Food on Oriana

Discussions about anything related to Oriana

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Whynd1
First Officer
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Joined: February 2013
Location: Gower, Swansea

Food on Oriana

#1

Post by Whynd1 »

There seems to be a lot of comments on social media forums as to the food currently being served on Oriana.
I mentioned it in my cruise report but obviously what some passengers like others will dislike. At the moment however it does seem that passengers are not finding the menus to their liking.
Some like us are paying and booking the select venus and others are trying the buffet.Poor servcice in the mdr has also been mentioned and I wondered if this was a combination of the crew having to leave Oriana and the fact that the auto gratutities have ended. We did see some passengers handing over envelopes and this sort of defeats the object, although if you have had excellent service then its nice to give something extra.

Will be waiting to see what the food is like on Arcadia in September.

Lindsey

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barney
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Joined: March 2013
Location: Instow Devon

Re: Food on Oriana

#2

Post by barney »

I must admit that I have never had any real issues with the food on any ship Lindsey.

I've had the odd duff meal but that was sometimes down to my own choice of trying something different.
Sometimes it just wasn't to my liking.

We have got to bare in mind that it is mass catering, not fine dining.

As for bad service, there is no excuse for that under any circumstances.
Freedom dining service level is variable, depending on where you are seated.
Sometimes great, sometimes not so great.
I don't think we have ever had really bad service.

We do use the pay venues quite a bit and on a fourteen nighter, will probably eat in the MDR no more than five or six times.

When we have eaten in there, it's generally been fine.
Maybe fine is not ok for some, but it is for us.

ps -
I also noticed envelopes being handed out.
We didn't.
Last edited by barney on 04 Jul 2019, 09:56, edited 1 time in total.
Empty vessels .. and all that


Topic author
Whynd1
First Officer
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Posts: 1832
Joined: February 2013
Location: Gower, Swansea

Re: Food on Oriana

#3

Post by Whynd1 »

Perhaps it's the age group, which has always handed out envelopes.

The service and food in the beach house and Sindhu were exceptional. Even received chocolates in the cabin the day after from Sindhu,thanking us for eating there,never had that before.

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Mervyn and Trish
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Re: Food on Oriana

#4

Post by Mervyn and Trish »

It defeats the idea of including tips in the price if envelopes are handed out, but each to his own. We won't be doing it.

We were of the first Azura cruise after the auto gratuities ended and our service was excellent.

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david63
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Location: Lancashire

Re: Food on Oriana

#5

Post by david63 »

I have to admit that the latest set of MDR menus is not always to my liking.

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Kenmo1
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Re: Food on Oriana

#6

Post by Kenmo1 »

Fine dining is a bit wasted on us. I'm just grateful that someone else has cooked the meal and is doing the washing up and Ken would happily live on bacon and eggs for breakfast and sausage and mash for dinner if I let him. I am a bit more adventurous than he is but we rarely eat out other than odd meals at pubs etc with friends usually at lunch time. We've just got to hope there is enough variety on the menu for us on Oriana in a couple of weeks time because if not we will be using the buffet more than normal.

Maureen


Ranchi
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Re: Food on Oriana

#7

Post by Ranchi »

We have only once been disappointed with the food served in MDR (over a full cruise, not just the odd dish) and that was on Oriana.It was so disappointing that we were very concerned about a cruise we had booked later in the same year. We need not have worried as the food on subsequent cruises has always been good (& in the case of our latest cruise, on Britannia, very good).
The cruise in question was unusual in its passenger profile. It followed an aborted cruise on Aurora and as I understand it P&O offered many passengers a choice of cruises as compensation. Many took the offer of 24 nights to the Caribbean. Additionally, this cruise was heavily discounted (we certainly hadn’t planned a second cruise that year ( we had already booked our summer cruise) but the offered price was at a rate that we had never seen before or after. We have been on longer cruises before and accept that there will be some aspects of the food that may suffer (eg fresh fruit variety can be limited towards the end of longer cruises) but the quality of food on this cruise was pretty dire. I cannot help but wonder if the possible low revenue taken in for this cruise ( due to heavy discounting & no new money from passengers who had accepted this cruise as compensation for the aborted Aurora cruise) may have affected standard of the offerings in MDR.
Fortunately, we have not encountered problems with P&O’s MDR food in subsequent years.
Last edited by Ranchi on 05 Jul 2019, 05:55, edited 1 time in total.

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