Megabear2

No and a dangerous proposition which caused uproar the last time it was muted!

I have to say you should not under estimate yourself. Everyone, no matter who, is equally important be it on this thread or elsewhere on the forum. If everyone thought someone else was more important than they are there wouldn't be many people on any thread. Your opinion, no matter on what, is equally as important as the next man's and you shouldn't feel guilty. It is very sad that one post is leading to people who are good friends to feel they shouldn't post and the whole point of this thread is at risk of undermining itself by accident. Time for everyone to take a deep breath, shake hands (metaphorically) and move on.

I hope you have a wonderful time regardless of if you stay on board or go ashore. Fingers crossed that the pain man finds a way to help you and that will be an added bonus for you as you set off on your cruise.

I didn't know Anthem was going to be in UK in November, I thought her season ended in October. A good idea about the schooling.

I think the OP states each person is having those drinks each plus his children getting the freebies. That would give him a total of £96 daily based on your figures.

I've always enjoyed the food photographs but having been lectured by the doctor a month ago and put into an NHS/Council run health support group to prevent heart problems and pre diabetes in the over 60's I'm suffering food envy instead! I now automatically look at everything in a picture or on a menu and add up the calorie content, how sad is that. I love fish and chips but now see it disappearing over the horizon never to be had again by me so salivate at every picture!

You may need a lot of overtime unfortunately. An August cruise on Anthem next year for 4 is currently around £9,500 according to my friend who has booked Arvia as an alternative at almost half the price - your 13 year old isn't a child on RC although they are on P&O. However the August P&O cruise are full if you require a child place so no doubt RC are able to raise their prices as a result of limited availability. Good luck whatever you settle for and many thanks for your daily blog which has been very interesting.

Currently stuck outside Clapham Junction on the first of my four trains up to Newmarket. No seats of any description and standing from Salisbury for 1 1/2 hours. My next train after the tube is Kings Cross to Cambridge so I'm hoping I might actually get a seat on that one although ominously I couldn't reserve one which I normally do. If that ends up.standing too I might ditch train 4 and take the bus to Newmarket as at least I can use my bus pass and get a seat. What a terrible mess the trains have become - used to be a 9 car train to London from Exeter now only 6 because apparently capacity isn't needed since the pandemic ...

I believe it was £399 each last season ended in April if I recall correctly? I also forgot to mention to Signaller that there's also a seat reservations fee of if I recall correctly around another £78pp return. It can be tricky to get seats together without that fee.

All very interesting. On a cruise of this length approximately how many changes would be considered okay, ignoring the Panama Canal situation? Clearly the mentioned swapping a Caribbean island for another isn't a big deal but what happens if they start cancelling them off one by one and replacing with seadays for instance? The cynic in me says the big changes have been coming after the final balance due date every time even when a problem is seen on the horizon. A 65 day cruise isn't cheap to lock into when the itinerary is already changing.

I'm sorry to hear of your difficulties. Assumedly her extra questions were regarding the property she is intending to buy. As she too will have encountered a large financial outlay for searches, surveys and solicitors it might be worth your chain investigating if it is genuinely to do with a price reduction. When handling long complex chains while I worked in a solicitors office if the person at the bottom collapsed the chain at a late stage for a financial reason we always suggested everyone in the chain consider sacrificing some of their price to keep the chain in tact. For example, if the pulling out person asked for £10,000 reduction we would go back to all chain members to ask if they would be prepared to negotiate and everyone reduce their price by say £5,000 with a view to achieving a sale with all prices accordingly reduced. This often worked. Sometimes the end of chain would counter offer and then discussion took place but if the original price cuts were weighed up against everyone's out of pocket expenses an acceptable solution would occur for immediate exchange. Obviously I'm not sure of your chain's reliance on their sale prices but with falling house prices and mortgage shortages a lower price from an existing chain may be more attractive than having to find new buyers who will no doubt want to negotiate and offer a possible lower price anyway. I hope it all works out for you and at least. Enjoy your holiday.

Dutch Decoy is declared for Friday evening and maintains his entry. I'm pretty certain he will run at this stage as he will have to travel from Yorkshire down to Newmarket. Therefore 20.05 at Newmarket on Friday 18th if you want to check him out.

