Chrisstew007

 No problem with buying a bottle of wine and taking it away. We had a wine package and took it in every time, never took it out but we could have done!

We are on the xmas G340 cruise on Iona. We have decided against the drinks package as we get a lot of free drinks in the casino. I thought 24 bottles through the wine package would make sense over 14 days and concerned about actually getting served through the normal waiter and tablet.  I have struggled to get through on the phone to order and discuss how it works. Do we get a choice? Can we have them all delivered to the suite at the outset? Any adv8ce would be appreciated.

We stayed in a corner suite on deck 15 over xmas and New Year. You will hear them moving the chairs probably at 7.00am everyday and then putting them away in the evening around 8pm. It certainly did not bother us and to be fair saved us having to set an alarm. No other issues throughout the day. You will not be under the pool although you may be beside it so no fear of getting wet. It is a fantastic position for us just one floor below the bar and easy to take drinks back if you want to spend time on the balcony. One floor below horizon buffett but that was poor unfortunately. Fabulous views and preferable to deck 9 as closer to the noisier deck with hot tubs and bar etc.

We are sure that this question has been asked many times but the answers may have changed with the current testing protocols.

We have always previously had fly cruises so this is our first P and O cruise and our first trip to Southampton. We will be travellling to the City Centre by train. My main concern is that if we choose a hotel very close to The Ocean terminal, we will be on Iona G140 at xmas, we will struggle to get a Taxi for such a short distance. In addition are Taxis likely to be caught up in the vehicle queue that we have heard about due to testing or do they have a separate lane. If we are caught up in the traffic can we get out and walk to the testing centre etc. Any info would be much appreciated.

As my dear wife thinks that I drive my car like a bank robber we have decided to take the coach down to Southampton in December. Has anyone had recent experience of how that worked with testing and boarding etc as we are not in a suite?

2 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

You could transfer the other two to any future cruise you fancy at no extra cost, including summer 2023 which should go on sale in September or October.

That is an option I had not considered. We have booked already for Christmas 2022. Might be worth a look.Thanks.

We have never cruised with P and O before, have always been with Celebrity for many years and have found the booking process quite depressing. We originally booked a GZ cabin for £6500 as that was all that was available. When we saw a conservatory suite available we phoned P and O to see if we could upgarde like we do at Celebrity. This was not an option we would have to book again which we did at £9582. Did we want to cancel the other booking the lady asked, Iexplained what is the point if we are going to lose our deposit, so I kept them both with a view to deciding which cabin to take in the light of the prevailing covid protocol at payment time in September. We were horrified to see our allocated cabin on deck 8 so have no intention of paying for that. Having then checked prices we have now booked a GD cabin on deck 14 for £5602. So we now have the choice of 3 cabins and the loss of two deposits but we are very happy with our latest one. What a farce!

Having had our September cruise cancelled today in the UK if you would like your celebrity fix Jane is on for the next 11 days at 19.30.

Some of you may have been on that maiden voyage in the caribean.

Best wishes to you all that will get on a ship this year!

Chris and Helen

In a radio interview the CEO of Saga stated that 98% of their customer databse that replied to a survey wanted all passengers fully vaccinated. They did the survey twice as they were supprised it was so high. Regarding the crew they were hopeful that the Phillippine Government were desigmate cruise workers as key workers and get an early jab. The cruise industry is vital to their economy as they have 200,000 of the population working on cruise lines.

I would second Agios Gordios on the West Coast of Corfu. ( Villa Pappadella) Beautiful location and very friendly. I have been there over 15 times. Have tried all the larger, popular Greek Islands and Corfu stands out above the rest, not just because they play cricket there!

Hi, I think that you will find that in your cruise planner under internet and more, I think, you can buy casino slot credits and casino table credits in $50 batches which will each give you $55 ie 10% extra. There is a maximum of $500 per person. I always do it. If you take it in slots between you and cash out every time you win there is a good chance you will have at least $350 in vouchers which you can cash in and put in your pocket.

'How the heck is this even possible' is a very good question for us in the UK as it is only February 2020 here!!

We were on the Edge this June 2019, they are definitly on there as one Guy insisted on having the sound up for maximum revs. It never fails to amaze me how many times people post comments on this site when they do not know the facts, why do they bother?

Having you considered pre booking a cab to avoid the lines? We have an earlier flight out of Barcelona mid September and have a premium car booked for 50 euros,. Lesser cars will obviously cost you less.

It is Ryanair, not everyone's favourite airline but we use them about 10 times a year as they go where we go and have never let us down. It would take a lot more than this inconvenience to put us off Celebrity. We have made a move up bid for a suite in September and will also do likewise on the three that we have booked next year. I am relieved that this is a very rare occurance, we are a very easy going couple so if it happened to us I had assumed that some of the more deserving passengers would have had similar treatment, but perhaps they cannot read and write so are not on the forum. Whilst I am still confused that security never showed to search the stateroom, which was a condition of us making a claim against our insurers and then it appeared in a back pack that me and my wife had both checked three times each. Rest assured that  we do not queue up in GR in front of others to report such a sensitive issue without good reason. Hopefully we can end this thread on a positive note that it was one in  a million. 

I have just printed off our boarding pass for a flight from Barcelona when we finish our celebrity cruise mid September 2019. We can check in and print the pass up to 60 days in advance. The boarding pass had no value but would make it awkward at the airport. I printed the replacement passes at the IT suite on the last evening, all the other documents such as Taxi bookings and airport parking  booking were not touched. We never remove auto grats and are always generous to those that have served us well like the waiters in the casino. The additional tip which would have gone to the butler went to the room steward as she was excellent and very thorough. 

Just to clarify, we are not saying ' the butler did it' that would be totally unfair without proof that we do not have.

My wife and I are totally compos mentis, I am a managing director and she is a highly paid professional  we have cruised at least 40 times before without an issue so perhaps not qualified to have an opinion. We had no need for a butler so why would we  complain. We are talking about a large Ipad not a ring or camera. I am not saying that we were on the edge but for those that have been on it they will know how small the safe is.

I would like to hear form the few, if any, as opposed to the millions that have not that will drown out this thread.

Having seen an earlier thread regarding minibar bills and possibly vindictive staff we are reluctantly asking this question. We love Celebrity as it suits us very well compared to other lines we have tried. A couple of months ago we sailed in a suite which was the first time having won a move up bid. We are a very easy going couple and  avoid confrontation on holiday as life is to short and generally at home our stress levels are to high. The butler we had presumably knew we upgraded so treated us with the contempt we deserved. We had no need for a butler and the room steward was fantastic, she was obviously in fear of him. We brought along 2 Ipads but as we only had a single WiFi package we only used one and put one in a back pack, yes it should have been in the safe but that was full of more valuable things. That spare one went missing. We reported this to GR and they proposed to send security to search our room, that suited us fine as we had both looked 5 or 6 times and the stateroom is not a 6 bedroom house! A couple of days later security had not appeared, but the ipad did, in the bag that we had both checked several times, we reported the good news straight away to call the search off. I am meticulous about bring two copies of all the documentation required to get us abroad and to get us home. On the last night our printed off boarding passes for the flight home were missing. I went to the IT suite and printed copies off so no drama, unless I had not checked.