cottonbuddas

I have travelled on all FO ships except Black Watch. I am much more interested in hearing people's positive experiences regarding their cruises or excursions they have taken.

Although I enjoy hearing people's positive experiences, I also feel the need to know of their negative experiences too. And in this case I consider that Fred's insistence on defending the indefensible all the way to the Court of Appeal is very poor customer service by the company and will have lost them much customer respect.

This thread has not been about norovirus - we all know that cruise lines are now much better at managing this than they used to be. The thread has been about FO's current attitude to customers as illustrated by continuing to argue all the way to appeal. Not good for its reputation.

London, as regards travelling on FO ships, I am the opposite of you in that we have only sailed on the Black Watch when with them, none of their others. It's a bit like a comfortable pair of old shoes since it requires little effort from us, so we will no doubt continue to use it.

And thank you Tring for your original information which I think has been useful.

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Why, oh why, do people who hate children so much and who mostly are in the position of being able to travel at any time of the year, decide to take a cruise in August when schools are on holiday? And when grandparents like ourselves are left in charge by working parents.

We have taken our grandchildren on Fred cruises for nine years since the younger was 3 years old. There have always been children's "arrangements" with trained children's hosts (not nursery nurses, they were usually proper junior school teachers in their summer holidays). They played table tennis in the dedicated room (on the Black Watch) and did their craft work, board games, quizzes, etc in the open air area just outside that room. They had an hour a day in the pool reserved for them, and they all sat together for the evening shows. Their pizza and cake baking took place in the self-service restaurant between lunch and afternoon tea when it was closed to others.

On our last cruise there were about 15-20 children aged from 3 to 14 years, who all mixed together really well and entertained eachother. I can remember one of my granddaughters in the pool every day for half an hour, giving swimming lessons to a 6-year-old boy. Most of the children were accompanied by grandparents (rather than parents), probably because the likes of Thomson and P&O were not their favourite cruise line. Because of this, I found that most children were there as only children, at most they had one sibling or cousin with them - no large families! We have always sat at a table for four in the restaurants, so as not to inflict our children on other table guests. However, because we choose cruises with as many sea days as possible, we sometimes found our girls either chatting in the lounge with older ladies, or even playing cards with them. Our elder girl has always been a demon at cribbage and has been much in demand to set up a game on quiet afternoons. Her younger sister was more than happy to take her dance shoes and join the ballroom classes.

So please don't knock the children. Fred have not introduced anything that wasn't there before. And it was obviously working so well that most of the moaning oldies hadn't noticed. For those of you who don't want to mix with children and consider that freedom to travel for eleven months of the year isn't sufficient, perhaps if you insist in holidaying during August you could choose a more selective cruise line. I can recommend Noble Caledonian or SilverSea - both lines we enjoy when on our own, but where we would be unwilling to pay for grandchildren.

I've just looked at my Black Watch photos, and I would say the pool was about 25-30 ft long (looks about the same length as four or five bodies :)). Long enough to do a delicate breaststroke, but perhaps not if you push off from the wall and glide first.

There are two exercise pools at the back of the main pool, either side of the jacuzzi, but we could never get the current strong enough to swim into. We asked a few times if they could make the resistance stronger, but nothing was done. But perhaps the power it's normally set on might suit you for exercise purposes.

I could let you have some photos if you know how to do (and could instruct me) such advanced computing activity as loading photos.

.... for pushing lift buttons or on hand rails, get them from Amazon and also Boots Anti Viral foam buy one get one half price from boots. Another thing we do is sign all drinks receipts with your own pen .....

I completely agree with anti VIRAL (rather than anti-bacterial) and also using your own pen. Additionally, can I suggest pushing lift buttons with a bony elbow or a knuckle, rather than the finger. And when leaving the public toilets (if you really MUST use them), again use the elbow for the handle and push outwards if the door opens that way, or use a paper hand towel to grasp the handle, again pushing the door open with your shoulder. Also, as soon as you get back into your cabin, wash and scrub the hands in case you've picked up anything.

All this sounds a bit drastic, but is very easy to get in the swing of, and well worth it if it means you stay healthy.

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This article might help:

http://www.cdc.gov/features/norovirus/

 

On average 0.3% of cases are hospitalised, of which 1% die

 

Thank you, that was very helpful, especially now I've found out that norovirus isn't a "special" illness, it's gastro-enteritis. Unpleasant certainly, and not what you'd choose to have on holiday, but with such low mortality rates (1 in 33,000 of those infected) it's something I am not unduly concerned about.

I've been sea-sick for that length of time before, so I don't suppose norovirus is any worse than that!

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Thankfully I have not had norovirus myself but I know someone who has and she suffered excrutiatingly painful stomach pains and extreme vomiting and diaorrhea. Of course, the effects vary from person to person as with any virus but not pleasant by anyone's standard. Add to this being cooped up in your cabin and the possibility of missing a port I think you are taking it far too lightly.

