Well, as usual, I've failed to do the last couple of days of updates. However, just so I can remind myself about it in future - here's the final story.
On Saturday we finally got the promised detail about disembarkation. I knew they'd want us out of the cabin and off the ship quickly, however, we need to be out of our cabins by 6:30!!! and everyone will be off the ship by 8am. That's earlier than I expected - usually it's out of the cabin by around 8:30 and everyone off the ship by 10:00 or so.
In the previous update I said I'd talk some more about the ship today, so here it is.
Food.
As usual on a cruise ship there's food available everywhere, however the setup on the Pacific Aria is a little different from most others that we've been on.
Buffet - other ships we have been on have a self service buffet, invariably on one of the upper decks. In place of a buffet, Pacific Aria has an area called the Pantry which is I guess a little more like a shopping centre food court. There are about 8 different stations each of which has different sorts of food, and it's served out to you by the server rather than you picking it up. Much more hygienic.
The quality of the food in the Pantry was quite ok. We never had trouble finding a seat - basically it was fine.
Main Dining Room - this was called the Waterfront and we only went there once, for dinner. The food was ok apart from issues with the temperature. We found here and in the specialty dining rooms that the hot food was never quite hot enough. And things that were meant to be cool were never quite cool enough.
Angelo's and Dragon Lady - these are two specialty restaurants, which unusually have no cover charge. We went to both of them and like the Waterfront, the food was good but the temperature was questionable. Angelo's had a couple of menu items that came as a surprise - a Sardine Bruschetta which no-one at the table thought was quite what a bruschetta should be but was quite nice, and a dessert which everyone ordering it thought would be ice-cream, but wasn't. I was a bit concerned about Dragon Lady - it features Chinese, Thai, Indian and Japanese food, and the way they advertise it sounds like it would all be hot and spicy, which doesn't appeal to me at all. However, it was quite nice.
Salt Grill by Luke Mangan - $49 per head cover charge (plus extra again for special items like oysters). Worth every cent. The only off-putting thing was that P&O had deemed Paul and I to be 'VIP' guests and one of the things we got was a free bottle of wine with dinner at the Salt Grill. I'm not at all a wine expert but even I could tell that the standard of the wine they offered wasn't up to the standard of the food.
Service at all the restaurants was good, but you could pick one of the little things that makes P&O probably a 3 star cruise line rather than 4 - there isn't time for the staff to offer to add pepper to your meal. I think this is a good thing because I never want pepper, but it's something that most people seem to appreciate, and miss when they don't get it.
Entertainment
Don't ask me - as usual we didn't get to a single show. The rest of the family attended quite a few and most reports were positive (although a comedian got a down vote for being rude rather than funny).
We did spend a bit of time playing the poker machines and for a change came out significantly ahead - that was nice!
Bars and Drinks
Cocktails - ok apart from a minor issue over their refusal to honour the words on a voucher they'd given us. The voucher said quite clearly that it was for $20 off a single drink order. However, when Adam and I tried to use it they wouldn't honour this - they were quite happy to give us two drinks for up to $11.50 each (which of course comes to more than $20!) but they wouldn't consider selling us an $11.50 drink and a $12.50 drink and letting us pay the amount over $20. In fact the bar tender got really snaky about it. Not a huge issue but irritating; we were asking for less dollar value than they were offering and it wasn't going to happen.
They did have cider which was good, although we had the same old problem of waiters having trouble with our accent and assuming we want soda. Normally we'd deal with this by finding out the brand of cider on offer and asking for it by brand, or pointing to it on the beer and wine list. However, for some reason it seemed that every bar had different cider and none of them had complete beer and wine lists. For future cruises, I'm seriously going to get a credit card sized piece of cardboard, write "Cider please" on it and get it plasticised so I can just show it to the waiter.
Adam and I had the soft drink package and it really wasn't worth it for me - although it was convenient to get a soft drink whenever I wanted one, the drinks were never really cold (because they were poured from cans and you didn't get a whole can, you got a glass full on top of ice, so your drink could have been sitting open on the bar for some time). Again, not a huge issue but not great either.
Coffee - goes without saying that the free stuff on tap in the Pantry was unspeakable while the paid coffees were acceptable but only just (coffee on a cruise ship is never going to be good because the milk isn't fresh).
Bars and open areas
Plenty of places to sit and chat. Basically a typical, small cruise ship.
Shops
Again, pretty typical cruise ship stuff - limited range and expensive. It was interesting to see that the 'general store' type shop was actually open while we were in port; that usually doesn't happen. I was very tempted by a lovely orange Guess handbag but I managed to avoid the issue.
Laundry
We weren't planning to wash clothes but in the end we did. I've never seen a smaller laundry than the one on our floor - there are people who wouldn't have been able to fit into the room! Four washing machines and four dryers; $3 a wash and $3 for the dryer. And, they had large containers of laundry detergent hooked up - included in the price. (We had our own though, so we used it). All ok although I'd imagine on a longer cruise with lots of people trying to use the laundry it could get crowded and heated in there.....
Gym and Spa
I'm a bad person, I didn't even look at the gym. I also didn't go anywhere near the spa. We did try walking around the promenade deck on the first day, but they were doing a lot of repair work so it wasn't possible to do a full circuit. Normally it would be though, this was clearly just temporary.
Shore excursions
Fairly well organised although as usual dearer than doing it yourself.
Overall - perfectly acceptable little ship. P&O Australia hasn't done themselves any favours by trying to sell it as 'new' because it isn't; the redecoration of the public areas has been done very nicely but once you get into the cabins it's clearly not a new ship. Of course, anyone who cares about their money would hopefully do some research and be aware of this, but not everyone does.
Disembarkation
Well, as I mentioned above, it was very early. However, we managed to get breakfast and all went our own separate ways - I had a shuttle booked to take me to the airport while Paul and Adam were picked up and went to visit Mother then again went their own separate ways (Adam to the Gold Coast and Paul to Al's place). I got to the airport and had to wait for an hour or so to check in. Then I caught the Airtrain into the city to fill in some time.
The flight home was uneventful. I managed to pay for the car parking which cost exactly what the online estimator had predicted ($160 for 9 and a bit days) and found the Falcon without too much drama.
Now, as I'm writing this, it's only 7 weeks until we leave Australia for the next big adventure!
