GOQ

Thank you all for your useful advise. I am sort of used to getting off the plane, collecting luggage then straight onto a transfer directly to the ship. I have been doing a bit of "Youtube" both of potential destination cities and of passenger experiences of long haul flights. Taking into account the effects of long haul travelling time and jet lag it I have come to the conclusion it might just be better to have a day or two in a hotel pre-cruise in which to recover. Thanks

I had a 12 year gap in my P&O cruising. Previously my last P&O cruise had been booked by my late wife as the lead passenger. When I started cruising again by myself with P&O I found they had automatically converted my Portunus points to the Peninsular club points.

Thanks for your comments jh1809 and Bill Y, what you say really does make sense. I think I might hang on for a few months and see if any "short segments" turn up. If short segments of world cruises are finished I am sure the likes of Princess, Celebrity and RC do Australia/NZ cruises.

Thank you david63 I will have to do some thinking. I suppose my other options might be: 1. Cancel A411 and start again. 2. Transfer A411 to another cruise I might intend to book.

I booked directly with P&O online. 1. If I log into "mycruise" and I get all the details of my booked cruise, how do I actually go about altering this booking to a totally different cruise. Or do I have to join the queue and have a discussion over the phone with a P&O adviser? I have never cancelled/altered a P&O cruise before so am clueless. 2. If I have booked the original cruise A411 as Select, can I rebook the replacement cruise as an Early Saver ? 3. Can I transfer the original cruise to a TA and get them to sort it out?

With Marella on my birthday I had a card, towels made up into the resemblance of a birthday cake and a free photo shoot. On P&O I just had an email, because it was my birthday, inviting me to take part in a free prize draw for a P&O hamper. Big deal. 😬 Grump mode on/ It made me think, do P&O really care about me as a passenger, grump mode off.

This is a brilliant idea. I usually take a sea view or depending on the ship/price, a balcony because I don't really like an inside cabin. But if you can just walk outside your door a few paces into an outside area it seems a very good option. I notice Azura/Ventura also seems to have a few outside small white spaces near the aft inside cabins. I wonder if they might also allow convenient access to a sea view.

A visit/cruise from/to Australia/Asia is on my bucket list. At the moment the maximum length of a cruise I can take is between 14 and an absolute maximum of 19 days. So I have had the idea of taking a segment of one of Arcadia's world cruises, possibly something like Brisbane to Hong Kong March 11 2024, Arcadia 15 nights cruise JQR. The problem is it’s too late for this year and next year I already have a cruise booked with P&O for March 2024. Now I notice that P&O seem to have taken out these shorter segments from the Arcadia 2025 world cruise, the segments are around 41 to 51 nights are too long for me, so it seems the 2024 Arcadia world cruise will be the last opportunity I have do take a short segment of a world cruise with P&O. Sorry I have not done this before so please bare with me, the cruise I have already booked for March 2024, A411, is a Select fare which I believe allows me the flexibility to change my booking. Is it easy to change this cruise A411 to JQR and and how would I best do this.

Yes I realize that but the flights section just lists "Gatwick date time"-"flight number"- "Barbados date time". It's nice to have an actual flight ticket/email confirmation. I am quite nervous really 😬 and it was just nice to have confirmation that the ship boarding pass will do.

This is what I understand, I have booked an equivalent single balcony cabin D200 - D210 on the port side stern. The deck plan shows a hash and a raindrop on the cabin which notes the cabin has a steel fronted balcony and is partially shaded. Doesn't really bother me, I went for the location on the ship.

Thanks from me also, I was getting a little worried that I had not received any flight tickets for my upcoming Gatwick to Barbados flight. On my last cruise, a TA Southampton outbound return by plane, I was sent a "flight notification" email before the cruise so I felt at least I had proof of a flight booking. Then I actually received my return flight ticket whilst onboard Arvia. For my next cruise I only have my ship Boarding Pass and no emails, so I am a bit more reassured by your post.

This the big advantage with Freedom dining, you mostly get to meet new people every day. Going back to my original confusion, the P&O brochure lists all ships Except Iona and Arvia as freedom and club dining. Wading through P&O website it lists Britannia as freedom dining only, perhaps they have changed the dining arrangements, or the website is inaccurate. FreedomPdf.pdf

All the comments previously made seem to be good advise based on personal experience. Just to add I met 2 naughty ladies on a Ventura cruise who used to pop into local Spanish supermarkets buy a bottle or 2 of local red wine, were not challenged on bringing them back on board, then poured the contents into an empty bottle of P&O wine. Which then ..... ☺️🍹

Never mind, it will be something new for me even if it's horrible. Bits of China were horrible, bits of New York, San Francisco etc., but was an experience, I am getting older now and I want to do/experience more. 🥵🤧🙃

Because of covid I had a cruise to Casablanca cancelled. By comparison with other cruise lines it seems that unless you travel with the 28 night+ cruises P&O are not very adventurous (unless you do a segment of a world tour, another topic). However in April 2024 R406 Aurora visits both Casablanca and Tangier. I am very tempted.

