First Review Of Britannia

[towny44]

I found this reveiew on another forum but thought it was quite a good comprehensive first review of the new ship which might be useful to share.

http://www.silvertraveladvisor.com/revi ... -britannia

[GillD46]

Very interesting.thank you for sharing the link.

[oldtimer]

Interesting report, disappointed to read about queue on stairs to the restaurant, this was a problem on Azura and I think also Ventura. Elderly people with walking sticks on the stairs, those more disabled used the lift which opened just in front of restaurant entrance and at head of stairs queue which resulted in a bottleneck and not enough room for people to exit lift. This would not pass any health and safety checks and I am amazed that P & O have not learned this lesson when designing Britannia.

[towny44]

Interesting report, disappointed to read about queue on stairs to the restaurant, this was a problem on Azura and I think also Ventura. Elderly people with walking sticks on the stairs, those more disabled used the lift which opened just in front of restaurant entrance and at head of stairs queue which resulted in a bottleneck and not enough room for people to exit lift. This would not pass any health and safety checks and I am amazed that P & O have not learned this lesson when designing Britannia.

You make a very good case for using Freedom Dining rather than Club, generally queues on freedom are much shorter, if at all.

[poole boy]

towny I do disagree with you re length of wait on freedom dinning as when we were on oceana to canaries November 2014 p&o booked over 1100 people on freedom and the wait was nearly an hour 2 people really complained strongly and were moved to our table for the rest of the cruise
graham

[Manoverboard]

Thanks for providing the link .

Freedom Dining is obviously the way forward, contra to the out dated opinions of some, and I certainly did enjoy reading about the increased number of food opportunities within this ship.

Just need a suitable itinerary and a balcony cabin at a knock down price ... and off we go.

[JenniC]

Have to be honest, we gave never waited more than 30 mins for Freedom, but I guess that is because we are so sociable, we don't care who we sit with...lol

[Jan Rosser]

Have to be honest, we gave never waited more than 30 mins for Freedom, but I guess that is because we are so sociable, we don't care who we sit with...lol

I can confirm that - Jenni and Steve at very sociable

[GillD46]

I rather suspect that although we have booked Freedom dining, we shan't bother with it at all and will just choose the selecting dining venues.

[CaroleF]

We have just come off Oceana and people were queuing for Freedom Dining at 5.30! Seems ridiculous to me. There was an appeal in Horizon asking people to wait until later to dine. It appears everyone wants to eat at 6.30.

Carole

[Dancing Queen]

This is what amuses me, if people want to dine at 6.30pm why do they book freedom .. why not just book club

[oldbluefox]

If everyone wants to dine at 6.30 why don't they just go Club Dining First sitting? Queuing at 6.30 seems to negate the whole point of Freedom dining to me.
Is it me? Am I missing something here?

[Stephen]

We prefer freedom dining and the flexibility it offers.
Never had a problem with long waits. And if we did have a short wait of say 20 - 30 minutes we would be given a bleeper and off we would go for another drink at the bar. And we can almost guarantee that as soon as we had sat down with our drinks the bleeper would go off. No problem though, just take them with you.

[Stephen]

If everyone wants to dine at 6.30 why don't they just go Club Dining First sitting? Queuing at 6.30 seems to negate the whole point of Freedom dining to me.
Is it me? Am I missing something here?

Agree Foxy.

Speaking for ourselves, 6.30 sitting is too early and 8.30 too late. 7-7.30 works for us.

[poole boy]

mob we have tried freedom dinning ourselves and did not like it much prefer 2nd sitting we have not tried any of the big boats yet as we did try arcadia and found that to big for our enjoyment as we do not have outdated opinions we believe in letting people choose what they want unlike you who thinks you are never wrong and that everybody else must agree with you.
graham

[oldbluefox]

Vive la difference!! We've tried first sitting and freedom dining. There are pluses and minuses on both sides but overall we prefer second sitting Club dining, especially if it is accompanied by laughter from Carole and her husband on the next table!!
We are the quiet ones!!

[Manoverboard]

mob we have tried freedom dinning ourselves and did not like it much prefer 2nd sitting we have not tried any of the big boats yet as we did try arcadia and found that to big for our enjoyment as we do not have outdated opinions we believe in letting people choose what they want unlike you who thinks you are never wrong and that everybody else must agree with you.
graham

Hey ho Graham, you old stirrer you ....

I didn't actually have you in mind, twas a feller with a monocle if truth be told.

[Dark Knight]

when all the hype started about Behemoth, sorry Britannia, I did wonder if there would be much more upselling and less included and it would appear I was partially correct, I seem to remember that cakes were free with coffee on Azura and Ventura? and there were less pay for options

Maybe this is the Pando opportunity to raise the bar but at what cost to the traveller?

[GillD46]

As I understand it, the cakes ARE free in Java, providing you buy a drink. Market Cafe is a celebrity chef venue, so food items, which are in a totally different league, are at a cost. Seems reasonable to me.

[Onelife]

Hi Gill

So its..'buy one, get one free' or 'Buy one.. or go without'

Regards

Keith

[daib GC]

If everyone wants to dine at 6.30 why don't they just go Club Dining First sitting? Queuing at 6.30 seems to negate the whole point of Freedom dining to me.
Is it me? Am I missing something here?

Agree Foxy.

Speaking for ourselves, 6.30 sitting is too early and 8.30 too late. 7-7.30 works for us.

This situation regarding people standing in a queue for freedom dining has been reported for some time now. It is clearly people who wanted first sitting and could not get it because of the introduction of freedom dining.

Perhaps they need to move one of the restaurants back to club.

Dai

[towny44]

Dai, I think P&O will have done their research and double checked the passenger demand for club vs freedom before they decided to switch the second MDR to freedom. But if demand changes then they might put an extra first sitting on and only switch the second one to freedom after 8:30, like Princess have been known to.

[barr0ld]

We've never had a problem with Freedom Dining on any of the P&O ships we've been on, and have rarely had to queue at all.

That said, we usually head to the MDR until around 19:15, and are happy to share. On the odd occasion we want to dine at a table for two, we take a pager if need be, and have a G&T or ten until they have room for us.

One of the reasons we enjoy cruising is that it is so stress free. I'll be damned if I'll let eating or disembarking at our ports of call ruin my holiday if ever we have wait to do either....

[Mervyn and Trish]

Will post our review on our return. Just to say we are on Club Dining and have had no problem with queues. We turn up at opening time or a couple of minutes after and go pretty much straight in. There were long queues for Freedom on first day but seems to have eased since

[barr0ld]

We've taken pot luck this time with a saver fare, so will have to see what we end up with dining-wise. I don't really mind what we get, as long as it's not first or second sitting ....