Arcadia Review, January 2006

Cruise J601 Simply Caribbean.

Having just finished our first P&O cruise on Arcadia, after previously cruising on Coral & Island Princess, I offer the following comments and comparisons as our own personal views.

Our first impression of the ship wasn’t too good, the shops had just taken delivery of new stock and the whole Piccadilly area was in chaos with boxes being emptied and shelves restacked. The Palladium had still to be cleaned and was looking very shop soiled and stained with dusty surfaces everywhere, and the whole of the starboard area of deck 2, which was being brightly lit by sunlight, looked shabby with dust in the air, and although some of the previous passengers were still onboard waiting for their flights to be called, this area was quite empty. It did look better later but the general cleanliness of the ship was worse than we experienced with Princess.

As regards the ship design, I can now understand all those negative comments I had read about Arcadia, she is definitely far less glitzy than the Princess ships, and Oceana according to fellow passengers; and her lack of a proper Atrium is a big disappointment. The walkways through the main public decks seem far narrower and the area through the photo gallery gets very congested, probably because they have the photo’s displayed down both sides. In addition she only has one theatre, the Palladium which tends to limit the variety of shows, and even then it’s size is only just comparable with the smaller of the two Princess show lounges, and on exiting the Palladium on deck 2 you have to walk through either the casino or the Rising Sun pub. In fact the layout of both public decks was less than ideal, the shopping area creates another bottleneck, and I thought it pointless to have Intermezzo and the Spinnaker bar next to each other, especially as neither was ever full.

On the plus side the cabins are bigger and the majority have a bath with shower over, which the ladies will probably prefer, but even here the wardrobe space is much less with limited fixed hangers, but your steward will provide extra wire hangers, the safes are tiny and shelf space is barely adequate, but our balcony on E deck was much bigger than we have had on Princess. One other strange quirk is that the bedroom reading lights are just above the pillows and if you want to sit up in bed and read then they are covered, not the best design feature I have ever seen. Contrary to other comments there are plenty of electric sockets above the dressing table, 5 in all, one UK, one European and 3 US, and a razor socket in the bathroom, so if you take a couple of travel plugs and a 2/3 way UK adaptor he can charge his razor and camera battery whilst she uses the hairdryer and curling tongs, and you will still have plenty left over. But here again with only one UK socket and all UK passengers why does P&O use the UK socket for the kettle rather than one of the US ones?

As you would expect the food is first class and the restaurant dining service is friendly and attentive, however I did yearn for the ever present waiter topping up my water and breakfast coffee that comes as standard on American ships, but I did enjoy the genteel way in which my HP sauce was served. The poor design is quite noticeable here; there is only one smallish galley and only one entrance on the port side which has to service the entire restaurant. As a result some waiters have a long way to walk to their serving stations, and most tables are on a route from the galley. After a shaky start we did feel that the Belvedere, self service restaurant, was better than Princess. The seating is more comfortable and it is more spacious, and the choice of food was excellent, however its layout did take time to sink in, but by the end of the cruise you should know where everything is! Of the two alternative restaurants we preferred Arcadian Rhodes; the food in the Orchid was rather too bland for our tastes. In the Restaurant we were on 2nd sitting at 8:30 pm which we found rather late whilst most people on 1st sitting, 6:30 pm seemed to think it too early, on Princess we enjoyed the flexibility of anytime dining, maybe P&O could think about switching sittings half way through a cruise to give a better variety.

We thought the Arcadia theatre troupe was excellent, we went to all the shows and only Bollywood Nights flopped, the rest were very enjoyable. We also enjoyed the variety acts with Martin Daniels probably our favourite, but all of them seemed to go down well
with the British passengers whereas the American acts on Princess are not usually appreciated by British passengers. There were plenty of day time activities, dance classes, table tennis, whist, bingo etc. etc., we didn’t participate much in these activities although my wife went to a couple of the make up and hair care presentations. Quite a number of the courses did have a charge which, according to many regular P&O cruisers, is “another example of the Carnivalisation”.

Unfortunately we did feel that the deck attendants were not as vigilant as on Princess; used glasses and food plates were often left all day and very little attempt was made to keep the sunbathing decks tidy, until they were cleared away after sunset. We also felt that tightly packing the sun beds did not help in keeping the areas tidy since the first thing everyone did was to pull out one or two beds to make themselves a private space. Princess use small tables between every two or three sun beds and this provides enough privacy and avoids spare sun beds littering the rest of the deck.

The cyb@centre is OK but pricey, and you cannot use Wanadoo webmail, so for Wanadoo users ensure you have a list of e-mail addresses with you and prepare to use Mail2web or similar, which is just as convenient but each logon is only specific to ONE e-mail account.

What would be our overall rating for Arcadia, probably 7 or a weak 8, compared with a high 9 for Princess. Would we book an Arcadia cruise again, of course we would if the itinerary or price were right, after all despite any criticisms this is 5 star cruising and a wonderful way to spend a one or two week holiday being pampered and cosseted without a care in the world.

One final point regarding the flights, I now have to agree with all the complainers that the seating is just too cramped, P&O should look at this and charter airlines that offer more space, even if the extra cost has to go on the price. However the direct flights from your local airport with the luggage going straight to your cabin and you going directly off the plane onto a coach cannot be bettered, this is a really big benefit compared with having to fly via Heathrow.