It started badly... 20 min wait on plane for buses to port. Buses from airport were a shambles and way overcrowded. Then a 20 min stand in line in 29C heat to embark. Not a good start. However, things did improve. Staff throughout the cruise were generally pretty good but some were surly and unhelpful especially in the pub. Room was good (balcony with sofa on Deck A) but the balconies on Britannia are very small. For such a new ship I would have expected to see my account on the TV but that is not available. Room maid was pretty good but made up our room on departure morning before we had left making it much more difficult for us to check that we had everything. Food in main dining room pretty good and Freedom Dining worked well for us. Buffet had great choice but quality varied greatly. All sunbed areas very crowded and with no space between beds made it seem very crowded indeed. Specialty dining was good (Sindhu and Limelight Club) but expensive given we had aleady paid for food in the cruise price. Glasshouse excellent. Good choices of wine at reasonable prices. In fact all drinks on board were reasonably priced at not much more than pub prices. We used the Retreat and it was pretty good alleviating the sunbed squash for a while but the food in the Retreat is not great and is often dried and tired. We were charged for a spa treatment we didn't have and it took several visits to get it resolved. Wife had a spa treatment and the masseuse clearly wasn't qualified and forgot to do one side! We were not at all happy with the staff in the spa. We had the middle internet package and it worked without fault throughout the ship and was pretty fast but no streaming on that package. Streaming was double the price! Disembarkation was at about 10.30am so it was a pity we had to vacate the room at 8am but the disembarkation was painless.

We did feel that the holiday was one continuous hard sell from P&O and that aspect we didn't like but the food, service and the ship were all pretty good generally and we enjoyed the cruise overall. We would book P&O and Britannia again.