Dream joins Celebration, Destiny, Spirit and Island Escape in providing home-from-home cruises for the British market, packaged with flights from regional airports around the country.

The ship, formerly the Costa Europa, came straight from dry-dock in Sicily to rescue 2,800 holidaymakers stranded in Majorca before embarking on its first proper cruise – with some crew members left behind because they were stranded by the ash cloud chaos.

But operations swung into top gear this week as the ship left Palma with a full complement of crew and passengers.

Fares for seven-night voyages, to destinations such as Tunis, Naples and Barcelona, or Villefranche, Rome and Ajaccio, start from £530 for departures in May. There are plenty of children’s facilities on board, but cruises in June and September will be adults-only – and during the World Cup all England’s matches and most of the other big games will be shown on board.

Throughout the summer, Thomson will be looking closely at how the ship operates in her new colours, and at the end of the Mediterranean season, it will be dry-docked in Hamburg for a £5 million refit. Some of that money will be spent on fitting stern thrusters to improve manoeuvrability (and save on the cost of tugs when berthing). The rest will be spent on upgrading cabins and public rooms.

Managing director David Selby told me: “Our first thought was that the casino is bigger than we need, and we were considering changing some of that space. But apparently this week it has been very busy in there, so we’ll wait to see how that works out.”

He may want to look at extending the servery areas in the Andromeda buffet restaurant. Some passengers have complained of long queues at breakfast and lunch

For more details of Dream’s itineraries and to book online, go to www.thomson.co.uk/cruise, call 0871 231 4691, or visit any Thomson or First Choice travel agent.

Dream will be up against some formidable competition as rival cruise lines slash their fares .

Disney Magic arrives in the UK in June, and a seven-night cruise from Barcelona to Dover, calling at Gibraltar, Cadiz and Lisbon, is on offer for £699, including one-way flights. Departs June 5. Go to www.virginholidayscruises.co.uk or call 0871 781 9893.

For the same price, you could sail on P&O’s Ventura on a seven-night round-trip from Southampton to Vigo, Lisbon, La Rochelle and Brest. The fare includes £100 on-board spending money, and balcony cabins are available from £899. Departs July 24. Go to www.iglucruise.com or call 020 8544 6447.

Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 is the grandest ocean liner afloat, and it’s not often you get an opportunity to spend four nights on board for £399. The ship departs Southampton on May 28 and visits Bruges, Rotterdam and Cherbourg. Balcony cabins are available for an extra £100. Go to www.iglucruise.com or call 020 8544 6447.

But the deal of the week has to be a seven-night cruise on the inappropriately-named Costa Fortuna. This one definitely won’t cost a fortune – it’s just £199 per person. Sailing from Venice on May 17, the ship visits Bari, Olympia, Santorini, Mykonos and Rhodes, before returning via Dubrovnik. Flights are not included in the fare, but if you’re prepared to travel light and risk flying with Ryanair, I found round trip flights from Stansted for less than £70 per person. go to www.costacruises.co.uk or call 0845 351 0552.

Entering to Valencia port on 28042010Call Sign ZCDT2MMSI 310562000Gross tonnage 116017 DWT 8044Type of ship Passenger Cruise ShipYear of build 2008Flag BermudaDimensions 28861 x 3605 x 850 mBerths 3597 Cabins 1546Shipbuilder FincantieriCant Nav Italiani SpA Monfalcone Yard No 6132Name of ship VENTURA 200803

Entering to Valencia port on 28042010Call Sign ZCDT2MMSI 310562000Gross tonnage 116017 DWT 8044Type of ship Passenger Cruise ShipYear of build 2008Flag BermudaDimensions 28861 x 3605 x 850 mBerths 3597 Cabins 1546Shipbuilder FincantieriCant Nav Italiani SpA Monfalcone Yard No 6132Name of ship VENTURA 200803

Entering to Valencia port on 28042010Call Sign ZCDT2MMSI 310562000Gross tonnage 116017 DWT 8044Type of ship Passenger Cruise ShipYear of build 2008Flag BermudaDimensions 28861 x 3605 x 850 mBerths 3597 Cabins 1546Shipbuilder FincantieriCant Nav Italiani SpA Monfalcone Yard No 6132Name of ship VENTURA 200803

Entering to Valencia port on 28042010Call Sign ZCDT2MMSI 310562000Gross tonnage 116017 DWT 8044Type of ship Passenger Cruise ShipYear of build 2008Flag BermudaDimensions 28861 x 3605 x 850 mBerths 3597 Cabins 1546Shipbuilder FincantieriCant Nav Italiani SpA Monfalcone Yard No 6132Name of ship VENTURA 200803

Designed to appeal more to P&O’s traditional customers, the 3,100-passenger Azura promises “classical touches with contemporary style,” whereas Ventura made a big thing about being a family-friendly ship, complete with circus skills classes and a rock school.

