The Cruise - Part 3 (P&O: This is NOT how to Holiday!)

So, we finally get to part 3 of the cruise. Why so long between posts? Well, I wanted to give P&O a chance to be nice.

Unfortunately P&O Cruises "like to take you for a ride" in more ways that one.

Be warned... The gauntlets are off. There's no bad language here but I'm not going to spare P&O cruises the embarrassment associated with their misdeeds.

Shore leave

One thing you notice about all the P&O advertisements are those pictures of beautiful islands. In fact that's why people go on cruises - to go to islands, not to spend eight days trapped on a ship. Sure, there's parties on the ships for the young ones but for families... forget it.

We were promised three islands; New Caledonia, Mystery Island and the Isle of Pines. We got one - the transshipment port of Luganville. It was a container yard plus a few broken shops with no beach in sight. It had also been raining for three days.

In fact, it was so bad that when we got home Kaelan burst into tears when one of the P&O's lying advertisements came on the TV. "That is what it was supposed to be like!", he shouted.

Heck! If a child on the autism spectrum with learning difficulties can burst into tears at the injustice of a soulless company like P&O, then there's got to be something wrong.

So, lets have a look at Luganville;

Kaelan looking at Luganville in disgust....

You can see that there's no pretty beaches there.

In fact, just so you can see why we're annoyed with P&O, I've made a poster to send to all my friends..

Arrests on the P&O Cruise

So, given the utterly rubbish nature of our P&O cruise and the facts that;

• the pools were closed for most of the trip.
• the side and front decks were closed for most of the trip
• the trip was so rough that my son fell out of bed from the top bunk
• they attempted to serve us disgusting six-day old prawns (and made everyone wait in line for more than 30 minutes to get them).
• they didn't go to ANY of the three islands they promised.
• they tried to charge me $10 for simply sitting in a deck chair
• they cancelled shows.

You could be forgiven for thinking that's it - and I think you could probably understand that by the end of eight days trapped on a rusty rocky boat that most of the people onboard were no longer friendly.

So, as we approached Sydney, everyone was relieved that the trip was coming to an end but some frustrated people decided to jump in the pool - even though it was netted.

The P&O guards grabbed them, handcuffed them and took them off to the brig.

It happened several times over - YES, people really were that frustrated on the trip. In the end, we saw that about 12 people were arrested. The P&O's total disregard for their passengers might have made me vomit but I didn't - after all, they'd probably want to arrest me for that too.

NEVER AGAIN P&O! - For the amount of money we paid, we could have FLOWN to a resort where there was guaranteed pool access and good weather.

The Aftermath

We complained and we probably would have been happy with a third of the costs cut off a future trip which actually reached its destination but no - P&O replied instead with a letter telling us all about how hard it was to provide a good holiday and why they never offer compensation.

You don't get anything back from insurance either - they've disclaimed themselves too well for that.

I'll leave you with this youtube video clip of the Pacific Sun, the boat we went on. This didn't happen on our trip but it gives you a taste of what you might expect.