GSPG

For the hull and underwater areas, I wonder if that episode in Majorca last year when she broke away from her moorings during that storm is showing any signs of wear?

Thanks. Hope you had a good holiday. Must feel ‘a bit weird’ berthing up at Southampton today, only to be allowed off tomorrow when it moves to it’s usual berth? Looking at your sail history, appears you last docked on the 26th March what with not being able to dock at Ponta Delgado. How has everyone got on being at sea for 8-9 days?

Is this it’s last cruise before it’s refurb? Anyone know where it is heading for this, and exactly what they are going to do? I’m interested as I’m on the Baltic cruise next month.

If there was an ‘accident’ going forward that was due to the driver behaving this way, I would say now you have raised this concern with the company they would be negligent by not addressing it in some way. People are often wiser after the event, you have raised the potential for disaster now. I myself would have been sitting there on tenterhooks. In fact I would have shouted out at him to concentrate on the road, and leave his frigging phone alone. All for the sake of finding another cafe, although as we know driver’s can make quite a bit of money from the cafe’s owners for bringing income to them. What was the reason on going to a different cafe, as if driver’s can go off route as they please raises all sorts of questions, and being liable for this and that. I think you need a lot of answers here.

Haha, that would have made me laugh more! We’ve seen Le Voix and as far as I can remember there wasn’t much interaction, well the likes one of the OP party may fear. Saying that, we have seen Gareth Gates at the Limelight, and they sat the three of us on a table on the dance floor right in front of him. It was like a nightclub scene in Goodfella’s. I was c’ing myself in case he done something. He did, he walked about a bit putting his microphone to several people’s mouth’s for them to try to sing a long. I’m sure he could see the fear in my eyes and left me alone! All I can say is if you do get picked on, you will still be living when you walk out the Limelight door. You may probably remember any experience like that for the rest of your life as well. Holidays are there to make memories!

Yes, if you buy shares just to dabble in shares and look to make profit, I assume most know the pitfalls, volatility and uncertainty. If you are buying these shares to make use of the OBC perk, then as long as you will be taking enough Carnival cruises in future any purchase at the current price will more or less pay for itself in time. In the short term, barring a stock market crash the gamble if you like is whether the perk will continue after July. Personally, I’ll wait to see what happens in July, and go from there.

Thanks. Yes at £5 a pop I would have bought them whatever. But again, the only purpose would be for OBC, and as suggested with the uncertainty of the perk after July I might park my decision for a while.

Thanks. That’s the thing, I would only buy them for the perk. And as that appears uncertain from July I think I will hold fire on these.

Thanks. I suppose the only reason to buy these shares was to gain OBC if we cruised with Carnival in future. That’s by my calculation approximately just over six two week cruises on the current price to ‘pay for the outlay’, and you still have the shares. But again, if it’s an unknown and the perk was ceased in July what’s the point in buying them as I’m not interested in what happens to the share price itself, unless they went to a really silly price!

In many an untrained eye and some comments above, is it worth buying shares now given the uncertainty of claiming OBC in future. I have a P&O two weeker in May, would this even come too soon to have any OBC for this cruise in time?

I had a dispute with TUI about our flight back from Cyprus that took off a day late. They weren’t going to pay anything. As soon as I got the ADR on my side and onto them, my God did they crumble and I got full compensation in a matter of days. From our experience and outcome, highly recommended.

Good point, and that happened to me one time. Thought the car would be okay there with less traffic perhaps manoeuvring around, but what a mess when we got back. I was still finding bits associated with that tree months later!

The one at Southampton at least your car stays where you park it. No need for anyone to take them from you.

Yep, same for us on the whole Saying that, our son only received £45 OBC for his single room for our May trip, or he could take the parking option next to the terminal. Rather than pay £300 something for two rooms and cruise package at the HI, we are staying 10 miles out of Southampton overnight in a much cheaper Premier Inn.

I don’t use facebook, but heard only yesterday that a P&O Baltic cruise from last year did not stop at Helsinki, Finland, or Tallinn, Estonia perhaps due to their close proximity to Russia. The ship apparently made stops in Norway instead as replacement to these. Does anyone have any knowledge of this? The next P&O cruise out there is in May on Britannia and I’m due to be on it, and Helsinki and Tallinn are still on the itinerary. I’m expecting these to be cancelled as I would say tensions are even greater than last year. In addition, Stockholm, Sweden has been in the news recently due to unrest there. It could be that the war(s) end just like that, but I can’t see it happening soon as things in a number of areas are going in the wrong direction to put it mildly. For commercial reasons, I wonder if P&O have already taken the decision to change their itinerary on this cruise, but haven’t said so yet as final payment’s are due next week. I’ll be paying mine, but I have been on cruises before when the itinerary has changed and it leaves you feeling ‘what could have been’. This what could have been however may not have been good! I’m not sure what the reason for this thread is, just airing my thinking at this time with a bit of helplessness on the situation. The thing is things as we know can change so quickly. Never before have I felt the world is so volatile in my 60+ years. Quite what we will be looking at in 6 months, 3 months even 1 month down the line with escalations as they are. If ‘things’ do deteriorate before May and spread further, can they still send us on the cruise if the itinerary looks nothing like the one that was booked?