Structurally, the two ships are almost identical although Azura – which cost £380 million – has what is known as a ducktail stern to improve stability and fuel consumption. There are other differences: up top, the new ship has an open-air cinema screen above the midships swimming pool; on her older sister the pool can be covered by a sliding glass roof – perfect for chilly days in northern waters.

Also new to Azura is the Retreat, an adults-only haven connected to the spa, and accessible only to passengers who have paid for a half-day pass – £6 on port days and £10 on sea days. Book a spa stateroom package and the fare will include four passes on a two-week cruise, plus unlimited access to the thermal suite and Oasis pool, plus two facial treatments and body massages.

Five of the spa’s treatment rooms have balconies for outdoor pampering, which means that it is no longer possible to walk completely round Deck 16.

The Planet Bar, high up at the stern on Deck 18, has a video wall showing pictures from every continent, and to match the views, six themed cocktails devised by Olly Smith who has also chosen the wines for the Glass House, and even blended the ship’s house wines.

Fun-loving Olly (above with managing director Carol Marlow) is on board during four cruises between now and October and I’m looking forward to joining one of his tastings on a voyage to the Baltic next month.

Michelin-starred chef Atul Kochhar, who has devised the menus for the Sindhu Restaurant, will also be on board for five cruises between now and February. There will be additional charge of about £15 a head for Sindhu, where Goan-style lobster, chicken biriyani and lamb rogan josh are among the main course dishes.

Azura’s other premium restaurant is XVII (Seventeen) and although it does not boast a celebrity chef – as Ventura does with Marco Pierre White – the menu looks interesting and traditional; beef fillet Rossini, with foie gras; Dover sole meuniere; Welsh lamb; and Cornish sea bass.

Among the 12 bars on board, Brodie’s looks like it will be a popular hub. With its adjoining casino it is in the same position as the Exchange bar on Ventura, although the bar and the gaming area have been flipped left to right. There’s a pool table – hopefully on gimbals, but I wasn’t able to check – and some of the space has been pinched to allow for the creation of 18 single cabins tucked away down a corridor.

I hope the soundproofing is good, because Brodie’s will be the venue for karaoke sessions, as it was in the early hours of Sunday morning with Angela Griffin, Andrea McLean, and various stars of Strictly Come Dancing, Hollyoaks and Holby City.

Ventura’s Havana nightclub has become Manhattan on Azura, and Tamarind has transmogrified into Malabar, but apart from details of decor they are pretty much the same.

Smoking is not allowed anywhere inside the ship; it’s limited to starboard sections of the open decks, and to cabin balconies.

Standard cabins are adequate in size, though not exactly generous, but they have everything most passengers will need: flat-screen TV, mini-bar fridge, safe, dressing table(or desk) with English plug sockets, a spacious wardrobe area and – essential for Brits – a kettle, tea, coffee and biscuits.

Inexplicably, my cabin on Saturday night had neither coat hangers or teabags, but you expect teething problems like that when a ship has not officially entered service.

The naming ceremony was a spectacular event, with dancers from the Royal Ballet and the ship’s entertainment company preceding prima ballerina Darcey Bussell – resplendent in a red Jasper Conran dress – on the stage to celebrate Azura’s links to dance.

The champagne bottle smashed, ticker tape and confetti rained from the sky, and fireworks exploded over Southampton Water.

And as Azura makes her maiden voyage, P&O will be looking beyond the arrival of boutique ship Adonia next year to what will follow as the fleet is expanded further to satisfy growing demand for cruises with a British flavour.

Whatever design is chosen, Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle was certain it will be different from Ventura and Azura, thanks to changing building regulations, and likely to be smaller than the two superliners.

Carnival Corporation boss Micky Arison also indicated that Dingle and P&O managing director Carol Marlow will have to compete with other lines in the Carnival empire for the capital needed .

