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SandG

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  1. We have watched the Super Bowl onboard cruises a few times and we've found it's fun to watch with other fans around. This time we will be in a pre-cruise hotel on 17th Street on Super Bowl Sunday. It's a little early, but we're starting to think about strategies for watching the Super Bowl (aside from watching from our hotel room). I see there is Duffy's Sport Grill very close to our hotel - will it be a zoo? What other good choices are there in Ft. Lauderdale? We don't mind going a little further for a fun experience, but we want to be able to get a seat!!
  2. Thanks everyone, you have all been so helpful. It is 5 weeks before our journey and we have decided to book our rail tickets today. To review, we are going from Windsor -> Southampton, and I decided to go by way of Reading as this was a fairly inexpensive route compared to the other options, especially when purchasing off-peak tickets (£24.3 for RDG to SOU). I'd considered getting advance tickets for £17.6 but that not such a big savings and I'm glad to have some flexibility if needed. I also feel good that we have reserved seats on that train, because it originates in Manchester and there are a few cruises leaving both that day and the next (ours). I did flip back and forth several times between saving myself any hassles and purchasing a ticket for the entire route vs. booking just the CrossCountry train (RDG->SOU). It turned out that ticketing the whole route ended up just a little more expensive than using the contactless payment from Windsor to Reading, so I booked only the CrossCountry train on their website today (no UK address required, just like LNER!). I've worked out a flexible schedule that will give us 40 to 70 minutes in Reading, so we'll be exiting the train area there anyway to grab some lunch. So now we are all set with transportation because we will be using some OBC to pay for the transfer to Heathrow after the cruise. Thanks all again; if I remember to do it, I'll report back here on how it all went.
  3. Thank you Bill, I'm glad to hear from someone who has done the trip from Slough to Southampton that it will be a straightforward trip. We are getting transportation from the cruise ship back to Heathrow, so only a one-way trip is needed. You're right, there is no contactless ticketing on CrossCountry, and I have decided to buy that segment in advance for some piece of mind. I could have saved a little more money getting an "advance" fare but it wasn't a big savings, so I got the off-peak one to be safe. (We took a train from London Waterloo to Southampton in early May and the off-peak price was £41 but advance fare was £9.20! That time I booked the advance fare since there were 4 of us on that trip.)
  4. Thanks. I did also notice that if I use the National Rail Journey Planner, it has an option to add extra transfer time. So I can at least get it closer to what I want to do. I do wish it had the flexibility of adding more time at a specific station instead of applying it to all transfers because I'd rather have more time in Reading station than tiny Slough, but it's better than nothing.
  5. Thanks for that tip! Doing a little searching on that website, it turns out that someone on that forum was asking questions that were somewhat similar to mine only 4 weeks ago. It gave me a better idea of what to expect. There is also a "RailUK Fares & Ticketing Guide" on the site with lots of good information, although it was a little outdated in places since it's from 2012.
  6. Hmm, I looked again at booking tickets from Windsor to Southampton, and they are very optimistic about our ability to change trains quickly, 11 minutes at each station. We're a couple over 65 with enough luggage for a 14 day cruise, which means that we'll be taking lifts. Only the Reading to Southampton train has seat reservations, so my plan will be to take an earlier train from Windsor and Slough than what is ticketed to give us a little more buffer at the stations. Since they are off-peak tickets, that should be okay, right? Another question: The segment from Slough to Reading is serviced by both Elizabeth and GWR. If we purchase tickets which uses the Elizabeth line but the GWR ends up the next train coming, can we use the same ticket to get on either? Also, I see we have the ability to reserve seats on the Cross country train to Southampton, but how does this work if we're booking off-peak tickets and can travel on any train? What if someone takes a different train, how do their seats get released? (Unassigned) Sorry for all the questions but I like to be prepared on what to expect before I leave.
  7. It's nice to hear from you again. You had kindly helped me out when I was trying to buy advance tickets from London - Waterloo to Southampton 2 or 3 months ago, but had been unable to create an account because of the USA address issue. I did end up creating an account on LNER for that trip and received my tickets as files via email. It worked out great, so I would definitely use them again.
  8. Thank you so much for the advice and taking the time to look at the options. It's nice to have a second pair of eyes on these things. Although I've used and enjoy the UK rail system several times before, it's always been on direct trains. Because the Elizabeth line is part of the London transport system, I'd assumed that I would have to pay for that segment separately, and so I'd use my contactless credit as worked so well during our last trip. I didn't think I could get a since ticket in advance from Windsor to Southampton when travelling via Elizabeth, but as you point out, the website will sell you that combination. And yes, I was excited to find out that there was another train station in Windsor but as you noticed, the options from Riverside (I looked at Waterloo and Clapham) were a lot more money (almost double!) and there are two of us traveling that day. I will look into pre-purchasing the tickets to save the extra time at the station.
