Celebrity Summit or P&O Azura?

[redridinghood]

Hello everybody,

 

I do appreciate that this is the Celebrity board and so I think I will be amongst Celebrity fans, I just wondered if anyone here has also cruised with P&O and what they consider to be the biggest differences between the 2 lines?

 

I am looking at last minute offers at the moment and it seems to be coming down to 15 nights on the Azura in the Caribbean or 7 nights in San Juan AI at the Intercontinental Resort & Casino and then 7 nights on the Celebrity Eclipse in the Caribbean.

 

We are a UK couple in our late 30's, we enjoy the formality of cruising and we both worked for P&O some years ago. We went on our first cruise as passengers last year on the Ventura. We were slightly disappointed in the standard of the food and we sometimes felt that we did not fit in with the way things were conducted on the ship (the boisterous sailaways and encouragement to join in with games/singing etc). We had a wonderful time though and visited so many of our favourite ports from when we worked on the ships.

 

Any thoughts and advice you could share would be very gratefully received.

[librarylady19]

To clarify: do you mean Eclipse or Summit?

[simon stingray]

We have never cruised with P&O as we were always led to believe that it is a much older crowd-you'll know if this is the case if you have previously worked for them.

 

My partner and I are a similar age to you and feel Celebrity meets our requirements spot on by offering an upmarket experience, not too rowdy, no tacky belly flop contests or non stop announcements,etc but also plenty of other passengers in our age group.

[redridinghood]

To clarify: do you mean Eclipse or Summit?

sorry, I did mean the Summit

[tom_uk]

We've done both P&O - Ventura twice (and a third one booked) but not yet Azura - and Celebrity - Galaxy twice, Solstice once, but not yet the M-class ships.

 

To sum up the differences: P&O is of course very British, Celebrity is very American (more so than most of their passengers realise, I believe). On-board prices are much higher on Celebrity even before the dreaded 15%. We haven't sailed in the Caribbean with P&O but I think that, out of the school holidays, that might be quite an older and formal crowd on P&O. I also think that a seven-night cruise on Celebrity, especially from San Juan, would be more of a mix of ages. I also ought to say that every occasion on cruises when we've met someone who was uncourteous, boorish, ignorant or prejudiced were all on P&O. The americans we met on our Celebrity cruises were unfailingly polite and friendly. (But of course, that was Celebrity in the Med; Celebrity passengers in their own home waters might be different....)

 

I'll be honest, I'm very torn between the two lines. Both have their advantages. In the end it's probably the little things that might sway me towards P&O: kettles & teapots in the cabins! washing & ironing facilities! and familiar food. But all that said, we're thinking of Celebrity for 2012.

 

Here's a link to some blog posts I made when on P&O & Celebrity cruises:

Celebrity: Galaxy in 2007, and Solstice in 2009;

P&O: Oriana in 2008, Ventura in 2008 and 2010.

[redridinghood]

Thank you both for your replies. We have just booked a crossing on the QM2, so that does solve our booking dilemma! Perhaps we will try Celebrity next year.

[Greghouseo]

Hmmm!!!

 

Azura or Summit?

Azura

7 nights cruise and stay or 14 nights cruise?

14 nights cruise

 

Flying to Puerto Rico (on an indirect)

or Barbados on a direct (albeit chartered)

 

No contest.

Much as I am a Celeb/RCCL cheerleader, for a UK couple who enjoy formality would have to be the Azura on the 3 points listed above.