We chose this cruise because we wanted to do something special for New Year's 2017/18. As not many cruises go to the South Pacific from Melbourne, we flew up to Sydney to board P&O Pacfic Eden for a 12 night cruise to Vanuatu and New Caledonia. Before I talk about the cruise I would briefly like to mention P&O's room allocation procedure. Unlike Princess, which you usually choose not only cabin type and deck and number when you book (and which results in different prices within the one category) with P&O unless you wish to pay extra to pick your cabin, this is done automatically within the type you select, eg. interior, oceanview etc.. On the P&O cruise control website it says that you can print your documentation two weeks before the sail date. We tried to do this but the website said, that it can't be done as the rooms hadn't been allocated yet. When I rang P&O they informed me that room allocation could occur up to one day before the sail date, which I personally think is unsatisfactory, as there may be an issue with room location. I was manually emailed the documentation, but when we picked up our documents from Escape Travel, the consultant didn't believe me until i showed him the error.

The embarkation procedure for the cruise was very good, with only a small wait time. When we have sailed on Princess, their wait times have been quite a bit longer and they are fairly rigid with making you wait until your boarding number is called. So we got on and were settled in fairly quickly. I shall provide a brief paragraph on each of the main areas of the cruise.

The ship Pacific Eden was smaller than the other ship Pacific Jewel which we went on and was newer looking with more of a boutique and elegant feel to it. Everything was fairly accessible, although some corridors led to dead ends which could make finding some areas more troublesome. Read more