SeaJane

Just caught up on everything. @Adawn47 so pleased to hear the good news about Frank - I can only imagine how relieved you must both be. Hope you have a lovely relaxing weekend.

@Eddie99 and @Presto2 - hope you both have a fabulous time on your cruises with lots of lovely sunshine.

We had 3 lovely meals in Epicurean on Ventura in May and were served by the waiter in your picture. On that cruise all our MDR meals were very disappointing so I’m pleased to see that they seem to have resolved that issue!

I’ll be following this thread and looking forward to reading about your experiences Selbourne. Things clearly didn’t get off to a good start with embarkation, but hope that you were able to board in time to enjoy a leisurely lunch and a welcome drink (or two 🥂🤣)

Another lurker and occasional poster here! A very happy and healthy New Year to everyone. Avril - I’m so sorry to hear that Frank is in hospital, but pleased to hear that he seems to be making progress. Hope he will soon be back home with you where he belongs. Look after yourself.

The suite bathrooms on Aurora were refitted before Covid and are now white (at least the ones we’ve been in recently are!) so it must be possible.

Merry Christmas everyone and a happy and healthy new year.

We also received ours today. We reached Caribbean level this year so assume that is why we now qualify.

Us too! OH knows he’s not allowed to book anything without checking the calendar 🤣🤣

Hope all goes as well as possible for you today. So sorry you and your family are having such a sad time.

What a pity that Epicurean was not to your liking on your cruise. We ate there 3 times on Ventura in May and found both the food and service to be excellent at that time. From the pictures you have shown it looks as though we had the other menu.

We definitely would have gone more if the menu had changed as we had a lot of OBC to use and at that time we found the MDR food very poor. The food in Epicurean was excellent.

We were on a 7 night cruise on Ventura in May. The cruise started on Saturday and the menu in Epicurean remained the same throughout the cruise.

We also always received the next days menus on every cruise pre Covid. On our first cruise this year on Ventura in May the butler did not deliver them, however on our recent Aurora cruise they were again delivered every day.

Have a great cruise - looking forward to hearing about your experiences.

Happy birthday to everyone who is celebrating over the next few days 🎂🥳🥂

I agree that roast potato was an odd thing to put with the salmon, but as you demonstrated it was easy to ask for an alternative if that didn’t suit. I had the chicken on a couple of occasions as did others on our table and found it very good. My husband described the sirloin steak as tender and juicy with a lovely mushroom sauce. I think we’ll have to agree to differ on this Jean!

I’ve just looked back through the menus on this cruise and in my opinion it’s a bit misleading to say there was a roast every night in the MDR. Whilst many of the descriptions of the meat described the method of cooking as “roast” the meals were served in various ways with different accompaniments. For example roast potatoes were served only rarely. Obviously food is a very personal thing, but as we enjoy a variety of foods we were content with what was on offer and really enjoyed most of the meals. For me it was the starters that were often rather boring. As a fish lover I did miss the lack of always available salmon and prawn cocktail.

We really enjoyed the cruise too. The staff were incredible and all seemed very happy inspite of how hard they work. We were fortunate to have fabulous weather for the first 2 weeks and we met lots of lovely people. We felt the food was good overall although the menu choice has certainly reduced from what it was. On the occasions when I was less happy with my meal it was usually that I had made the wrong menu choice! Everything was always well cooked and presented and hot which is a big improvement on our Ventura experience in May! The waiters were happy to bring extra or make adjustments as requested. It’s the changed MDR lunchtime menu that I often struggle with, but that was also the case in 2019. We also found the Entertainment Manager hopeless. However we did enjoy some very good performances from the RKs, the Vinylettes, Tom Ball and Neil Lockwood. Apparently the Headliners were new and we didn’t think they were very impressive although thankfully they didn’t do many shows in the theatre. The Captain was certainly conspicuous by his absence during the storm! The weather was really horrific and in our opinion he should have given further updates and reassurances. We have sailed in similar weather on previous occasions, but we came across others who were quite concerned especially when glasses and bottles were smashing. There were three different speakers onboard and although we didn’t attend any of them others found them enjoyable and informative. Aurora remains our favourite ship and we are booked on her again for 2025.

No starlink internet on Aurora yet. It’s still the old system, but it’s worked fine for us.

We’re really enjoying our Aurora cruise - it’s good to be back onboard her and we have had lovely weather and calm seas. Lovely to meet up with @yorkshirephiland @Astrajet last week for a chat. Yesterday we had a pleasant day in Heraklion and a delicious lunch of shrimp risotto. Today we have enjoyed a wander around Mykonos. It was quite busy as there was Virgin Resilient Lady, Silver Spirit and Star Legend in as well as us.

Us too! Finishing packing this afternoon ready for the journey to Southampton tomorrow to join Aurora - our first time on her since April 2019. Really hoping she will be an improvement on our Ventura experience in May.

I understand if you book in advance you get a 10% discount on the cost, but have to then pay that amount. That was certainly the case when we were on Ventura recently. You can only use OBS to pay if you book onboard.

We were on Ventura in May and were very disappointed in the MDR food as I mentioned on here. The quality was was poor and the presentation dire. Things were only saved for us by 3 excellent meals in Epicurean.We complained whilst onboard and again once we returned home. A representative from Paul Ludlow’s office phoned and acknowledged that there were problems which they were addressing. We were awarded £300 OBS for our next cruise. Hopefully things have indeed improved - I think it was SarahHben who was onboard recently and posted about her experience with some photos. Her experience seemed to be completely different from ours and the food she was served looked a million miles away from our meals!

We used that address for issues from our recent Ventura cruise. We got a proper response and follow up telephone call within 28 days.