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.