As I said, I'm not intending in getting bogged down on the dining issues on Arvia - I've been shot down on that one far too many times and have absolutely no intention of revisiting the topic in detail! However see below. My reply was by way of an opinion on how Princess are managing their reservation system and are allowing bookings throught their entire four hour dining period for dinner. Of course Princess are not yet sailing their new vessels in Arvia's class so we are currently unable to judge how their dining system will cope with the 5,000+ passengers, however we can say with out doubt Regal, Sky etc are not experiencing the problems and confusion that Britannia for instance has developed in recent times and she is the same class and design. Better organisation and understanding of your customer combined with a more "fixed" bookable time clearly help. The P&O app system gives absolutely no idea how long your wait may be when you join the virtual queue whereas the Princess "timed" appointment offers that comfort even if when you arrive at the desk your table isn't immediately available. Giving a time means if you keep the customer hanging around for a long time after his arrival he rightly will complain. Offering a vague promise you'll get to eat some time will only cause anxiety and raise anger levels, especially when you shut up shop really early after the virtual queue opens. It's absolutely pointless saying keep looking to join the queue as there's no indication at what point it may reopen, you're turning it into a lottery.

Beware - Iona is absolutely nothing like the E class. Capacity is far higher on Iona and Arvia, 2,900 on Edge compared to 5,200. If money isn't a worry it really is like chalk and cheese.

I hope you enjoy the stadium and get to meet the eagles. Depending on timing they will fly one for you which is pretty amazing in itself, nothing quite as exciting in football as to being in a full crowd when one of these magnificent birds spreads its wings and soars across the pitch. Have a wonderful day.

Naples is like Eden compared with St Vincent on a rainy day! What I meant was get outside of the immediate areas around the ports because most of them are pretty crummy immediately outside. The beaches, volcanic landscapes and the rainforests etc are the beauty of these places along with some great flora and fauna.

I hope you get Wadali Cats. They were far superior to Mystic Cruises in our opinion as the crew are very much.more interactive. I wear my "crew" shirt every time I go to Antigua. It's a nice day out we've done it every year up until 2022. Despite all the countless visits to Antigua we'd never been to a beach for the day so did that last year. Thinking of maybe the half day boat trip this time and some relaxing time on board. We aren't doing many excursions this year though, just our absolute favourite in Bonaire on the catamaran out to the national park. We love it because it's under sail rather than.engine. Be prepared that a lot of these places are pretty shoddy immediately outside the port which can be a bit off putting. We arrived in St Kitts last year to a big local.festival and a lot of people for some obscure reason got ver nervous because of the noise,!

Did you get on the Antigua catamaran cruise? It showed sold out when we looked. I personally didn't rate the beaches in Curacao, they are quite rocky and msn made. If you like swimming with wildlife the P&O trip that goes to the fishing village for you to swim with wild turtles is good, they also take you to a beach for a couple of hours and to see the flamingos. Grenada has amazing Grand Anse beach. You can get the ferry across to it from just outside the port gates. Otherwise some quieter ones can be taken to by local taxis. All the prices in Grenada for the local tours are government controlled and you can pay in the terminal and be taken to your minibus. St Vincent - are you doing Bequia with lunch or just the transfer.

I've sailed on Celebrity, Cunard, RC, Princess and P&O in the past 12 months. They have all changed the way you dine since before the pandemic, particularly on the "freedom" dining side. Celebrity, RC and Princess seem to operate a choose your time with 10 minute slots, Cunard introduced Britannia "freedom" and P&O, well P&O are trying to be all things to all men. In truth all these changes, apart from possibly the Cunard one, are being offered to offer more choice on how you dine and who with. It was very noticeable on Princess they were not offering a lot of table sharing in freedom. The 10 minute slots gave choice on the three American lines with at least some basic time frame. The Cunard one allowed me to book a slot on an app if there was availability but when arriving for my prebooked time it seemed every other person onboard had ignored the app and just turned up with resultant mayhem. P&O depended on the ship. The ond big difference was the app/Medallion worked all the time on the American ships.

Why not forward the reply highlighting the worrying bit to the people you dealt with previously at Carnival House as well as speed is needed here and you'd be within the must reply in 28 days if you write in the next day.

As I said above I would seek clarification on that reply before parting with my cash next month. If you felt strongly enough about the changes to ask you must be concerned. I'm guessing this is an expensive cruise and I also recall you saying you were only reluctantly sailing with P&O so ask and insist on a proper answer.

I'd be more worried about the ominous waiting for information as to what constitutes a significant change for this cruise. If the final payment date is 5/6 weeks away I'd seek clarification from P&O urgently as to what this means. Personally I would read that as a high possibility something else may be changing imminently. Two ports being changed isn't unusual on Caribbean cruises but this rather strange comment would definitely ring alarm bells before I parted with a substantial amount of cash next month.

That's the 65 night one? I wouldn't think changing two ports on that itinerary would constitute a significant change because of the length of the cruise and the advance warning.

Which cruise is this and what has changed?

The problem with RCI is the cruises start in the US. P&O charter direct to Barbados including regional offerings offers bonded luggage which is a fabulous benefit. The cost is also very high and in my experience if weather conditions prevent a port call RC do not often replace the port or attempt to reorder. P&O are actually very good in the Caribbean and also their excursions and tours are about half the cost of any offering on an American ship.