terrierjohn

I can't get the BBC site now either.

I wonder if there has been a major cyber attack on a large server centre, I notice that Yahoo/Sky e-mail is down, and another smaller cruise site is also down.

Can you not book online?

Passengers become victims of operational problems.

You should receive 20% reduction on the price of your meal, after the £10 deposit has been deducted.

Britannia passenger capacity is only around 4000 when full.

You are better looking at each actual port websire, then looking for cruise ship schedules.

If you E-mail P&O they will provide the times, but it's unlikely you would get a reply in time. However if you google the cruise terminal for all the ports you are visiting, you should be able to see the schedules for the day you are in that port, and that will have arrival and departure times.

Most third party companies offering to collect cruise passengers will know the ship arrival and departure times themselves from the port schedule. So if you e-mail them your cruise ship details they will be able to tell you the time they will pick you up.

There is no welcome aboard lunch for anyone on fly cruises.

It would also be nigh on impossible to get any car out from the nose to tail rows, and tight parking between the rows, and they do have security lights and cameras as well.

White marble flooring, or any type of solid flooring is far better for wheelchair pushers than carpeted floors, although I do have a preference for RCI's imitation Roman mosaic floors, they just seem that little bit more special.

We are booked on that cruise and will be over 80 by then! I am expecting that the age profile will be very similar to the 3 round trip Ventura cruises that we have already taken, whilst there were some under 60 retirees on board those cruises, they were very much in the minority with an average age profile somewhere around 70.

Thank you Selbourne for a very interesting blog, you have certainly reaffirmed our policy of avoiding school holidays, especially the summer one. I can confirm that we did not encounter many wheelchair issues on our 2 cruises on Iona. We had cabins in mid fwd and mid aft locations and used the fwd and aft lifts, and even though the aft lift foyer only has 6 lifts, rather than the 8 on the fwd and mid ship foyers, we found it to be the less crowded of the two. So perhaps that might be some comfort to any wheelchair user considering trying Iona.

Why are you surprised Andy that the media sensationalise this incident, they always do. You can just imagine the news room staff whooping with joy, as this story came in.

You do need to climb a short flight of stairs to go around the front of the ship, but other than this there is a full wrap round promenade deck. However in high seas or strong winds they often close off the stairs.

Selborne, we always ask our steward if its OK to leave our hand luggage in the cabin while we go to breakfast and have never been refused, we find it far less hassle than carting hand luggage and a wheelchair. We try to get back to the cabin before 8:00 but even if we are a bit later there is never any fuss from our steward, in fact we rarely see them, although the bedding and towels have often been removed. We then do exactly what you did today and head straight for the gangway, and never have a problem getting straight off, and in fact it's often very quiet even though it should be well into the disembarcation procedure. In comparison we were given an 8:30 disembarvation time on our Princess cruise, but they were running well ahead of schedule and were well past our Yellow 2 luggage time by that time, and we were running a bit late. As a result most of the Yellow luggage had gone when we got to the luggage hall and ours was very easy to identify. That is maybe something P&O could consider changing, instead of having the luggage in deck order.

Vacations to go are the TA P&O recomend, but many online UK TAs will happily book the cruise for you.

Maybe it would be worthwhile telling the Maitre D on day 1 that you prefer a table for 2, which is not close to others in all the restaurants.

In that case I would need to do some kidnapping to get full value, somehow I don't think I will bother.

Having done 2 cruises on Iona I agree that they are far to small, and the fact that the doors seem even smaller in proportion, makes it difficult for wheelchair users to get close to one side leaving space for another wheelchair, or even a full number of able bodied passengers.

That's interesting, because on the Princess, Britannia equivalent ships, the lifts are huge.

It would certainly increase customer satisfaction, but probably at the expense of reduced revenue to P&O, which I doubt would be acceptable to them, or Carnival.

Sorry I had not realised there were 2 initial classes of refund.

But surely the refund to the passengers who booked early would have been the same in total if they had never reduced the price.