pennib

After years travelling from Manchester to Barbados for our Christmas cruises we finally ran out of patience in 2022 when there were horrendous delays. So we have booked a 35 nighter on Ventura from Southampton. We have looked into using Eavesway coach travel but have some questions. Please note that I have spoken to Eavesway but did not get sufficient information to feel comfortable about booking. we are travelling from Warrington and there are 2 pick up point fairly near but they are both in motorway service areas. Has anyone been to them and picked up a coach there? How early do you need to be ready to receive the coach? Is it like 3 hours before like at the airport? Can anyone give us some comfort that a coach booking will work . If not what are the alternatives, if any?

In my experience, P&O are not good at cleaning the balconies but we were amazed when on Marella, the balcony got hosed down every week.

We have been on Explorer twice in the last 12 months and had no complaints whatsoever which is why we have booked it again for November 2023. We were amazed that the balcony got hosed down each week. Never had that on P&O.

Presto- I don’t know where you would be flying from but remember that you get penalised if you fly from anywhere except Gatwick at £100 per person. For example our cost for the flights for the Britannia Christmas cruise for the both of us is £1088. Swallow quickly!!

Good luck!!!

Same for Manchester. Of course, the Christmas Friday and Saturday flights were very badly delayed (for which we have been paid delayed flight compensation) so we are hoping there won’t be a repeat of this next Christmas.

From memory, you pay an amount to use the restaurant and then the dishes on the menus are not priced.

I think we booked all our speciality dinners when we got on board. They have a couple of machines near reception that you can use to book restaurants and you get a receipt for your booking which saves you fiddling about with the navigate app. They seem to work on weekly chunks as I think most people are on weekly cruises but we do the back to backs so you just have to remember to book the nights you want towards the end of your first week on the ship. We have never been knocked back from a dining booking. The dining club we think is excellent and better than the epicurean on P& O Britannia. Also do not overlook the Vista restaurant which operates in the MDR in the evenings. You can’t book but you just turn up. We think it is great and my OH is not really a lover of Italian food!! We are on Explorer again in November and are really looking forward to it. The only evening venue we didn’t rate was the Sushi bar and also we were not keen on the pasta restaurant in the Mediterranean lounge in the evening. The tapas restaurant in the lounge is really good however.

That’s right. The only walking from the aircraft you’ll be doing is across the tarmac to a coach. That is assuming you are on a TUI charter flight. If you have instead flown BA or Virgin then you will have to collect your bags from the carousel. Not sure how you get to the ship in that case. Taxi probably.

On page 7 of today’s Daily Telegraph there is a picture of a ship. The title for the pic is “Arvia, the latest vessel to join P&O’s fleet arrives at her home port of Southampton, ahead of her maiden voyage yesterday. The 185,000 tonne 345 metre long liquified natural gas powered liner has 16 decks and is the largest cruise ship ever built for the UK market”. Just goes to show you can never believe what you read in newspapers……

Had a letter this morning from Paul Ludlow about reinstating various things such as afternoon tea (but not on Arvia and Iona) and the peninsula cocktail parties. Are these things a sign of someone at P&O listening to concerns expressed on this and other sites?? Discuss.

I take enough pods for the number of washes I think is needed plus some vanish powder in a plastic bag plus a couple of colour run sheets plus the same number of tumble drier sheets as soap pods. All works fine and fits into a small container which goes into the suitcase. Extra weight is minimal. What is the problem? It just needs some organisation…….

We hate having to sit on banquettes for meals as they are never close enough to the table and are usually too low down so we always ask for a table with 2 chairs and no banquette. This is often met with a look of puzzlement and we just have to persevere with our request. Anyone else have this problem? Actually when you are in a dining room (on chairs!!) take a look at the people who are seated on a banquette. If there is a table for 2 the person on the banquette is always lower down than their table companion seated opposite on a chair and they look uncomfortable.