All the other ships in P&O’s fleet have the name Hamilton painted on their sterns, showing that they are registered in Bermuda. P&O’s brochure, and even the Press pack handed to journalists boarding Azura on Saturday, indicate that the ship would be registered in London.

Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle explained that the decision to have the ship registered in the UK was made for “quite complicated regulatory reasons” and that Southampton was chosen because it was Azura’s home port, and the company’s head office is in the city.

Although he did not say so publicly, I understand that the tax benefits to the company arising from UK registration outweighed the advantages of flying what is commonly known as a flag of convenience.

Most merchant vessels, including cruise ships, sail under these flags in order to cut operating costs and reduce onerous regulations. Most of the Carnival fleet – P&O’s parent company – are registered in Panama. Celebrity, whose newest ship Celebrity Eclipse will be named in Southampton on April 24, chooses Malta.

P&O appear to have chosen the UK for Azura in order to take advantage of something called Tonnage Tax, which reduces Corporation Tax liabilities.

Where a ship is registered is of little significance to the majority of passengers – the first of whom will be setting out on Azura’s maiden voyage later today.

There is, however, one notable disadvantage as a result of UK registry; the ship’s captain is not permitted to conduct marriage ceremonies at sea – and those weddings can be big business.

During 2009, a total of 1,064 couples got married on P&O and Princess ships. With wedding packages starting at about £750 (on top of the cruise fare) and another £250 or so for the licence, that’s a significant amount of revenue.

On one day last December when I was on board Azura’s sister ship Ventura in the Caribbean, Commodore Stephen Burgoine performed three wedding ceremonies. Dingle told me of a day when he was on board one of the fleet’s ships when there were seven weddings, one of which involved 100 guests.

Captain Keith Dowds, who has conducted numerous weddings on Ventura, will have to be content with hosting renewal of vows ceremonies in Azura’s Ivory Suite.

There are hopes that UK legislation may eventually change to permit captains to conduct civil ceremonies, but no-one expects that to be a government priority, whoever wins the election on May 6.

So while there may have been good commercial reasons for registering Azura in the UK now, there is also a good chance that the flag will be changed some time in the future.

And P&O confirmed that Adonia, which joins the fleet next year, will not be UK-registered.

The 116,000-ton ship will be named by ballerina Darcey Bussell on Saturday, and sets out on her maiden voyage on Monday. Before then she will host thousands of visitors – among them regular P&O passengers, travel agents, and 1,200 specially-invited guests for the naming ceremony.

Carnival UK chief executive David Dingle clambered aboard the vessel off the Isle of Wight at 6.00 am this morning, and was on the bridge as Captain Keith Dowds brought the ship to her berth, escorted by a tug spraying jets of water across her bow.

P&O managing director Carol Marlow (above) joined dozens of fans on a pleasure boat which went out to Calshot Spit to meet Azura and followed her into Southampton.

The ship, a sister for Ventura, is the first P&O ship to have a cinema screen out on deck above one of its swimming pools, and also features an adults-only Sanctuary area for relaxation and spa treatments.

Carrying 3,1000 passengers and 1,200 crew, it is also the first ship in the fleet to have custom-built cabins for singles. There are 18 of them along a corridor tucked away behind Brodie’s bar and casino.

I got a sneak preview of the ship’s interiors this morning – its decor will be familiar to P&O aficionados, and there are none of the flashy gimmicks which were installed on Ventura to attract a younger, family crowd.

Unfortunately, interior pictures are embargoed until later in the week, so you’ll have to be patient, and settle for these shots taken as the ship sailed into port.

Welcome to Panda Cruises – involving the change of just one vowel in the name, but necessitating a multi-million pound makeover for the seven-ship fleet.

The all-white vessels are to be repainted black and white, like their cuddly namesakes. The 116,000-ton Azura, which has just been delivered by the shipyard in Italy, will be the first to display the new livery when she arrives in Southampton next week.

The handover of the vessel from builders Fincantieri was carried out in conditions of great secrecy last week in order to keep the new colours under wraps. Carnival UK boss David Dingle and Panda managing director Carol Marlow were the only British representatives at the ceremony, and media invitations were withdrawn, under cover of uncertainty over availability of flights because of the British Airways cabin crew strike.

Fincantieri spokeswoman Lola Porfi told me that workers at the yard had been busy for the past two weeks on last-minute modifications to the ship.

