NoFlyGuy

12 minutes ago, Harry Peterson said:

Looks very much like it, Andy - let's see whether P&O treat everyone properly, or just those who know what they're entitled to.

Hi Harry, Will be interesting but I suppose these things have to be discussed and cleared with head office.

When we were 'stranded' in Tenerife for 5 days on Ventura back in December it was about 48 hours before we were informed that we would all get 50% of our cruise fare back. Lets hope that P&O are as generous to the current Oceana passengers as they were to us.

I do feel a bit sorry for both sides - whether weather related of lack of port facilities, P&O must be thinking 'what next' especially with the Corona virus outbreak having a significant effect on almost all cruise lines. 

Someone onboard has posted on the Oceana facebook group that Brugge has been cancelled due to more gales.

Seems strange that a major commercial and passenger port like Zebrugge would have a lack of pilots.

Looked at 'windy' and it was forecasting winds of 35knots (just about gale 8) and a 3.5 metre swell out in the North Sea for tomorrow morning - doesn't seem excessive for a cruise ship docking with tug support.

No doubt we will find out. We are due on her on Sunday for the Canaries cruise so will keep an eye on proceedings.

Either way shame for those onboard - not quite the cruise they were anticipating!

Would agree with Jean that with priority booking the 20 minutes includes getting through security and onto the ship.

If you still have your passport(s) scanned and photos taken then the only difference seems to be that I will have to register my credit card (all of 30 seconds).

I got a link to online check in a few days ago for our Oceana cruise on Sunday.

Not sure how it works and, as we have priority boarding anyway, wont bother with it.

Had already printed our luggage labels and e-tickets so we will try to turn up just after noon on Sunday and book in using the old method.

5 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

Yes she has just turned South East to cross the Westerly shipping lane and get herself into the Easterly one.  Only doing 11 knots, so obviously got plenty of time.

Looks like you were right Jean, joining the Easterly flow. May have been a bit rocky turning broadside to the wind and swell though! Should be better once she has the wind and swell behind her heading for the IOW and Southampton.

According to Vesselfinder she is now steering 224 degrees (SW) away from Southampton.

Looking on the P&O Facebook pages they seem to think it's a medical emergency.

If so, must be serious if they can't wait till 6am tomorrow in Southampton

5 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

Yes the shares went up by £2.29, maybe they should stage a few more crashes and delay all their new ships!

The share price shot up at 2pm yesterday presumably after Carnival posted fourth quarter results.

Haven't read them yet but must have been better than expected.

Yes, It looks very lumpy.

No ongoing electrical problems on Ventura but she did have to miss Lanzarote again due to the medivac and adverse weather.

Might not be directly P&O related but seems to be a tough time for Carnival. What with this incident (thankfully nobody reported injured) and the problems we had with Ventura which seem to be ongoing, albeit weather related now. Aurora due to head for the Canaries into some pretty bad conditions. We are back on Ventura on the 3rd - fingers crossed all will be well.

Interesting  to see how the share price reacts, if at all, on Monday. 

The captain did say that reasonable ongoing expenses would be reimbursed so I am a little surprised if no contact details were given.

We stayed on and just picked up our car at the Ocean terminal 4 days late so were not affected. However we did check with guest services onboard that P&O had squared everything with CPS parking though.

11 hours ago, kalos said:

I'm glad to see the Ventura up and running again as we were looking forward to boarding her for 

the New Year cruise as we have done many times over the years.

I have just spent ten days in cardio care in hospital and now back home but declared unfit to travel

so will be at home this New Year.

So to all of you who are onboard and about to go onboard .. Have A Great Cruise.

 

Wasn't going to post ever again but sorry to hear your news.

We had to cancel a christmas/new year cruise last year for medical reasons and were gutted.

Hopefully you will soon be fit for travel.

Just got back from Venturas ''slighty' amended voyage but she seems to going again on all cylindres now.

Hopefully she wont fuse all her forward propulsions electrics again!

Thanks for the link. We will be travelling down on the 29th which is a Tuesday so hopefully wont be affected.

But appreciate you spotting this and bringing it to our attention.

Some on here claim P&O/Carnival failed in their duty to passengers. I disagree.

Would be interesting to know what a non Carnival cruise line would have done differently given the circumstances.

Apart from the question of whether going to Monaco during the boat festival was a sensible idea, this could have happened to any cruise ship.

The sheer number of passengers and crew stranded meant the result was always going to be problematic and not ideal. The idea that hundreds of hotels rooms can be found at short notice at a typical tender port  is ridiculous - Last year we tendered at Rovinj in Croatia, a really nice but fairly small town, doubt they could have accommodated the numbers involved if a similar incident had happened there.

2 minutes ago, Harry Peterson said:

Good friends recently returned from a Saga Baltic cruise - previously P&O but the difference, they said, was incredible.  So much included (drinks even, plus taxi from home), suites had two separate rooms rather than just a curtain. Fantastic new ship too.

 

They won't go back to P&O now, having tasted luxury, but the prices are somewhat higher.

Somewhat higher? We looked at Saga a couple of months ago. Could near enough do two P&O cruises for one Saga even if we paid the £40pppn for the P&O drinks package (which we don't). 

30 minutes ago, Host Sharon said:

They do, and it includes the Safety Officer and Deputy Captain

As I posted yesterday one assumes that the local experts were also consulted and a collective decision taken.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

11 minutes ago, emam said:

By taking the people to the sports arena, they kept them all together and could watch over them. Keeping an eye on passengers that might be ill or needing help with children. I am sure that anyone feeling under the weather (pardon my pun) would have appreciated the fact that they had the help they needed, by people they could trust and talk to without any language barriers. If they had been bused to a place 60 miles away the poor people that were poorly might not have made it and could have ended up having to go to hospital.