Selling cabins at rock bottom prices just before the cruise seems to attract a certain type of person. It was the same on Ventura for the. Christmas cruise in 2008 after the financial crash. There were a lot of scalliwags who paid next to nothing and there were fights galore and people thrown off the ship in St Vincent on a Sunday and left to find their own way home. Don’t know if drinks packages were done then but either way these people were able to afford the bar prices as they had paid next to nothing for the trip. Way of the world I’m afraid.

Hi. We have been to Barbados and St Lucia in the last few weeks. The information for Barbados is correct although no one checked it and you can do it quite easily on line. No forms for S Lucia although I think you may have to take your passport with you. Didn’t go to USVI this trip but you will need to look at the US requirements which changed recently if you have been to Cuba. You need to look this up asap in case you need to get a visa rather than the ESTA. have a great cruise

We did Azura for 4 weeks over Christmas and New Year 2021 and it was great. Ship obviously not full and there was a quarantine zone for the big C. We were happy.

Been on Cunard twice. First time on the old QE2 which was brilliant. Second time on QM2 which was awful. Cunard is OK if you can stand the class system. If I am on a ship I like to be able to go where I like on board. If you are not booked in one of the grills then you are definitely steerage.

As confirmed P&O cruisers but wavering at the moment, we have done 2 cruises on Marella Explorer and they were excellent so much that we have booked a third for later this year. Never seen any bad behaviour so far but we have seen this several times on P&O over the years. What slightly puzzles me is what are the on board accounts like for these people who go overboard on booze? Drinks on P & O are not cheap.

Thanks

Bazrat - can you tell me how they made it difficult. I presume you are referring to fb as the other social media site. Thanks

You can get plastic wallets which hold the labels/tags and keep them dry etc. wallets attach to cases with wires. We have reused ours. Look on Amazon. They have tons to choose from. Not expensive.

First, I apologise if this has been covered in recent posts but I cannot find the post I want. On Friday 16 December 2022 DH and I were over 4 hours delayed leaving Manchester airport on TUI’s flight to Barbados to join Britannia . This was on top of a delay while we were held at the flight departure gate for over a hour because they were short of blankets and cushions for the flight ( I kid you not). Various excuses for the late departure were put forward by the Captain but the bottom line is that we were over 12 hours in our plane seats. I could hardly stand when we struggled off the plane. What rights do we have for claiming compensation? Is this something we can do ourselves? Is there a claim form to use? As I said, sorry if this is digging up a previous post but I do hope that someone can give us some guidance.

Totally agree with the comments on PE going to Barbados. We weren’t in a suite for our Christmas cruise but we did have a sit down breakfast in the Oriental restaurant on deck 6 each day and it was wonderful.

Not being able to book anything on Britannia before boarding ( except the limelight club) was a real pain and meant that DH had to dash down to the reception to do the bookings as soon as we got on the ship as we had read reports that venues were booked out from the start of cruises. Imagine our surprise therefore when we attended the Epicurean for our Christmas Day evening dinner to find the restaurant barely half full. In fact the waiting staff were starting to remove the place settings just after 21.00 hours in readiness for the next day’s breakfast.

We did 2 Marella cruises this year on their Explorer round the Canaries and they were excellent. We did the Christmas Cruise on P&O Britannia and therefore had a good chance to compare. We have been on Britannia several times. This time, we thought P&O had cut back so much that it was not good. For example we like to have dinner in the Epicurean restaurant and this time we went twice- once in the first week of the cruise and then on Christmas Day for dinner. We can honestly say that our experience on both occasions was such that the Epicurean could not hold a candle to the Dining Club on Explorer, both in terms of the food but also service and ambience. The Beach House on Britannia and Surf and Turf on Explorer are about on a par and there is not much to choose between Sindhu on.Britannia and Kora La on Explorer. we have booked Explorer again for November and we are already on Britannia for Christmas. To anyone who is wondering about whether to book Marella, I would say go for it. We spoke to others this Christmas who have had good experiences on Marella on other of their ships.