whoops

What a great chat up line :D

I take it the zip was at the front :eek:

And some people think being called by your first name is being over familiar.

If I call a member of staff such as the room steward by his first name why can't he call me by mine?

I turned up 2.5 hours early for a cruise at the end of April after vacating my hotel room at 12. It was raining so didn't want to walk around Southampton. I thought I would see whether I could get onboard early. Next time I won't bother as I eventually boarded 30 minutes before my allotted embarkation time so I will have lunch and a couple of drinks in the hotel first before leaving for the Port for my next cruise on 3 July.

The standard of veggie food varies on the two cruises I have sailed on. On the first Ventura cruise the food was excellent with plenty of variety on the separate veggie menu presented to you the night before. However on my last Ventura cruise the veggie food I tried was inedible so I ended up eating in the buffet.

I'm on the Azura in a few weeks to Norway so am hoping for a better result.

anyone booked an inside cabin on the saver fare and been upgraded to a balcony?

I'd say the chances of that are nil.

One issue I came across on a recent Ventura cruise was a couple of people on one table smoking e cigarettes with a dreadful stench of something horribly sweet polluting the atmosphere. It is apparently OK to smoke these darn things in public places but I hope P&O clamp down before this becomes a common occurrence.

Just booked on this cruise

 

They say that Flam may be tendered off as its busy there. Does this mean on a saver you would have to pay a transfer fee.

No.

Flam has also been dropped from the 2 July Azura departure and replaced with Olden. I only found out by accident as neither P&O nor my travel agent had told me of the change. Not happy!

what time do you leave southampton on a fjords cruise?

I haven't a clue as we haven't had our embarkation time yet.

I'm surprised Sindhu is so well used. On the Ventura hardly anyone goes in there in my limited experience of 2 Ventura cruises.

They take credit cards in most places in Norway. I don't know about Euros, we took some Norweigan Kroner (for things like the Bergen Funicular) but didn't have lunch in port as it's really really expensive in Norway. We had a big breakfast and a late-ish lunch back on board or food provided on an excursion!

How much is the Bergen Funicular please. Thanks - all very helpful.

Is it worth taking the local currency or do they accept euros or credit cards for even small amounts such as drinks and possibly lunch?

Thanks. I was intending to book a simple railway journey (private trip) as others on this forum have recommended. Lucky I didn't!

I'm going to Norway in July. When I booked the cruise the invoice and advertising stated the cruise was visiting Flam. Particularly I wanted to visit Flam as the railway journey was a particular trip I was looking forward to.

However I have just noticed on the cruise personaliser that the cruise is no longer visiting Flam but is going to Olden instead. No notification no nothing from P&O or the travel agent. Luckily I did not book the railway trip as others on this forum have recommended but I wonder what would have happened had I did.

The lesson I have learned is not to book private trips early and not to assume that the advertised destinations are those to which the cruise is going.

We dine about 7pm, get out of the dining room somewhere about 9 then walk the length of the ship twice looking at what's going on where, decide on a venue for a drink then wander along to the theatre for the 10:30 show having possibly been entertained from 9:30 in our chosen venue/bar. All very relaxing, no RUSHING to get to the show.

 

It bugs me when people rush away from the table to get to the show, why didn't they come in to eat earlier?

On my recent cruise some people were queuing up at 5.30pm to get into the restaurant to guarantee a table for 2 which was the only way they could get out of the restaurant in time to grab a decent seat for the 8.30pm show if you need to do something in between. If you end up on a table for 4 or 6 the time taken to eat takes very much longer - nearly 2 hours on my cruise which ended on 6 May.

The arrangements described in the quoted post do seem very relaxed but not everyone can eat late, myself included, due to stomach issues which many suffer from. If I ate late I would never get to sleep and be ill for the next day so eating late is not an option for everyone! So it shouldn't bug you if people leave the restaurant early as they do so for good reason.

I found that by far the best arrangement for me was to dine in the buffet on show nights or use the Beach House (with small cover charge) which was a much better arrangement.

The shows are at 8.30pm and 10.30pm. I found on a very recent Ventura cruise that if you wish to attend the 8.30pm event you had to eat early - and by that I mean as near to 6pm as possible - because in order to get a seat you had to be in the Arena Theatre by 8pm at the latest. With fixed dining I believe you are placed with the same group of people so meals tended to take a very long time - 2 hrs on my recent cruise.

Always I opt for Freedom dining as I need to eat early due to a medical condition so on my chosen Theatre nights I opted to eat in the buffet along with many in their dinner suits. If you are OK at eating later then there is no problem with dining at a time to gel in with the 10.30 start time. It's a matter of personal choice.

Thanks again.

