September 2024. My parents in law have been wanting to go on a cruise for a while now but didn’t feel like going on their own so they tagged along with Sam and I. My father in law’s ultimate destination would be the Norwegian Fjords, combined with the new that soon-ish cruises to the Fjords would be limited (and thus price sky-rocketing) we decided to cruise to the Norwegian Fjords. Considering I have to take time off at work outside of major school holidays we were looking at September-October, combined with my wish to cruise for longer than a week we ended up with a P&O cruise out of Southampton.
As Aurora is an older and smaller ship it offers less dining options than you would find on newer and bigger ships on both P&O and other cruise lines.
The Single buffet was on deck 12 ‘Lido‘ Aft, called the Horizon Restaurant. It was a rather small and poor offering. It also shut down completely a few times a day, leaving you with no options to have something to eat.
For example after the ‘afternoon’ offering the buffet shuttered completely at 17:00 before reopening again for dinner at 18:00.
This meant that if you arrived late from a port excursion it could be that you had to wait an hour before you could grab something to eat, something that I have never seen on any other cruise line. As the buffet was rather small it was often a pandemonium to find a seat or being able to grab something from the foodstands.
While the main meal time offerings where rather poor, we felt that the afternoon and midnight buffets often offered a slightly better spread (not in the number of items but the sort of items on offer).
It was also very hard to flag down a waiter to order drinks other than the self-serve Coffee, tea or water. We often waited 30 to 45 minutes before being served any other drink. In the morning it is also impossible to order speciality coffees in the buffet restaurant, having to go fetch them yourself in the Raffles bar.
However if you want to bring your speciality coffee from the Raffles bar to the breakfast buffet to drink along with your breakfast you are required to use a reusable personal cup, which you can buy at the bar but is not included in your drinks package (a lot of unnecessary red tape).
In the evening part of the buffet transformed into The Beach House, a speciality dining restaurant serving up things like steaks and hamburgers. Even though the prices were really good value compared to other cruise lines, the atmosphere of a cordoned off section with high-school cafeteria charm didn’t enthuse us to spend extra money to eat at this speciality venue.
Further forward on deck 12 in between the covered Crystal Pool and the open air Riviera Pool there was the Lido Grill. During the day this offered pepperoni pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers and fries. While the food was relatively good at this outlet, it was only opened on sea days and not during port days, when the fast grab and go food would be a prefect snack after coming from a shore excursion.
While on most cruise lines they close the main restaurant during lunch on port days and open up the poolside grill, P&O decided to do it in inverse.
The next dining options where located on deck 7. There was the Glass House, a wine bar which also served a pub-like menu. Even though the prices were really reasonable to have dinner in here, we opted not to as the menu wasn’t very special.
We only once drank a galls of wine in here, but as there is an open stairwell to the sports bar below you could hear the screaming of the public watching the sports games below ruining the tranquil atmosphere.
Around the atrium there was the Raffles coffee bar. While this is the main space where you could get speciality teas and coffees, they also offered some cakes sandwiches and other light bites if you fancied a light snack instead of a full meal.
Outside of the extra-charge speciality coffees and teas the food at Raffles was inclusive.
At the opposite side of the Atrium there was Sindhu the only true, fancy speciality restaurant on the ship. While the venue looked absolutely fantastic, the Indian themed menu did not appeal to our taste-buds, especially to those of my parents in law that prefer a bland taste. If I was travelling with Timothy we probably would have tried it out, but with my parent in law we decided against it.
The remaining (and best) dining options where the main restaurants on deck 6. In the Aft you had the Alexandria Restaurant, only open in the evenings and reserved for those with a fixed table and dining time.
As we had opted for the Flexible dining we were assigned to the mid-ship Medina Restaurant, which was also opened to everyone for breakfast and lunch every day (both on port and sea days). On the first sea day they also served a proper afternoon tea in this restaurant, however as my mother in law had a hairdresser appointment at that time we didn’t partake.
Even though the Horizon newsletter mentioned that they would be serving another afternoon tea service on the last sea day of the cruise, we turned up at a completely empty restaurant, lacking even staff. Apparently there was a printing error and there wouldn’t be a second proper afternoon tea service, which was a bummer.
We also enjoyed three gala evenings in which the restaurant served a more elaborate five-course menu. While the first and last gala evening had a splendid menu, the middle one was underwhelming.
All in all we had mostly good food here in the main dining room, lunch and dinner had a different menu each day while breakfast was always the same menu.
At breakfast it was also impossible to order some bread with cold cuts like cheese or ham, this shouldn’t be hard thing to add to the menu for people that are not keen on having a hot breakfast every day.
The portion sizes could also use some standardizing, as sometimes a course could be very generously sized making sure you were stuffed to finish it all while at other times the portion was rather small and left you hungry.
It was impossible to predict the portion size in advance, so this could use some tweaking. Service could be hit and miss, while some quadrants had excellent staff going above and beyond for you and providing the perfect service.
Other quadrants had terrible staff that couldn’t care less about you, even going as far as to take away your full glasses of drinks to make sure you would leave the table as soon as possible, which is terrible service.
In the end we opted to eat most of our meals at the main dining room as there they offered the best quality of dishes and the nicest atmosphere to eat in. At the buffet you sometimes had to fight for a seat or get some food while it was hard to find someone to serve you a drink.
Every time we ate at the buffet we regretted it instantly and wished we had gone to the main restaurant. The main reason we didn’t go to the main restaurant at times where the limited opening hours.
They closed breakfast at 9:00 which is way too early on a holiday when you might want to lie in and have a later breakfast.
While the lunch between 12:00 and 13:30 is somewhat acceptable, it is quite early if you are in port and wish to do an excursion.
On the food front P&O could do some tweaking in the offer and opening hours of their service. While the food we had was all of good enough quality it pales in comparison to cruise lines like Celebrity and Princess and you could feel that the cruise line had been penny pinching to save on costs.
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