P&O Ferries (Tazzywazzy's voyage épique partie 1)
 Jul 12th, 2006
Advantages:
Cheap and Cheerful - does the job !
Disadvantages:
Not much to do on the boat, not good if you get motion sick !
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Reliability
Comfort
more
  tazzywazzy
About me:
i think i broke ciao's rating system, it doesn't seem to be registering my rates....
Member since:07.03.2006
Reviews:66
Members who trust:90
Review rated by 44 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
Every good story starts at the very beginning, so I guess, if I want this to be a good story I guess I should start at the beginning... ~Mood setting babble~
...Sunday before last, it was a lurverly sunny day, and we were heading home from boyfies folks in Wiltshire, and we were bitching and moaning about wanting to go on holiday this summer, then no more about it....Until Monday afternoon that is, boyfie had been surfing the web and decided that we should go to France and drive around, stay in some bed & breakfasts, drink wine & eat cheese...sounded like a brill idea, we decided to go that coming Thursday afternoon for a long weekend and return Monday evening. So the next day I trotted (well more like dragged my sorry ass to work) and asked my boss, only to find that my colleague had booked off the entire week, so I could have the Monday off....Phone boyfie....come up with Plan B. Plan B worked like this, leave Wednesday afternoon and return Sunday evening, but it was Tuesday, and summer hols are starting, I started to worry that this may be easier said than done....
We didn't do much shopping around, as we were really pushed for time, we checked the tunnel prices and ferry prices. Using tint-er-net we found that we could get la voiture (that's some French speak for ya) on a return ferry crossing on P&O ferries from Dover to Calais for £120 (inc. £10 fuel surcharge) or go on the tunnel for £140, we decided as this was so last minute we would go for the cheaper option and boyfie went ahead and booked it. In the interests of writing a tres bon review, I decided to
check out ease of use of P&O's website, so I googled it and came up with two websites - poferries.com & poferries-online.co.uk.
~poferries.com~ Ok, this seems easy enough to use, there are links to the pages down the left hand side, things like latest offers, mini cruises, onboard experience etc oh and you can translate the site into 6 different languages.
In the middle of the page there is the main booking bit which seems straight forward enough, a series of drop down menus asking you to select your journey type (return, mini cruise or short break), select where you want to go, date (via popup), time, and details of your return journey, how many of you there will be and how you will be travelling i.e. car, car + caravan, car + trailer etc (another pop up menu to select vehicle type) - real easy so far. I thought I would see, how much it would be to leave on roughly the same journey we did - a short break (up to 5 days), leave this afternoon (Wednesday) at 17:20, return Sunday eve (18:20) by car with 2 x adults (& 1 x stuffed monkey) - hit the get quote button and taken through a series of screens letting you select journey times (with varying prices) until I get to the book now button - this test journey got me a quote of £160 (inc. fuel surcharge)....that seemed easy enough! Oh and there was a section where you could add on a priority boarding thingy for your journey, I assume that means buy your queue jumping ticket here for an extra 15 squids!
~Rest of the Site~ The rest of the site is pretty self explanatory and if you are reading this review, then I will assume that you can navigate around a basic internet site. The only thing that I would say is that there is not that much information on the site itself, for example the "onboard experience" link takes you to a page with more links, "eating and drinking sounds good...hmmm... doesn't give me too much information it just tells me to have a drink in their bar oh and that all their ships are non-smoking (but more about that later), it's just a very general overview of all their ships, I am non the wiser as to what will be on my ship and I can't seem to find a link that lets me look at the ships in their fleet or any history or information about the company.
~poferries-online.co.uk~ This opens to a page flashing full of special offers that seem to good to be true, but clicking on a link just takes you back to the above website, oh and I have not yet managed to try and book one of their special offers as advertised on their site - I tried for the £12 each way Dover to Calais trip but couldn't make it happen.
~Getting on the boat~ Ok Wednesday morning, get up, go to work, surf the net, play some computer games, midday, head over to Victoria Park - I don't know what I do but I must get easily distracted, it was about 2 when I arrived at boyfies, had pizza, did some last minute packing, boyfie did not have passport, bank cards or drivers licence packed....typical male behaviour!!!