 

The two quotes on here from people that were there said that the crew were brilliant. 

 

You can't compare P&O with another cruise line by saying they would have done better, because you simply don't know that. There is a first time for everything. Yes similar things might have happened but they weren't he exact same circumstances. Norwegian stranded people just a few weeks ago, with storm Dorian in New Orleans. The headline read 

 

Hurricane Dorian Strands Cruise Ship Passengers in New Orleans: 'Everyone's Been Starving, No One Knows What's Going On'

 

I am sure they weren't starving, just the same as Azura's passengers might have been cold but would not have been freezing. Before anyone jumps on that I'm not saying it is okay to be cold just that the papers make it out to be a lot worse that it is.

 

 

Agreed.

Just looked up weather statistics for that day - high 25 Degrees and low 18 degrees (usually around dawn). Hardly freezing conditions as reported by the Sun.

I would second most of what's been posted and am careful to wash my hands etc.

I don't go as far as to avoid touching handrails - I'm on holiday and want to relax and although less congested, one could  pick up a bug in an hotel on land if unlucky.

It is dreadful that some passengers handle food in the buffet and then replace it but equally I'm not convinced that tongs are a good idea.

In some ways I would rather someone pick up a bread roll, without touching anything else and take it back to their table, than use the tongs. If their cleanliness is lacking their bugs could be transferred to the tongs risking all those who subsequently use the tongs. 

8 minutes ago, Windsurfboy said:

I think there are two problems, assessing the probability of the wether forecast being wrong, and evaluating beforehand what you can do if the worst happens. 

 

Firstly the weather forecast and the understanding of risk. What we see as laymen on the TV is a single forecast of the most probable scenario.  Presumably this predicted acceptable seas. However a cruise ship is a different matter and it should have access to all the different scenarios, the Captain should be able to take a very informed judgement on the forecast being wrong. I would be surprised given today's technology that the probability of bad seas was zero. Bad weather doesn't come out of the blue nowadays. Clearly if the most probable forecast was for acceptable seas letting people ashore may seem like the right decision but thats only if the risk of it changing is small  Depending on the probability of the forecast being wrong  , then contingency plans should be looked at, and the consequences assessed before tendering.

 

The risk you want to take of people being stranded depends on the ability and difficulty in enacting proper contingency plans. If Monaco had 2000 empty beds, then getting people stuck ashore is a very different proposition for the passengers, compared to Monaco being full. When any port if full and the only contingency is to sleep in a sports hall, then only tender if the risk of bad seas is near zero. 

 

 

As a passenger I would expect the Captain to consult with the port authorities/pilots, they are the experts in local weather and sea conditions. If they deemed it safe to tender and likely to remain so, then the right decision was made at the time. The fact that things went pear shaped later was, to say the least, unfortunate.

So the contingency plan is to have enough coaches and hotel rooms available to be able to bus all passengers and a percentage of the crew at short notice at all tender ports, after all how many might get stranded, 100, 1170 or virtually everyone.

Also better be ready even in ports where docked. After all, unexpected stormy weather may occur and the ship might have to drop its lines for safety reasons.

Seems to me there are going to be a lot of empty coaches and hotel rooms at every cruise port around the world waiting for the possible call from P&O or any other cruise line. But we must have contingency!

Whilst Villefrance is pretty well sheltered by the Cap Ferrat peninsular I can only assume that conditions there were too poor as well that evening/night to tender.

What contingency planning would some of you be expecting to have taken place?

To have 20 or more coaches on standby and 500-600 hotel rooms, scattered all over southern Provence, booked, just in case something went wrong.

By the time 1100 or so passengers had all been dropped off at these 'hotels', it would be time to start coaching them all back to Villefranche!

Still can't see them (9:20). Cruise E005P still shows 'full pricing coming soon'.

Would have loved to do the 35 night Caribbean cruise at these prices but, as others have said, can't fit it in. We are booked on the Arcadia 28 night Caribbean getting back on the 25th November, a week after the Oceana cruise departs - bum!

Looking at booking the 14 night Canaries cruise Feb'20 as a consolation.

Whilst not specifically P&O related but, due to a recent thread regarding breakdowns that had  been closed, I thought it worth pointing out the following.

We are on RCI Explorer of the Seas tomorrow for a 14 night Med cruise from/to Southampton.

Received an email this afternoon advising that she will be late in by about 4 hours due to leaving Stavanger late and all boarding times by deck have been revised.

Cannot confirm the reason but have read that divers were down in Stavanger - something to do with the props, maybe true, I'm sure we will find out. 

The purpose of posting this is just to point out that, if true, P&O are not the only cruise line that have ships that experience the occasional 'mechanical' and assume their maintenance schedules are much of a muchness with other cruise lines.

My wife has been diagnosed with a NET (Neuroendocrine tumour) She's had surgery in December and awaiting further scans to see how successful it was.

We've found InsuranceWith to be good , although with a pretty high excess for cancellation or repatriation if related to the condition.

One slight problem with them if that even on an annual policy, cruise cover is restricted to 31 days, so we are now taking out single trip policies with them.

I suspect prices will depend on the type of cancer and what future treatments are antisipated

Hope you find suitable cover at a reasonable price.