sandancer

$100 each for Murano I believe.

Yes Phil, we always book Select. I was trying to point out that if you wait to book onboard you have less chance of getting your chosen cabin category if it is in high demand.

The only drawback I can see for booking onboard is if you want a specific cabin or cabin category. We always book an aft, wake view cabin whenever possible and they tend to be snapped up quickly once a cruise is released for booking. Not over bothered about the £50 deposit but double obc is well worth having. TigerB did really well with that.

Thanks. I was going by Celebrity where they pass on the booking to the travel agent unless you specifically instruct them not to. We are also on the Arvia repositioning cruise in March. We have just booked Azura for January. If I’d known about the £50 deposit and double obc I would have waited and booked onboard.

If you book onboard is it automatically passed on to the travel agent you booked the original cruise with or does it stay with P&O.

I may have invented this but I thought I read that it is more expensive to reserve onboard. That wouldn’t bother us as we also have a nice pot of obc but want to make sure we get our bookings. We’ve paid upfront for all our excursions so paying for restaurants is a no brainer.

We were in a hot air balloon over the red rocks in Arizona on the day of the Royal wedding. The Americans in our hotel were appalled that we would miss the televised ceremony just to go up in a hot air balloon to see the most spectacular scenery when we could be watching tv.

Booking opens 2 weeks before sail date so the only way to guarantee you’ll get in will be booking in advance and making payment then. Some cruise lines allow you to use obc pre-cruise. P&O are not one of them.

Thanks for that info. We have 2 Azura cruises booked where we have Jet2 flights and this is very useful.

We have 4 P&O cruises booked. Would be very disappointed if we couldn’t eat in Epicurean so I’m hoping this rumour is just that “a rumour”. Thanks Gettingwarmer for the positive post.

Well hello you two. We are looking forward to the TA, we have done lots of them since our NCL days. Glad you were happy with the cabin. Our last cruise was in November on Enchanted Princess and we loved the cabin. We are on Azura in October, Malta to Tenerife. We know it’s an older ship but we like the itinerary.

Fair comment Megabear2 but I’d still like to know where this information originated from. Hopefully the OP will come back and confirm the source.

Our cruise is definitely one of those affected. Checked with our travel insurer and we will be covered for cancellation or curtailment due to Covid.

We would love P&O to use the Port of Tyne. Azura was docked here during the pandemic. Fred and Marella both sail from “Newcastle” and there are plenty of cruisers from the North of England and Scotland who would welcome P&O. We do get plenty of ships making port calls. Holland America, Disney, Silversea and Cunard are among them. Unfortunately none of them use the port for departures.

Just had an email from P&O saying that we have to test ourselves 3 days before our cruise on Arvia in March and are required to show proof when boarding. I wasn’t expecting that. I thought we were done with covid testing for cruising. Especially as we are fully vaccinated. So what happens if you test positive? Will P&O issue FCCs? Or is that all done and dusted now.

Go on! Treat yourself. It’s worth £10. if I could find it at 25% off I would def be stocking up.

Malbec would work. Happy to buy either by the bottle or glass. You can probably tell that we are fairly easy going about wine choices. Our very favourite wine is from Chile and is Diablo dark red. £10 a bottle a supermarket. We are planning to buy a couple of bottles of spirits in duty free. I wonder if it would be acceptable to take a selection of smaller bottles rather than 2 large bottles.

If there is a Merlot and a Pino Grigio, by the bottle or glass it will suit us nicely. On our Cunard cruise in August we used to buy a bottle of each and finish them over a couple of nights.

We are on the starboard side for the return TA. My DH still sticks to the old “port out, starboard home” rule. That’s great advice about the noise level.

Great. Thanks

No. Sorry. Just Googled water taxi tours.

I forgot to mention that now on Celebrity lobster night you are allowed one lobster tail pp. Extras cost $16.95 each.

We will be taking our 3rd P&O cruise in March. I have read with interest the posts mentioning cut backs on P&O. Not having much experience of the cruise line I don’t know what the cut backs are. However, we have taken many Celebrity cruises and so after watching a YouTube video tonight on the same subject I am interested to compare. The cutbacks on Celebrity include a charge of almost $12 for room service which used to be free, premium drinks package now costs $109 + 20% pp per day. Wow. Speciality restaurant upcharge increased (amount not specified) and finally dinner service drastically cut back in the buffet. So it seems P&O are not the only cruise line penny pinching.

I’m fairly sure it’s not just P&O that have the same rules. Cunard certainly have the same criteria. I know this because we wanted to do the same but it was refused. I do understand the reasoning behind it though.

We initially booked a deck 9 aft cabin on Arvia and after reading comments on CC we moved to deck 11, same cabin. We expect to still have some noise from the bar below but it’s not going to spoil our cruise.