One of the reasons I didn't complain at the time was because the issue was not solely to do with my cabin. Any work on any cabin above mine resulted in dust landing on my balcony as it protruded beyond all those above. With the best will in the World I very much doubt that P&O would agree to stopping work on about 10 cabins because of an objection from me. I accept though that I should have tried but didn't want to make an issue of it as it would probably have dominated my thought for the rest of the trip.

However, I recognise that P&O must undertake maintenance and it was just my bad luck that they decided to concentrate on my area of the ship.

I have never complained to anyone about anything in the past but have decided to complain to P&O on this occasion as I think it is unreasonable to expect me to be deprived of a facility for nearly a third of a holiday that cost me over £3500.

You can get printouts as the excellent post above describes. But you can also keep track of spending by everyone in your cabin from the menu on your cabin TV.

Thanks for the comments so far.

My particular gripe is that my cabin stood out from the cabins above (cabins that are overlooked by all the cabins on the other floors)meaning we got all the dust from any work done on the higher floors. Because the balcony on my cabin is so large - about 2.5 times larger than a standard balcony - we received a disproportionate amount of the dust and was used as a convenient place for varnish and other materials to be stored meaning workmen were walking in and out all day long.

Given that I could not use my balcony for 4 of the 14 days it seemed to me that this was unacceptable but perhaps I am wrong but question why I should pay for a balcony for 14 days when I could only use it for 10 all on a Select Price fare.

For the record I did not mention compensation. I was enquiring about whether such maintenance is usual but I must admit the more I think about it the more aggrieved I feel.

Any further comments would be welcome.

I am not an experienced cruiser having only gone on two cruises both on the Ventura.

Last Friday I returned from a Ventura cruise and for me the enjoyment was impaired by the constant maintenance to and around my balcony on the 9th floor in the 7 series of Superior Balcony cabins. The balconies on this floor stand out from the balconies of the cabins above.

On a day in Port I decided not to go ashore and found that I could not use my balcony because the maintenance people wanted to sand down and varnish the rails. That took about a morning because the guys stored their materials there and kept coming onto the balcony for rags, varnish and sand paper. Because of the smell of varnish the balcony couldn't be used for the rest of the day.

The next day in Port we walked around the town and came back to the cabin after lunch to read on the balcony. Again the maintenance people decided to do the same to the balcony above but because our balcony stood out from that our balcony got all the dust from rubbing down the rails and were told by the maintenance people to go back into the cabin - an obvious request because of the amount of dust involved.

If that wasn't enough at the next port stop the maintenance people then began to rub down the paint around the balcony and doors in the cabins above us so we we were subjected to yet more dust accompanied by scraping noises resembling rubbing finger nails on a blackboard.

The next port stop the same happened on the balcony below us meaning reading was an impossibility.

Out of the 14 day cruise the balcony was unusable for 4 days so my question is .................................is this kind of maintenance usual on P&O ships and if so do other cruise lines do the same?

I should mention that I did not complain at the time because I am the type of person who finds confrontation difficult and did not want my holiday spoiled by unpleasantness.

The original post mentions Stavangar but my advice would be to check the P&O website to see if the cruise is still visiting the port.

I am on the Azura for a cruise in July to the Norwegian Fjords. P&O have changed the destinations and will no longer visit Flamm on this particular cruise. Stavangar is still on the list but whose to say it won't change.

The gripe is that neither the agent nor P&O have notified me of this change and I only found out by accident when I looked at the P&O website.

I was just about to book a ticket on the Flamm railway so I'm glad I checked.

But is it usual for cruise destinations to change without notification?

I returned last week from a cruise on the Ventura. I thought Hughie was hilarious whereas the rest of the entertainment team were stilted. Hughie was very visible and while I have heard some of his jokes before they still make me laugh.

I assume if you saw that happen you would bring it to the attention of a member of staff, so they could take the machine out of service until it was disinfected.

 

If everyone did, then P&O would soon take steps, otherwise they would have to have a dedicated member of staff for each machine.

You are right of course but I hate unpleasantness and I doubt whether members of staff would do anything as they could risk their jobs if a scene is caused. But the mind still boggles when I see people do it ........and it happened every day by several people on my last Ventura cruise. The problem is that when one does it others follow.

Hi, is it full shade or partial shade - it looks like it is one of those overlooked from above with a huge balcony. I had looked at one like it and noticed that it has a metal balcony side?

There is no shade. It is overlooked from above but if you want sun that is inevitable. The balcony has a glass side to the area immediately outside the sliding door but a metal side at the curved rear.

The biggest culprits are those who insist on filling water bottles from the water dispensers. Don't they realise that infection is easily transmitted when they press the necks of their bottles against the filling mechanism?