind some elderly folk in the corridors and walkways, often taking ages to get past them. Not their fault of course, but it did get a little frustrating.

The incredibly short days at port were frustrating, only having 2hrs ashore at Ajaccio was a real shame. The long queues to get through port security when getting back to the ship were annoying and reduced our time ashore.

Ventura is so large that I never fully found my way around her. Just as I thought I knew where I needed to go, i’d get lost.

Having to arrive at an entertainment venue 1hr before the show to secure a seat was also annoying.

Crew - The visible crew is almost 100% foreign and they provided faultless service. They were extremely polite and nothing was too much trouble, referring to us as sir/madam all the time and constantly stopping to allow us toppers in front of them if we met in a walkway etc. Now heres where I have a bit of a problem, and this isn't a criticism of the staff….

Whilst they were incredibly polite to passengers, I did get the feeling that they were frightened of putting a foot wrong, as if there are perhaps hundreds of other people ready to fill their position if they did something wrong and got sacked. This made me a little uncomfortable to be honest, especially being called Sir all the time. Im a working class bloke and the staff tended to view passengers as being above them, no doubt they are told to do so? I told our cabin steward he needn't refer to me as Sir as I'm just an ordinary bloke, just like him. I always insisted on allowing the crew in front of me if we met in a walkway, seeing as they have work to do whereas I am at leisure. As I say, not a criticism of the crew, more of P&O’s policy?

Maybe if we cruise again we might try a different cruise company just for a change of scenery and a different experience?

The above are just my observations from my holiday, and not complaints or criticisms. Others will no doubt be along soon to tell me i should have done things differently!!

Thanks for reading