1. It depends which ports you will visit , but try googling e.g. "weather in stavanger in july" and you will get average temperature and rainfall figures. 2. In a double balcony cabin on Iona I have had the bed by the wardrobes and on Ariva (Sister ship) the bed was by the balcony doors. I think there is a pattern to this which I am sure other posters will have figured out. If you look on the deck plans you will see some cabins are marked with a square meaning cabin has an additional pull down bed. My Iona cabin had this, the extra bed was over the sofa next to the doors. 3. Booking a specific cabin, definitely a good idea, on my Arvia cruise I booked an early saver fare and got a dreaded balcony cabin on deck 8, the promenade deck where absolutely any passer-by can look into you cabin. 5. As selbourne has commented, norproblem.

This is from my booking receipt: "Early Savers receive second priority for dining. We will attempt to accommodate your request but this is not guaranteed. Dining will be allocated on board and cannot be changed. To register a dining preference please click on the below link http://www.pocruises.com/early-saver-dining/" And this link does not seem to work. Thanks Fionboard and zapp99, hopefully if I get allocated fixed dining I will be able to change it onboard. I have only ever been on fixed dining twice, on HAL in 2007 and P&O Oceana in 2009, then if I remember correctly we were allocated a fixed time in a specific restaurant with the same people, same table every night. Every other cruise I have been on since has had freedom dining, hence my inexperience. If I do not get allocated freedom dining on Britannia does it mean I just get a fixed dining time or do I get a fixed dining time with the same table/people every night, not sure how it works. One of the things I really like about P&O, as a solo cruiser, is the option to share a table in the restaurant. With freedom dining I get to meet new people every night and that is possibly the best part of the holiday.

Take a look at the first photograph in this sequence. I had the Exactly equivalent cabin on Arvia on its TA cruise in January. It was absolutely horrible, the last cabin on the starboard side deck 8, cabin 8.123. 1. The seated view was obstructed by the green/frosted glass and the windscreen opposite. 2. Next to this cabin is an equipment room of some sort, I am guessing it is aircon with extraction grills onto the deck. During the passage across the Bay of Biscay (TA Southampton to Barbados) it was horrendously noisy. It sounded like a metal filing cabinet was being thrown repeatedly across the room next door. After the BofB this racket fortunately stopped.. 3. Everybody, absolutely everybody, could look directly into my cabin. Some people passing by were quite brazen about it and had a good look, others were embarrassed and others might say good morning and might have a chat. 4. Somebody actually vomited onto my balcony (I have a photo to prove this), the mess looks like Weetabix ???, my mind boggles.

I was chatting to a fellow passenger on my January Arvia Caribbean cruise who told me she was flying back to Heathrow on Virgin, I thought that's a good idea I will have to check this out. Then my return TUI flight from Barbados to Gatwick was delayed for 2 hours. Definitely a good idea.

Well that sounds encouraging, it seems every TUI flight I have been on to the Caribbean had been delayed for some reason so the option to choose a flight on Virgin from Heathrow looks good. Also Heathrow is a tiny bit nearer to me.

I usually book a mixture of Select and Early saver fares however I prefer Freedom dining. With Early saver fares I have previously booked, on Ventura I was lucky and was allocated Freedom dining, on Arvia and Iona, no problem as they only have Freedom dining. I now have a cruise booked with an Early Saver fare on Britannia, the cruise receipt came with a link for Early Saver dining preferences: www.pocruises.com/early-saver-dining which sends me to: https://secure.cunard.com/earlysaverdining I enter my cruise details and get an error. My booking confirmation says: Dining Request / Table Size - Requested, not confirmed So how do I request a dining preference Another Select fare I have also booked on Britannia seems to have automatically allocated me Freedom dining, my booking confirmation says: Dining Request Freedom Dining / Confirmed TIA Paul

It would be nice to have your confidence. My late wife used to handle all this adventurous stuff for me. So I have to just do it, and work out some sort of strategy, guess do a bit of googling/you tubing.

I have done about 17 cruises by myself, Mediterranean, Canaries, Caribbean and Scandinavia. They have all included a transfer from the airport to the ship, so it gives me a little bit of confidence as a solo traveller I won’t get lost and will be looked after by the tour/cruise operator. I would like to be a bit more adventurous and have Australia, Brazil, more USA and Asia on my bucket list, however because these are long haul to far away places (from the UK) they seem to involve a pre- cruise stay of 1 or 2 nights in a hotel offering Room Only or Bed and Breakfast accommodation. Staying in a RO/BB hotel by myself makes me a little bit nervous as I would presumably have to go out and about looking for places to eat and drink in a strange foreign place. Have any of you solo cruisers had experience of this sort of thing and how do you handle it.

I cannot drive for more than an hour so I have no option but to travel down to Southampton by taxi, train or coach. I also have a bit of a problem dragging my suitcase and carry bag around. Traveling by train I have to drag my suitcase from taxi to station, on/off 2 trains, taxi again to cruise terminal, then drag again to the luggage pod at the cruise terminal. I once had no option but to take a taxi all the way, my taxi driver loaded my cases but sitting in a taxi for 4 hours was rather uncomfortable. By comparison, traveling by coach is brilliant. The Taxi driver loads my bags into the taxi and drops them at my coach pickup. The Coach driver picks up my cases and loads them into the coach. OK 5 hours on the coach but half way we get a 45 minute stop whereby I can have a little walk to iron out the kinks in my joints. Then my case ends up outside my cabin. A lot of physical and mental stress taken away.

Sorry for the double post. I fly solo so it's good option for me. As a couple your solution is probably the best option. My late wife used to go walkabout, which is the heathiest way to fly, and used to drag me along too.