Selbourne

and with many companies (thankfully not P&O - yet) if you do get a live person they are often in a far flung country with an impenetrable accent!

I think those staff members are probably now cleaning cabins, moving luggage, serving in the MDRs etc etc etc 😂

We once had multiple issues with an aft suite on Britannia and we were offered a balcony cabin to sleep in or use as we wished, in addition to the suite.

Oh dear. The joys of a Saver presumably? Thank goodness that the ship isn’t full and they can move you. Imagine if they couldn’t 😱

Great to hear. Given that it’s impossible to know precisely what time you will have dropped your car off and be entering the terminal, I’m trying to establish how early you have to be to be sent to the naughty queue. Clearly 30 minutes is within the level of tolerance. Well, on Britannia at least!

I’m really looking forward to your blog. Please be extra careful in Amsterdam as there are lots of pick pockets. I was a victim of one within an hour of arriving. It’s a great place with a vibrant night life, but be vigilant.

You shouldn’t have to. Most companies now use nominee accounts, where you never actually get a share certificate. No ongoing fees with Hargreaves Landsowne.

That’s a great tip. Thanks. We are on Britannia first (in Freedom). Iona in August but, other than the one formal night (and breakfast), I think we shall avoid the MDR like the plague 😂

Primarily due to all the reviews I’ve read (90 minute virtual queues etc), but also for some of the reasons you describe. It seems as though there is still a strong demand for people wanting to dine at the same time every night and an awful lot of those seem to like to eat very early. As there is no Club Dining option on the newer ships, this is clogging up Freedom Dining for the first hour or two. On Arvia, people have been able to book MDR tables at set times (albeit early). That’s Freedom dining pretending to be Club, but doing neither well! As I said, we will see for ourselves over the next few months and hopefully our experiences will be as positive as yours.

Looks horrendous. I hope that the escalator is switched off 😂. I’d love to know what constitutes being an ‘early arrival’. It’s impossible to plan your arrival time precisely as it’s dependent on CPS etc. if you are 30 minutes early do you get sent to the back of the 3 hour queue? 🤔

Interesting subject. We did our first Cunard cruise recently. There were many areas where we felt that the experience was far better than P&O (e.g. embarkation, disembarkation, food quality and choice, dining times, staff levels, cabin servicing etc) and, consequently, we are now prepared to pay more for the better experience. The one thing that I really didn’t like was that gratuities are still charged and you pay 15% gratuity on top of drinks as well. I didn’t feel comfortable removing the auto tips (as it would deprive the staff who enhanced our experience but didn’t interact with us personally, such as kitchen staff) but equally I didn’t feel comfortable not tipping our dedicated steward and waiting staff, so I ended up doing both auto gratuities and personal tips, so I ended up spending around £50 a day on tips! I would be very unhappy if P&O reverted to charging extra for tips as it’s one remaining positive for us and would be a difficult sell with the new to cruising market that P&O are so desperately targeting. We are still cruising with P&O as well, but have set a cap of £100 pppn for a balcony cabin on a Select basis with free parking, simply because we no longer feel that the product offered by P&O is worth more than that. We may take a different view once we have done some post Covid cruises with P&O, of which we have 3 over the next 5 months on Britannia, Iona and Ventura. We should then have a good idea of what the post Covid P&O looks like, in particular the MDR experience (menu choices, portion sizes, virtual or physical queues for Freedom dining etc). We never pay for WiFi (use it free when ashore) and we get priority embarkation anyway. We always want to choose our cabin (not have what is left). We prefer Freedom dining, but are concerned from what we’ve been reading that P&O seem to have lost control of that, and what once worked really well now sounds like disorganised chaos! Personally, I would like an included drinks package (without all the daft restrictions of the current one) but my wife wouldn’t get value from it. I could therefore see us ending up with a dilemma. The top level package would make P&O too expensive for what we now perceive it to be worth, and would push us to other (better) cruise lines, yet the lower tier offer wouldn’t tick our boxes. 🤔

As others have said, black trainers are absolutely fine for smart casual evenings. Obviously if you want to attend the main dining room or nice bars during formal nights, something more formal will be needed. Personally I only wear black shoes with a suit or dinner suit, but a lot of younger guys wear brown these days, which might give you a secondary use when going out at home?

Indeed. When our kids were young they were never allowed down from the table during a meal and if one started creating (even as a baby when you can’t reason with them) one of us would take them outside until they had calmed down, so as not to spoil the experience for others. Sadly, there are many poor parents theses days who see nothing wrong with allowing kids to walk around the table during meals (dangerous for waiting staff carrying food etc, as well as irritating for others) and wouldn’t even consider temporarily removing noisy children 😡

Great. We are on both over the next 3 months and are really looking forward to Epicurean on both ships, multiple times!

How refreshing. In many situations these days nobody is prepared to exercise discretion, and people have to jump through hoops to get anywhere with things that used to fall under the heading of ‘common sense’

Same with me also (Cunard, but same email). No rush though. It’s a 2024 cruise. I know you aren’t meant to apply until after balance is paid, but they’ve added the OBC on all the other 5 cruises we have booked in 2023 & 2024 so I thought I’d chance my arm. Footnote (having started this thread) - I’m now comfortably in profit with OBC added to cruises now well ahead of the share purchase cost!

Exactly the same experience when we boarded QM2 the other week. We had 12pm priority boarding and were on the ship at 11.50am. Our first case arrived at the cabin as quickly as we did. Friends who arrived an hour or two later (without priority boarding) also reported a seamless experience with no queues. P&O like queues. The Cunard disembarkation process was also significantly better than the P&O system 🤔

I know. It was a bit tongue in cheek, but in my days in the commercial world if you wanted to sell something the last thing you did was keep it a secret 😂

I think that’s wise. We only have one P&O cruise booked for next year, which was under our target £100 pppn for a balcony cabin on a Select fare with free parking, so even if it does drop it won’t drop by a vast amount. I have, however, just booked a second 14 night Cunard cruise for next year and that was considerably cheaper than the other 14 night Cunard cruise that we booked at launch. Interestingly, the first cruise is currently even more than we are paying, but I shall be keeping a close eye on it between now and launch. The challenge will be that we paid a big deposit and we have to have an accessible cabin (of which there are only 2 at the grade we have booked), so we may have to stick with it.

That’s clever. I hadn’t thought of that!

We thought the same for our first few cruises in Suites, but then we realised that families with young kids or even babies also used suites and we had some bad experiences with noisy families and a screaming baby, so much so that we went to the MDR for breakfast instead!

That’s good to hear. Which ship(s)? It’s not just the theatrics though. We were on Cunard 2 weeks ago and had a number of dishes finished tableside. All the generous helpings of alcoholic substances being added really did add to the flavours enormously 😂

Sounds like a misunderstanding. As I understand it, the people managing the queues are not P&O staff. If they tried to stop me I would be politely but firmly telling them that I know that I am not early and that I will be entering the terminal now and not joining the long queue with those who have arrived early. I don’t think they would physically restrain me!

When can we expect the website to be updated with details of the changes and launch dates by ship?

Thanks for the update. Shame that Epicurean isn’t back up to scratch as we are hoping to use it a number of times when on Britannia in July. Did they give any reason why?