I have a medical condition which prevents me from flying, so my wife and I decided to try this cruise as a test - if we can't fly, we'll float. The only real criteria for the selection was that it was from Brisbane and we could book at short notice.
The on-line booking process was very slick and loads of information provided - apart from anything that was actually happening on the cruise.... We had booked a suite so had priority boarding which went very smoothly. However the baggage tags were just paper. The P&O attendants at the terminal were very nice (they seem to employ everyone's grandmother for some reason) and the one we got stapled the absolute bejeezus out of the tags to reduce the risk of them getting torn off. So we waved our bags off in a pair - saw mine again about five minutes after we got to our suite and inexplicably my wife's about 3 hours after that. We were grateful as a number of other guests had theirs fail to turn up at all due to the tags being ripped off. Note to P&O - stick the hands deeper into the pockets and invest in tags they use at airports. More about the baggage later...
The Princess Dawn has seen too many I'm afraid. There was nothing wrong with our suite except it has seen an awful lot of people. Clean, but worn smooth and a vague feeling you were staying in a Motor Inn somewhere in country NSW. Our stewards were very attentive and added a lot of touches through the four days - fruit in the room, nice little quotes on the mirror and a towel fashioned into a penguin (complete with googly eyes). The bathroom was functional decorated in grey marble which would have been fine if it had been a morgue. BUT loads of water pressure and the hot water was hot. There was a mystery puddle which seemed to manifest itself out of the wall, so we just kept throwing a towel over it and hoped it would go away. The bed was comfy with nice pillows. The balcony was OK, though it looked like it had been painted by someone with a nervous condition because it was everywhere - floor, furniture, door etc.