“As well as the new colour scheme for the hull, the sports court on the top deck has been converted into a cage to accommodate a pair of pandas, and of course there is hope that they can be persuaded to mate and produce the first pandas to be born at sea.

“The animals will be fed on fresh bamboo shoots grown on board. The company’s environmentalists have been carrying out secret tests and believe that if Celebrity can have real lawns on their ships, there should be no problem growing bamboo – it’s only a type of grass, after all.”

I understand the name change will be supported by a sponsorship agreement with the World Wildlife Fund, and that 2011 itineraries for next year’s world cruises are being altered to include extended visits to the Chinese ports of Shanghai, Dalian, Xiamen, and Sanya on the tropical resort island of Hainan.

Also new on the ships’ itineraries will be visits to the remote island of San Serriffe, and excursions to the spaghetti tree plantations in Italy.

The history of P&O can be traced back to 1837, when the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was awarded the contract to carry Royal Mail to the Iberian peninsula and beyond. The company grew into a major commercial shipping line and passenger liner operator and in 1918 took over the Orient Line, its partner in the UK to Australia mail route, thus becoming Peninsular and Orient.

In the 1950s and 60s, the company’s fleet carried thousands of “£10 Poms” to Australia, and when that program ended ships such as SS Canberra were converted to cruise liners. The cargo and ferry side of the business also grew, with the takeover of companies such as British-India Steam Navigation and Townsend Thoreson.

In 2000, P&O demerged its cruise business as P&O Princess Cruises, and this company was taken over in 2003 by the giant Carnival Corporation.

But confusion among consumers unable to differentiate between the cruise line and the remaining shipping and logistics company – which since 2005 has been owned by Dubai World – have led to the decision to adopt a new name.

Welcome to Panda Cruises – involving the change of just one vowel in the name, but necessitating a multi-million pound makeover for the seven-ship fleet.

The all-white vessels are to be repainted black and white, like their cuddly namesakes. The 116,000-ton Azura, which has just been delivered by the shipyard in Italy, will be the first to display the new livery when she arrives in Southampton next week.

The handover of the vessel from builders Fincantieri was carried out in conditions of great secrecy last week in order to keep the new colours under wraps. Carnival UK boss David Dingle and Panda managing director Carol Marlow were the only British representatives at the ceremony, and media invitations were withdrawn, under cover of uncertainty over availability of flights because of the British Airways cabin crew strike.

Fincantieri spokeswoman Lola Porfi told me that workers at the yard had been busy for the past two weeks on last-minute modifications to the ship.

“As well as the new colour scheme for the hull, the sports court on the top deck has been converted into a cage to accommodate a pair of pandas, and of course there is hope that they can be persuaded to mate and produce the first pandas to be born at sea.

“The animals will be fed on fresh bamboo shoots grown on board. The company’s environmentalists have been carrying out secret tests and believe that if Celebrity can have real lawns on their ships, there should be no problem growing bamboo – it’s only a type of grass, after all.”

I understand the name change will be supported by a sponsorship agreement with the World Wildlife Fund, and that 2011 itineraries for next year’s world cruises are being altered to include extended visits to the Chinese ports of Shanghai, Dalian, Xiamen, and Sanya on the tropical resort island of Hainan.

Also new on the ships’ itineraries will be visits to the remote island of San Serriffe, and excursions to the spaghetti tree plantations in Italy.

The history of P&O can be traced back to 1837, when the Peninsular Steam Navigation Company was awarded the contract to carry Royal Mail to the Iberian peninsula and beyond. The company grew into a major commercial shipping line and passenger liner operator and in 1918 took over the Orient Line, its partner in the UK to Australia mail route, thus becoming Peninsular and Orient.

In the 1950s and 60s, the company’s fleet carried thousands of “£10 Poms” to Australia, and when that program ended ships such as SS Canberra were converted to cruise liners. The cargo and ferry side of the business also grew, with the takeover of companies such as British-India Steam Navigation and Townsend Thoreson.

In 2000, P&O demerged its cruise business as P&O Princess Cruises, and this company was taken over in 2003 by the giant Carnival Corporation.

But confusion among consumers unable to differentiate between the cruise line and the remaining shipping and logistics company – which since 2005 has been owned by Dubai World – have led to the decision to adopt a new name.