Globaliser

It's not cheapness on BA's part. BA doesn't actually make that much money from this, and the fee is set at a level that tries to deter you from paying it at all. This is a development from the previous version of the policy in which you could not select a seat at all (even if you were prepared to pay) unless you were in one of the exempt groups. That underlines why the main aim is to protect seating for BA's better customers. This is correct. Seating rules are usually governed by the operating airline, not the marketing airline (the airline whose code appears in the flight number written on your ticket).

Now you know how the rest of the world feels when seeing the dates that Americans write!

The long dog-leg to get to Corfu got me doing some rough calculations. On the original schedule, I think that Mykonos-Corfu and Corfu-Valetta would both require an average of about 19 knots. Without adjusting the Mykonos departure and Valetta arrival times, Mykonos-Valetta would only require about 12 knots. I don't think that any of the other sectors of the cruise would require an average speed of as much as 19 knots. Even the long haul from Rome to Santorini looks like it's only about 17.5 knots. But this is all very approximate back-of-the-envelope stuff.

The fee for pre-allocation is what we've been telling you about from the beginning of this thread! The difference between your two sectors is actually very likely to be for a more technical reason than simply long-haul/short-haul. It's to do with the booking class (inventory bucket) into which your particular fare is to be booked on each sector, and on the short-haul flight your fare appears to book into a booking class that comes with free seat pre-allocation.

London spends billions on public transport every year to cater for all of those occasions when it's further than you would want to walk!

Thanks, Host Kat!

Trying to see Berlin as a day trip from a port 150 miles away is actually a really frustrating waste of time. I have done this once, but there was literally a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see one thing (it was when Christo had wrapped the Reichstag), so it was worth organising even though normally the idea of a day trip to Berlin of this kind would be faintly insane. Without something like that, you really are better off just flying to Berlin and seeing it for itself. It deserves so much more time and effort than snatching a few hours between two long train journeys through uninteresting countryside. All of this also applies identically for Paris. If you want some fun in Aarhus, try Legoland. It will make you laugh, even if you don't have any children in tow.

Usually, yes. But make sure you know what your backup plans are if it goes wrong, as Ashland says. AIUI, one evening a few days ago there were some five-ish hour waits for bags to be delivered.

Although on the OP's airline of choice, that wouldn't achieve much on the day that I think that they're intending to travel. There's actually another same-airline option from MDW, which is to fly to MIA late in the evening. If things have gone so pear-shaped that the OP has to choose a last-minute option on a different airline, then it's true that ORD would offer more options to MIA.

In the main forum listing ( https://boards.cruisecritic.com/ ) the link to the "Britain" forum (under Ports of Call) currently points to https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/88-britain/ However, the forum itself is now "British Isles/Western Europe" and is located at https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/148-british-isleswestern-europe/ , to which there is an automatic redirect. One effect is that on the main forum listing, the indicators for the presence of unread threads (the blue dot and title bolding) don't work. "Britain" always appears unbolded even though there unread threads in it. All of the same applies to the listing in the "Ports of Call" index ( https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/2-ports-of-call/ ). I'm not sure whether my email to help@cruisecritic.com has reached anyone, so I'm posting this here in the hope that someone techie at CC will see it.

You are actually required by law to have a reservation. The only cab services that are allowed to pick you up without a reservation are licensed taxis ("black cabs" in London, even though they're not always black) which operate from the official taxi rank. Beyond these two categories, everyone else touting for business is illegal, unlicensed, likely to be uninsured, and possibly on the lookout for easy pickings. These car services do thousands of these pickups every day, only a small proportion of which will be cruise ship passengers. As long as they have your flight number, they'll keep on top of what's happening, and they are operationally flexible so they can adjust if need be. But it will be useful to have a working phone on you when you arrive, so that you can talk directly to the driver if you need to. IME, the drivers for the car service that I use usually try to keep track of your timing and whereabouts by phone rather than relying on a sign. At any one time there can be dozens if not over a hundred drivers waiting outside the exit from customs, each holding a sign - good luck with your speed reading! (And no, I don't usually plug the service that I normally use because in general, all of the usual suspects are much of a muchness.)

You're not the only person that something like this has happened to. See this thread for how this poster resolved their issue:

Including AA, the topic of this thread.

Book three cars? Horrendous one-way fees would be my first fear about this.

Hey, there was a smiley at the end of that comment!

On AA? I thought all AA flat bed configurations are all-aisle access?

But I thought you Scots consider Bank of England notes to be "foreign money"? 😉