Lady Meer

On 5/10/2024 at 5:15 PM, GSPG said:

On board Britannia just about to leave.

We made the decision to buy bottles on spirits on board. There’s not much in it with buying outside, and thought P&O would be happy us buying it from them.

 

Just rang reception at 5.05pm to order a bottle of Bacardi. Response, we haven’t got that. Asked when are you going to get some. Response, we are not.

 

Not very happy. Have they not got any because they want us to buy this drink from the bar?

 

Not a good start with this change in policy!

Only just discovered this thread. Was it just Bacardi that wasn’t available or did they have other bottles of white rum? 

13 hours ago, jeb_bud said:

If you run the coffee maker without a pod you will get hot water. I don’t know if that would be appropriate for tea but it would be hot. 

Tea needs to be made with boiling water - not just ‘hot’ 😳!

On 5/16/2024 at 10:43 PM, Pirateskigirl said:

 

 

 

 

 

A great service by our coastguard (and also our land air ambulance service) - both free. I hope the casualty makes a full recovery
 

I’m really enjoying your posts - we did this cruise 2 years ago and loved it!

8 minutes ago, memoak said:

We always travel as either a 2 or 3 person group and have never experienced a wait but we don’t insist on the exact same table and usually eat around 8:00. On one cruise the head manager tried to hurry our meal and we had to tell the assistant manager to keep him away from us. Guess who got the tip at the end of the cruise

We’re always happy to sit anywhere as we like to meet all the staff. We usually eat at 7.00. We’ve sometimes been ‘encouraged’ to hurry!!

On Voyager we shared a table one evening with a man who was coeliac, therefore gluten free. All was fine until his dessert arrived which wasn’t what he had pre-ordered. He asked the waiter to check if it was gf. He came back and said he had asked the chef and it was ‘nearly gluten-free’ 😳!

We’ve requested and received a kettle on our 2 Regent cruises. There was a coffee maker which we never used.

When we travel as a four, we often have to wait for a table at dinner - sometimes up to 20 minutes. We wait in the nearest bar so it’s not too inconvenient 😃.

We’ve been there once and had a great tour!

I think it’s the Victoria and Alfred Hotel! Albert was Victoria’s husband, Alfred was their son! Confusing, or what?

21 hours ago, MacMadame said:

I have the same issues. And one eye is much worse than the other. I've given up on binoculars and now have a monocular. It works great because I can adjust the focus for the eye I am using.

 

I have this one, $75.

 

https://www.rei.com/product/203791/nocs-provisions-zoom-tube-8-x-32-monocular-telescope

I agree, I have this too and find it works perfectly for me and DH uses the binoculars.

4 hours ago, Host Sharon said:

Yes, beer battered cod is gluten free.

Thanks for confirming that. My mother was gluten free for 50 years but I can’t tolerate gluten free flour - the irony 🙄!  I can’t go to our local fish n chip restaurant 🥲! 
 

I hope your friend enjoyed her onboard visit.

I hope your trip runs smoothly after a tricky start. I shall be following your every move!

I did hear that the batter on the fish is now gluten-free for everyone. I wonder if you would be kind enough to check if that’s true.

I am sure the OP was referring to a P & O cruise on Aurora in ? February this year. It was well documented by Selbourne on the P & O board at the time.

You can all dine together in the main dining room. Suite guests can have their meals in the Reserve dining room and you would need to up-grade to a Reserve mini-suite or a full suite to join them.

15 minutes ago, rallydave said:

Tour tickets???  I was on venture almost a year ago and no tickets. Had to use the app and the expedition team who managed all excursions simply checked us off lists on clip boards 

We had tour tickets in our room when we boarded. No app as far as I remember with Regent last month!

kjbacon - when you get onboard, check your tour tickets! On our W Africa cruise last year all of our tours had a time change. Some were 30 to 60 mins different but 2 were changed from afternoon to morning - one to 6.30 am 😡.

Which country do your parents live in, if it’s the UK it could affect their travel insurance.

Our room steward changed the wine.

Agree with Cajuntraveler about the canapes! 

9 minutes ago, Esprit said:

Re faring here in the U.K. isn’t possible. So I hate seeing these threads with so many people successfully getting their booked cruise price reduced.

C’est la vie!

Our TA got us a reduced fare on our next cruise [2 reserve mini suites) after the prices fell considerably, so it is possible. 

24 minutes ago, LandC said:

 

That’s strange.  Can you give more details please?

Turkey and Eastern Med - April. Standard room B deck is now less than we were offered.

i see a well known TA already has 2025 cruises in their brochure which we received last Saturday! 

The room we enquired about (pre-registered) is actually cheaper on the website than we were offered.

1 hour ago, Hamwen3839 said:

Thanks for responding. It seems a bit different for Australians.For example Senegal do not require Visas from UK or USA passengers but definitely for Australians. What concerns me is that they say I have to send my actual passport to an Embassy( we don’t have one in Australia) and I don’t want to let it out of my control.Appears we need Visas for 6 ports i.e Cape Verde,Ivory Coast,Sao Tome, Senegal, Ghana and Togo.

Wow - that’s going to be costly. I wouldn’t want to send my passport out of the country either. There were a lot of Australians on our cruise - it’s a pity no-one has commented.

We did this trip in November 2023 and (as DaveFr says) only needed a visa for Ghana which Regent did onboard. I checked with all the Embassies in the UK myself before we travelled. Just a note - you may want to take copies of your passport as  Regent kept them for the whole cruise.

On 3/25/2024 at 1:06 AM, visagrunt said:

This is to facilitate South Korean entry and the reentry to Japan. 

Do take note:  foreign residents are required to have their passports on their person while visiting Japan.  There is a ¥100,000 fine if you cannot produce original identification (no copies) when asked by police to do so, and only passports are accepted for foreign nationals who don't have Japanese issued identification.

This means that the ship cannot collect passports at check in.  Presenting the physical passports for South Korean entry and exit would mean collecting all of them in a short period after leaving Fukuoka and returning them prior to Kanazawa.  The use of photocopied biodata pages is a courtesy.
 

Not HAL but have just been to Japan on Regent. Everyday we were reminded to carry our original passport ashore at all times as it is a legal requirement - copies would not  be acceptable. 

8 hours ago, labonnevie said:

April 2023 pre cruise, at the Hilton, the breakfast was served in a separate ballroom, next to the ballroom where we met for our tours. Very efficient, no lines, good variety of offerings. 

Sadly, not in March this year.