Thank you. Yes, we are undecided. It’s like if one policy doesn’t cover you for something, the other might do! That ‘s why I might keep it, in case one fails in some way with all the small print or just one is better than the other in certain circumstances.

I really don’t know why. We have this insurance and have used the part to do with roadside assistance, and all worked okay. But when it comes to travel, we have been taking out annual insurance with other companies. I think the ‘problem’ is, we complete these policies and know exactly what’s in them. It’s all current and up todate. We feel comfortable. The Barclays insurance carries 5 star Defacto rating (is that good?), so should we trust this Barclays insurance over all others and stop wasting £150 a year taking out other policies?

My concern, if you like is in your very first sentence, just getting off the Seven Seas Splendor, and boarding this ship. Polar opposites?

I feel nauseous reading that! I can imagine a lot of shipping in the channel and BoB will take action to protect their vessels during the vicious forecasted storm where in some places winds are expected to exceed 100mph. Vesselfinder.com might be ‘quite interesting’ tomorrow just to see how much shipping has altered course. Or for the ones attempting to ride through this, there are wave stats for each ship. Just what heights some of these will report back!

Having to navigate the M25, we usually book a park and stay package at the Holiday Inn next to Mayflower park, but it is usually a hefty amount though. For us with the car is around £300, and our son’s room another £150. On our next cruise however, our son’s cabin OBC was £90, and reduced to £45 if he took the parking. So we will use ‘his £45’, and stay at a cheaper priced hotel further away the night before, but south of the M25. Just a tip above for others booking two cabins, if one has much less OBC you can make use of the cheaper parking offer with it.

As you brought this up, I was on Arvia for two weeks to the Med on 9th July, and that ‘caught me out’ that other parts of the UK were on school holidays. There were also a lot of 15,16,17 year olds who had taken exams, and had broken up early. There wasn’t much for this age group to do and they quickly formed friendships, and by the end of week 1 there were gangs of 20 roaming the ship. During the evening they took over the area by Sindhu, then later on and in the early hours were in the canteen. There was food on the floor and glasses in every lift, kids running around nearly falling over mobility scooters etc, and no security in sight. At half one in the morning they were still piling down corridors, going god knows where. To add, there were a number of families where the parents in their 30s or early 40s smashed out of their heads. There were set two’s between families and crew, what a cocktail of guests, and no one wonder there were flash points. I believe the following cruises were less ‘eventful’ however which was good to hear.

Oh okay, that surprised me as thought you would say the Med. I hope my Baltic crowd are a bit more refined! If there are some ‘characters’ though that go down well that’s fine with me.

What was your cruise Andy? a Fjords or Mediterranean?

I’m due to sail to the Baltics on Britannia in May after the refurb. We were on Britannia in May 2019 on a week long trip to Norway. In truth, we have had a number of cruises since then (including Iona and Arvia), and I now can’t remember too much about the ship. I hope they don’t touch Brodie’s though as I liked that on Britannia, but not on the bigger two. It’s been said people can go on the same cruise, but have a totally different experience through a number of reasons, with too high expectations sometimes.

Probably worth a thread of it’s own this one. You are probably right with that figure, a hell of a lot of people carry on cruising. I did have an unenjoyable one in October 2021 on Sky Princess where we were all masked up, whilst sitting down sipped a drink and put your mask back on etc. The DJ played songs to clear the dancefloor and get guests to turn in for an early night. Those are lesser things above. The main reason I did not like it was it felt like the crew did not want us on there. There was a lot of fear still with the virus. Perhaps it’s unlucky and unfair of me to comment about Princessbeing so soon after the outbreak, but my take away was should we have been actually allowed to cruise at that time given all the dangers of covid, and then the ship contradicts itself about passenger safety? At the time, covid was and is considered far more dangerous than novavirus. Why put passengers at risk and welcome them on board when all they really wanted was your currency. Seemed a bit hypocritical to me.