Cruise General
First 2 Days were rough, so in buffet restaurants (Venezia & Verona) it was very busy at most times as passengers tended to stay sat down after having completed their meals thereby taking up space required by other passengers requiring seating to partake of their meals.

Noticed that as the weather was not so good so that passengers had nowhere else to go, apart back to their cabins as deck seating was not recommended!!
Walking around the ship was not easy due to the bad conditions. Not really any apologies from P & O (not their fault about the weather) but perhaps some films could have been put on to keep passengers occupied. Announcements on deck or communal areas were sometimes difficult to understand. If you were in your cabin at the time of an announcement by the time you turned to the TV channel to hear, the announcement was usually over.

Dress code
It is always strictly adhered to so you tended to feel out of place at times if you are not similarly attired (i.e.in other places such as the Playhouse Theatre on an evening for example)

Cabin (326 - Riviera Deck - 14)
Very good service by Cabin staff especially 'Sagar ' (Steward)
No problems with requests. Cabin was always clean and tidy on returns and milk/coffee/tea/sugar were replenished.

Note: Cabin was EXTREMELY noisy from Lido deck above as passengers moved table & chairs around constantly and staff appeared to relocate them after hours (until 1am!) and early morning (7am!). Because of this we asked to be re-located to another similar cabin, but on a lower deck. This request was accepted and we continued our Cruise on Barbados Deck - Rm.339

Cabin (339 - Barbados Deck - 11)
Not so good service and not so friendly as Cabin staff on R Deck, although no problems with requests and the Cabin was always clean and tidy on returns and milk/coffee/tea/sugar replenished. Unfortunately I did have to ask the Steward (Steveley) at one point to keep the noise down (talking continuously to other staff outside our cabin) at 9pm as we were trying to get some rest.

This was our third cruise on Azura and it was not as good as our previous. They have turned Brodies into a pub with a sports channel that repeated its programmes ever 24 hours. With it being the same Cruise Director as the last cruise the theatre shows were a repeat of the last cruise and somewhat stale. Food was good but the menu in the main dining was repetitive. The entertainment staff were on the young side and the majority of passengers were pensioners so there were times when the entertainment staff found it difficult to find a level of humour to suit all tastes. They seemed to have a problem with quiz questions and there were at times disputes over the correctness of answers to much reliance on the internet.

We travelled on the Caribbean-transatlantic cruise, our third time of doing this type of cruise, having done it on Oceana and Ventura before.
Having travelled on Ventura, we found Azura very similar, same kind of outlay just with different decor and names for the different areas.
As with our previous cruises we found the staff to be very helpful, friendly and polite and nothing was too much trouble.
The food was delicious, there is always lots of choice and even if you can't find something you like, you can ask for it to be made. We had Select Dining, and tried both Sindhu and The White Room which were excellent.
We only went to one evening show, however we felt that there was plenty of choice for those that wanted to go more often. There were also plenty of daytime activities for those that wanted to do them. I enjoyed the beauty talks that were on sea days, a chance to find out about different treatments without having to pay to go to the spa.
We thoroughly enjoyed this cruise and are starting saving for the next one already!

This was our 7th cruise with P&O and 5th time to the caribbean.
We travelled over from leeds to fly from manchester departed from manchester 8-15am by thomas cook airlines.flight took around 9hrs & quite smooth,but i do have to say the inflight entertainment on thomas cook is way out of date on the plane,in fact it was poor.with 3hrs to go to barbados passengers were bored silly,the majority of tv's were turned off.

We arrived at barbados at about 1pm local time straight down the plane steps onto the bus onto shed 2 at the port,photo taken scanned onto the ship dropped our hand luggage off in the cabin,up on top deck sat down with a drink 2-45pm spot on.

How did we find the ship AZURA.we have been on her sister ship ventura twice which we liked but we found we liked azura better.
It appeared they had taken great care in furnishing along with the decorating,it was just right throughout the ship.
We were on deck 5 with a picture window in our cabin,nice cabin with enough room for your clothes,we had 2 large suitcases & hand luggage.In cabin entertainment on the tv was ok with live access to your daily onboard account.bed good slept like a log,could have been the drink! we were just outside the atrium floor,not far to walk.
We liked all the bars,with there differing deco's. bar staff were friendly with a nice smile.
The theatre was nice even though we did not use it much,the show we went to see New york was good.We enjoyed the Malabar & Man Hatten.
Drinks on ship were Cider £2-95,newcastle Brown £2-95.Gin & Tonic's £3-50 sapphire gin.Cocktails of the day £3-50.
We chose freedom dining found it very good,longest we had to wait for a table was 30mins,we were in the Meridan restaurant.
Food on ship was good.
Had a meal in the Sindhu restaurant it was superb,the service was impeccable.£15 cover charge.17 restaurant were asking nearly £30 cover charge declined.
The cinema screen on top deck seemed to work well it was'nt left on all day screaching out,you can take it or leave it.
There were enough sunbeds around the ship for everyone.

Had some good sailaway partys on top deck,have attended quite a few now but they are still enjoyable.

The itinary for the cruise was:- barbados,curacao,aruba,grand turk,tortola,st kitts,st maartin,st lucia and granada.superb islands.

A very enjoyable cruise with friends on a very nice ship.shall be going again.