We were due at Dover at about 5(ish), our ferry left at 18:05 and we had to get there an hour in advance...we left the flat at about 3:00 and found that we arrived at 4 - boyfie doesn't trust my map reading skills and didn't want to miss la ferry! We arrived in lurverly Dover (via M20) and found the port really easily - can't really miss it and everything was clearly signposted, so choose your lane depending on your ferry company, we showed our passports and turned up at the P&O window and were told that we could actually catch the earlier 17:20 ferry (for no extra cost - even though the booking form says that you have to pay to alter your journey) - result! Or is that just what they wanted us to think?
We pulled up into our lane and parked the car in the queue and decided to look and see what there was to offer in the little service building....not much at all, there is a B*gger King, Costa Coffee and a little newsagent type place selling the most random collection of things - some tacky souvenirs, a bucket of candyfloss and overpriced maps of Europe and things to make your car legal in Europe like those sticky things for those lights on the front of your car... ...we decided against the sticky things and boyfie cleverly constructed some out of black duct tape - apparently our British lights dazzle foreign drivers so you need to remember to adapt them!
...It is now 17:05 and we are still not on the ferry, eventually we get on the ferry, and get out our cars, by this time it is 17:20 and the ferry is due to leave..... ~The Boatimificator~
We got out the car and went up the stairs to the passenger bit of the ferry, to be honest, there is not much there either, up the stairs to the first level is a bar/Costa coffee area (Starf**ks really need to get in on the ferry act!) at the front of the boat, moving to the back of the boat....go past la bogs and a small video game arcade, bureau de change, small duty free shop (prices are not that much different to home) more Costa coffee & a bar (avec another games arcade). Second level (from the front of the ship), to your right, a place that claims to be a brassiere, with waiters stood outside...doesn't look that appealing and I never really saw that many people in there, to your left, more Costa, heading towards the back of the boat, a canteen for freight drivers and the "International Food Court" I use inverted commas, because there is not really that much of a selection of food - small bowl of chips, a squid, sausage and chips £4.95, well you get the idea!
At the top of the boat, you can go outside, and this is the smoking area, this is not so fun when it is blowey, there are a couple of picnic style tables to sit at and some benches and that's about it. ~My opinions~
I had never been on a crossed the channel on a boat before, and I have to say I was not that it was a bit of a blah way to travel, the boat itself is clean, it sort of reminds me of a large service station that rocks about a bit, drinks are reasonable, we had two pints of larger and a packet of crisps (oh god...how British am I?!) and that came to about 5 squids, I did buy a pack a Marlborough lights for under 3squid, which I thought was very reasonable. The toilets are relatively clean, the actual toilet cubicles were quite dirty, but I think that this had more to do with people using them, not the cleaners on the ship.
This is also not the most relaxing way to travel, there are screaming kids, rather large, portly families waddling round shouting loudly at one another & coaches full of pre-pubescent teens - God I'm turning into a misery in my old age! On our outward journey, our boat was delayed by over an hour, even though we took an earlier ferry (17:20 we actually ended up leaving the port at about 18:20), on our return journey, the water was a bit choppy and the crossing was a bit uncomfortable, for me, I spent most of the time nursing a beer and trying to smoke whilst being showered with rain/sea-spray and trying to stand up.
I know I am being grumpy, but if you don't mind how you travel or you are just going for a booze cruise, I would probably recommend a ferry crossing, I have however heard rumours that Sea France are better (we saw a Sea France ferry that left after ours, over take our ferry on both journeys!). *also on dooyoo*
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by (18%):
24.10.2006 14:38
I was on a p&o ferry when we went to Disneyland back when I were a wee lad. I remember how wierd it felt, with the ground moving all the time!
11.09.2006 14:11
Une très bonne revue, avec toute l'information requise pour un voyage léger et agréable - Very good! I shall have to give you an E - Rob.
21.07.2006 13:15
not really a ferries, i tend to use the tunnell if driving, nice and quick