Most of the cruises were to the South Pacific, however she often made annual trips to Asia where should would be dry-docked in Singapore for routine maintenance and upgrades in between cruises. The usual ports of call to the South Pacific included Noumea in New Caledonia, Vila in Vanuatu and Suva in Fiji during her early cruising years. Most cruises averaged between seven and fourteen days long however there were occasional cruises that were up to twenty nights in duration.

It wasn't always 'fun' though.. On 22 October 1984, the Fairstar left Sydney for a special cruise to Noumea to witness a total eclipse of the sun. Unfortunately, there was a boiler failure on the previous cruise which delayed the start of this cruise and they missed the unique event.

Another embarrassing mishap occurred while cruising off Vietnamese coast on a 29 day cruise to Hong Kong, Korea and Japan. On 19th June 1991 her boilers failed due to infiltration of salt water. She remained adrift for two days in the South China Sea. To make matters worse, the air conditioning wasn't working so passengers had to sweat it out in the tropical heat. The passengers were eventually taken to the coast by the Australian tug Lady Sonia and Fairstar was later towed to a Singapore shipyard. P&O refunded the 1150 passengers and had to cancel the next three cruises.

Several upgrades were made to the ship during her career, the most notable occurring in April 1989, not long after the Sitmar was sold to P&O for $210 million. During the refit, her boat deck was extended, lounges and passenger cabins were upgraded and a new potable water plant installed. The passenger capacity was also reduced to 1280. The funnel sported a new colour scheme: a blue swan on a white funnel (it was originally changed to a white swan on a blue funnel in July 1988).

Next: Fairstar's finalé..