I haven't had it either, I haven't been on a cruise with it aboard, nor do I know anybody who has ever had it. Which is why I was posing the question about how serious it was.

I don't find a 24/36 hour illness a major disaster, whilst remaining in my cabin for a day would not be too painful. And as for missing a port, well in many cases this could be a relief. I always feel obliged to go ashore and have a look, even though I might have been there three or more times already, and didn't particularly like the place the first time. Like most cruisers, I've lost count of the times I've been to Madeira, Lisbon, Oslo, Bergen, Copenhagen, etc. The only place which I would have been seriously upset to miss was St Helena (for the obvious reason that it's a bit difficult to return to).

So perhaps I am taking it lightly because the illnesses which worry me and which have caused me to change my travel plans are:

• not going on a cruise calling at Senegal because of ebola
  
• not visiting Hong Kong when bird flu was rampant
  
• not going to Brazil for the Olympics because of zika virus
  
• not visiting certain areas of China when TB was rife
  

So I'll ask again - are we getting norovirus a bit out of proportion? If I have significantly underestimated its effects, then I'll certainly revise my views, but until then I think I'll just

On reflection, I wonder if we are making too much of this? How serious is norovirus? I might have misunderstood, but not many seem to be rushed off to hospital for emergency treatment. Are you just sick for 24/36 hours?

In which case it doesn't seem to be worth making such a fuss about - just take what precautions you personally are comfortable with. After all, I've had much worse things befall me in Egypt .... Delhi ..... Mombasa ..... even Weston-super-Mare if I remember right.

Staying in my cabin and nodding off on the bed for a day doesn't really seem so much different from nodding off in the lounge, and at least I'm not taking up a seat!

Surely, you should wash your hands all the time, whether you are unwell or not? Isn't what this is about?

I understood TansyMews to mean that for a week or two you should continue to wash your hands "often", ie much more frequently than usual, not just after a visit to the lavatory.

I wonder why it's always cruise ships that have outbreaks of Norovirus and yet we never hear about the crews of naval warships being similarly affected, and they live in VERY close proximity to each other.

Funnily enough, I was listening to Radio4 last week, I think it was the Food Programme, which visited a submarine, its galleys and storerooms. The question of "what about Norovirus" was broached and the answer was that their hygiene standards had to be of the highest, since it was their finger on the nuclear button. That's the reply I would have expected for PR purposes, but on reflection it's most probably just part of naval discipline.

Our own practice is to use our own Hand gel, use our own pen to sign chits, use our own cabin facilities, don't use lifts, try not to use hand rails and use serviette when using tongs in Buffett. Now it seems extreme but we just get used to it.

And I think we should make sure the hand gel is virucidal, not just antibacterial.

Are there any opinions on which brands are best?

Mauritius, Seychelles, Madagascar, Reunion - none of the French speaking islands are my favourites, so I'll be giving this lot a miss.

I have read about that tram and understand you get good views along the river as you go. We may well do that this year.

 

We have done the historic tram route which goes up and down the roads of the city, but we got a day ticket from a newsagent in the centre of the city. If you paid into a machine as you got on the tram, can you remember how much the fare was? I presume we would need the exact change to do that.

The views weren't so much of the river, but of the town itself, although we did go under the bridge and had a good look up. The fare was about euro 2.50, each and each way. I think there is still a one-day travel card which might have been better value at 6 euro but I couldn't cope with buying that from a Portuguese machine as we swung down the road. I was having enough difficulty trying to work out what "over-60s" and "children" tickets were :-}

We walked back a little bit (between the tower and the monument) along the water and it was so clean. We sat having an ice-cream, with our feet in the water, watching the fish no more than 30 cm away. I was going to say foot, but decided it sounded a bit confusing!

PS You don't need the right change for each ticket. It's electronic so you can buy several tickets at once with a single payment. Anyway, IIRC it gives change.

We docked in Santa Apolonia last year and got to the Tower of Belem, Mosteiro dos Jeronimos and the Monument to the Discoveries (according to my granddaughter, the paving is a bit like the Blackpool Comedy Carpet but more academic) by the E15 tram along the waterfront. It was a modern electric tram (not one of the heritage ones) and you pay at a machine inside - very easy, because everybody is telling you what to do and waving their arms about, great fun. On the way back, the machine wasn't working so, oh dear, it was even cheaper than expected!

To get the tram, from the Black Watch we turned left along the river and walked to the big "commercial square" and then the tram for about 20 minutes. They run very frequently so no worries about getting back in time.

.... and we were told they are expecting quite a few children on Balmoral this week, we have noticed that grandparents who like FO often bring the grandchildren along.

This is what we are doing at the weekend on Black Watch from Liverpool - husband, myself and two grandchildren. Our average age is 41 - exactly the same as the OP, but I suppose this is quite a meaningless statistic really :-)) Still, it reduces the FO average cruiser age!