Oriana -Brisbane to Hong Kong - Feb 09

[DennisN]

G'day,

 

Has anyone been on the Oriana?

 

Looking around for our next cruise I saw in the travel pages of the Brisbane Sunday Mail today:

 

"Oriana - Brisbane to Hong Kong [12 nights] from $3,095 which includes return airfare."

 

Stops at Whitsundays, Cairns, and then Rabaul on the way north.

 

We lived in Hong Kong for a couple of years way back in the 70s - thought it might be a good opportunity to return to the former British Colony for another look round.

 

I should imagine the Oriana would be very, very British - like the old P&O ships were.:eek: :) :p

 

Not a bad thing actually.:cool:

 

Any thoughts??

[Witchymob]

Hi Dennis,

We were on Oriana this year as part of the world cruise, did Singapore to Fremantle. She is a very nice ship indeed, although as you might expect the passengers are mostly in the senior citizens age group, we are in our mid 50s and were among the younger passengers! Quite a lot of aussies were on, much to the annoyance of some of the brits, Ship is very British in most respects, food, entertainment etc, I grew up in the UK so I don't find it a problem, my aussie hubby finds it quite amusing telling the brits tale tales of life in Oz. We had pretty rough weather from Vietnam all the way round Hong Kong, Shanghai, Taiwan and through the Phillipine islands, we had a cabin forward on D deck and found it moved about rather too much, back further was fine but we could not get a cabin that was more amidships. Plenty of space on Oriana, if weather is good the pool deck is very well spread out and no probs getting a sun lounger. Most of the rooms not too crowded either, sometimes hard to believe it is a full ship, after going to the Uk on Adonia we found Oriana much less crowded. We have been on Oriana twice now and enjoyed it both times, the refit has really smartened her up. The Crows Nest is a great room, unfortunately the smoke from the smokers side drifts across, as is the Lords Tavern.

[DennisN]

Thanks for the headsup Witchymob.

 

Some good info there.

 

Anyway, I put in a temporary booking for the voyage with P&O on Monday - and cancelled it today.

 

Reason?

 

They refused to honour the ad, said they don't do Fly/Cruise, and wanted to charge me around $400 per passenger extra on any of the quoted prices because they said they only deal with Qantas and could not get those sort of airfare deals as advertised in the particular advertisement.

 

They told me that the ad was submitted by travel agents and those prices had nothing to do with P&O.

 

Very strange considering the ad was under the P&O Cruises World Voyages logo, directed the enquirer to the P&O Australian website in the first instance, briefly mentioned a travel agent only in passing, it had a P&O ad catalog number, and it gave the A.B,N, of P&O in the small print at the bottom.

 

There was absolutely nothing to suggest that the ad had been placed by anyone other than P&O - and definitely nothing to infer it had been placed by travel agents.

 

In fact "travel agents" only got a 4 word phrase in the whole ad.

 

Yet they tried to tell me it was not their ad.

 

A more blatant case of misrepresentation I have never seen, and in fact I am considering referrring it to the Trade Practices authorities in Qld.

 

I think they have lost a customer with me