frozenflowers

Thanks! I thought this would probably be the case!

I should have said - both the bookings are a select fare. What I’m asking is can I transfer the deposits for two one week cruises to a single two week cruise? Or would I only be able to transfer one and have to forfeit the other? If going on the two week Britannia cruise I wouldn’t want to go on either of the one week Iona cruises - the dates clash.

Just an idle wonder - I have two weeks booked on Iona in July 2025, back to back but they are as I understand it two totally separate bookings. If I wanted to transfer the booking to a 2 week sailing on Britannia in the same month, would I be able to do this with both weeks or would I lose the deposit on one of them?

This is a good question! We had been on cruise pre-pandemic (on Azura, to Norway). We love Norway so quite happy to have gone on more or less the same itinerary multiple times now, although actually we’ve been to one previously unvisited port on each trip so there’s a tiny bit of variety! The Med on Arvia next year will be a change for us: I’m not sure how often I feel that itinerary will bear repeating: I guess I’ll have a better idea once we have done it once. At this stage in our lives repetitiveness is a positive boon - we have stressful busy jobs and a young autistic child so knowing what to expect is actively helpful! I doubt we will feel that way forever and as our daughter gets older I think we will want to spread our wings a bit. I do wish that there was a bit more variation in what P&O offer. In terms of why we like the ships: I like that Iona (and I assume Arvia) feel very modern and not dated. I also like that standard balcony cabins all have sofa beds - I’m not keen on Pullman beds or having to sleep in separated singles to accommodate the pull down beds so it’s a bonus not to have to shell out extra for a deluxe cabin to get that. I like that there is a wider choice of places to eat than on the smaller ships. I like the massive windows in the atrium! Ultimately for us P&O offer a good value proposition, and the opportunity for a nice holiday abroad without flying and with relatively little hassle. I’d happily try other cruise lines but they all seem a lot more like expensive, and at the moment we’re happy with the product we get for the price we pay.

We’re repeat cruisers on the big P&O ships - we’ve been on Iona twice (and have a further two weeks booked on her in 2025) and are booked on Arvia in 2024. We like them, for all they do have faults!

Standard balcony cabins on Iona and Arvia do have sofas (this isn’t the case on the older P&O ships though, which I agree is an annoyance). I haven’t sailed with Celebrity. I’d love to but it always comes out as enormously more expensive than P&O for us - we’ve got a child and as we are able to sail outside of the English school holidays on P&O we’ve always been able to pay almost nothing (once actually nothing!) to have her in the cabin with us. No other line has ever had such a good deal that I’ve found. I get the impression from what I’ve read that service is better on the US based lines. Generally I’ve also heard that the food on Celebrity is better quality than P&O. We do well enough on P&O so it’s probably for the best that we don’t find out for ourselves that we vastly prefer more expensive options!