Visit to Ponta Delgada on her way to the Caribbean

The Azores Cruise Club kindly sent us these images showing ORIANA during her yesterday's call to the capital of the Azores, Ponta Delgada. This was the first time ORIANA visited Ponta Delgada with the new concept and look.

According to the ACC, 56 passengers who missed embarkation in Southampton, did so yesterday in Ponta Delgada on a very sucessful operation.

ORIANA berthed alongside the expedition cruise ship ISLAND SKY in Ponta Delgada

She's currently undertaking a Caribbean Transatlantic cruise based in Southampton, a well known voyage in the british market. After her full day call P&O's handsome lady left inbound St. John's Antigua, one of the Caribbean highlight destinations she'll visit in this cruise. Return home is made via Funchal, Madeira.

Images: António Rebelo, Bruno Rodrigues, Eduardo Wallenstein - Azores Cruise Club.

ORIANA refit video

Today P&O released via their Youtoube page a timelapse video of ORIANA during her month long video last year.
The video shown below focuses mainly on showing the addition of the duck tail and the related removal and re installation of the propellers and shafts.
The video also confirms in its description that "To enable the conversion of the children's areas to additional cabins, a duck tail was fitted to her stern"
Confirming our reports last year of  the reason for its addition.

ORIANA in Southampton

After a day crossing the infamous Bay of Biscay ORIANA in true spirit docked in her home port Southampton at 2:45 am after almost effortlessly cutting through the 7 metre waves ORIANA approached the Isle of Wight yesterday evening at the speed of 25.4knots over a knot faster than her maximum service speed and a speed which all but a few other modern liners would find almost impossible to match

Taken from her fleet mate VENTURA who was occupying the Ocean Cruise Terminal ORIANA is seen docked in the Mayflower Cruise and under the cover of a rainy twilight was joined by Fred Olsen's BLACK WATCH docking in the neighboring City Terminal as shown below.

While ORIANA herself was to be seen in the Mayflower terminal passengers on board VENTURA could also seen another reminder of P&O's proudest and most distinguished fleet member with her name written on the dock side to commemorate the occasion of her first docking in the new Ocean Terminal in 2009 as seen in the image below.

Departing Southampton earlier this evening ORIANA is now undertaking a 22 night Caribbean transatlantic cruise with her first port of call in Ponta Delgada before heading out across the Atlantic.

Photos Copyright: Steve Martin

Interview with ORIANA's band leader

Recently on UK Holiday & Cruise Channel on its nightly show Cruising With the Stars interviewed the leader of ORIANA's guest band Natural High, Johnny Baxter, talking about various aspects of his career from beginning in Liverpool to humorous incident on board QE2 and about the bands 15 year connection with ORIANA.

A look at ORIANA’s popularity

As ORIANA reaches her 17th year in service she remains a popular member of the P&O fleet, but what is it exactly that keeps ORIANA popular in this day and age of the floating apartment block with all kinds of novel on board entertainment?

Over the next few weekly posts we will take a look and see if we can come up with an answer to that question.

Firstly by taking a look at the overall layout and design of ORIANA and her public rooms we can see that ORIANA is vastly different ship to the typical modern cruise ship most of which debut for the US market ORIANA on the other hand has her roots firmly implanted in the UK market she was built to serve which is vastly different as we have discussed in other posts.

The first and most noticeable difference which is immediately evident is of course her beautiful exterior lines the likes of which have not been seen since the introduction of ORIANA and AURORA in 1995 and 2000 respectively. To the fare paying passenger especially the more experienced passenger a good sign in a ship is when it looks like a ship from the exterior in this respect ORIANA excels and from purely that point.

ORIANA’s internal design focuses on the different tendencies of the British holiday maker who prefer smaller public spaces and more of venues choice and more subtle surroundings as opposed to the American clientèle who prefer larger spaces.

Below is a comparison of ORIANA’s promenade deck with the Crown Class AZURA showing the vast difference between the two.

As can be seen from the deck plan ORIANA’s public rooms are smaller and more numerous than those on board AZURA, ORIANA also having the advantage of having the simple yet effective feature of having an interior with the public rooms coming off from it rather than the tendency of the newer ships which require passengers to pass through rooms to reach other rooms on board.

Another difference which ORIANA features compared with the newer ships relates to her décor in the design it features motifs and aspects relating to a traditional ships design giving her passengers a feeling of relationship to seafaring heritage which can be seen by the wood used in her cabins giving them a nautical feeling reminding the passengers that they are indeed on board a ship compared to the American ships which tend to replicate the feel and image of a hotel which is what the Americans passengers generally expect from a cruise liner. As can be seen below in the comparison to a Suite on board ORIANA (top) and GRAND PRINCESS (Bottom)

Beginning next week we will compare ORIANA in detail with her newer fleet mate the Crown Class VENTURA to see how the ship compares in terms of atmosphere, décor to see if we can answer the question of ORIANA's popularity.