  9. We are Americans, yet comfortable with the idea of taking a train to Southampton from London since we always fly in early. We did this a couple of months ago, and I purchased "advance" tickets from Waterloo and saved a lot of money by doing so. (The off-peak ticket was £41 and we bought "advance" for £9.2.) But that was a direct train and it was easy for us to pick a specific train that we could easily catch from our hotel with a relatively small buffer time. In August, we're cruising out of Southampton again but decided to stay in Windsor pre-cruise this time. Getting to Windsor from Heathrow looks simple enough, but I'm puzzling over how much time I need to allow from Windsor to Southampton. I've considered several routes, via London, Clapham Junction or Reading and believe Reading will be the best choice. It's a quick ride on Great Western to Slough, and from there I can take the Elizabeth or Great Western to Reading and change onto a CrossCounty train to Southampton, which runs every hour. I've poured over the train maps and schedules but have a few questions about using the different rail lines and what we'll have to do at each transfer station as a result. I've been unable to find the answers, and hoping someone here can help out. 1) I read that I can use contactless payment from Windsor to Slough and Slough to Reading. We used the "tapping in and out" with our credit cards on the underground and it worked great. But how will this work on the trains on our route? Do we have to tap out and back in again when we change at Slough and if so, do we have to exit the tracks area to do that? Or can we just cross the platform from one train to another and tap out on Reading? (I'm guessing we cannot do this because the "Single fare finder" on the TFL site does not tell me a fare for Windsor to Reading. Also I've read about the "pink" readers but no evidence of one in Slough.) Does it matter, and/or will it be the same price whether we take the Elizabeth line or the GWR line from Slough to Reading? 2) It looks like a ticket is required for the CrossCountry train from Reading to Southampton (which originates in Manchester). Since we're reliant on catching/changing trains to get to Reading, I'm not confident in booking an "advance" ticket this time, but that's okay because the savings are not as big as they were on the Waterloo to Southampton trip. Right now, their website shows that the advance ticket is £17.6 and off-peak is £24.3. Can we do it the easy way (although slower) and wait to purchase tickets when we get Reading station, will we be paying this off-peak price or might it be even more money then? If we wait, is there a risk of not getting onto the train because it's full? 3) To make things the easiest that day, can we just buy tickets for the whole journey (3 segments and 2 to 3 different train lines) at Windsor station? I am aware of the option of buying all of the tickets with "trainline" but nervous about using a 3rd party agent in case of strikes. That's another good reason to wait to buy tickets if it won't cost us much more money to do it that way this time. 4) Am I missing a better option or a better route? I also considered getting ourselves back to Heathrow and taking the National Express Bus from there, but that will ultimately be slower. I have no idea how expensive a private car hire or Uber to Southampton would be.
  10. Yes, I think that's a big part of the reason for the higher prices. We are on the Silhouette and I also noticed that the upcharges I've been paying for our drinks (since we have the classic package) had no gratuity added onto them either. Sailing from the US, if I got a drink that cost $2 more than my package, I think would pay an additional 20% (?) gratuity and probably see $2.40 charged to my account. Here, I see simply $2. If the 20% is correct, then that $15 martini would have cost around $18 in the US with no drink package. But $20 is 33% higher, so there's also a price increase going on here as well.
  11. We are onboard the Silhouette sailing which is from the UK, and we are seeing the higher prices ($20) at the Martini Bar and also most of the World Class drinks are $20 as well. I was wondering if prices have gone up on all the ships, or just pricing for the UK sailings as we were on a Caribbean cruise in February that had the $15 prices. The classic package is including drinks up to $12 (reminder: this is a UK sailing) and so I paid $8 last night to get a fancy drink, and I'm paying a few dollars to get better wines. The premium package now covers up to $20, so it does cover the large martinis and world class drinks. I had been planning to upgrade to premium as I had always done, but it now costs about $24/day 😳 before CC discounts, and there is a new rule that both people in the cabin must get the upgrade, so that would cost us $48/day. I might get my money's worth because I like more expensive wines, but my husband is mostly happy with the classic package selection. So we will pay the upcharges as we go and see how it works out.
  12. I believe they only need your mailing address to cross check the billing address on your credit card. But since you paid with Paypal, it didn't matter!! I'm sure your tickets are fine. Have a great trip! (We leave this weekend!)
  13. For the record, and future readers: On the same day I first commented to this topic, I sent an email to Southwestern Rail asking what to do since I was unable to create an account with a US address. I got an automated reply saying they were backed up because of the recent outage and I would hear back within 4 weeks. 🙄 In the meantime I got excellent help here. 🙂 I was able to purchase advance tickets through LNER. I did finally get a response back from them today, just 11 days later, not as long a wait as they'd warned. They replied with the following: "Thank you for contacting us. Unfortunately our website has issues with non UK address and cards. If you wish to purchase the tickets in advance then I would recommend using a online retailer like red spotted hanky or trainline. Kind regards, xxxxxx xxxxxx Executive Contact & Complaints Team" I was a little surprised that they recommended the third party sellers and not another UK rail line, or maybe they weren't aware that others had a more modern website than they did. 😉
  14. Thanks Bob++ (Curious, are you a programmer? I used to be one, LOL). Yes, that's what I ended up doing!! When I got the tickets from LNER, my tickets came to me as 1 PDF with the 4 tickets and also 4 PDF files with individual tickets. I put the files into "Drive" (the cloud) for us all to access, and we'll each take a screen shot before we leave the hotel. I also printed off the tickets as a back-up. The way I was interpreting the Southwestern site (I could have been wrong), my choices were to send the tickets to a their app or pick up the tickets. I didn't want us all have to download an app and so thought that picking them up was the simplest, thinking we could scope out the station while at it, but getting the e-tickets is even easier!
  15. Thank you so much for the suggestion!! Yes, the LNER site did not care where we lived when I made an account on their website. I did have to supply our home address when using our credit card to pay for the tickets because they needed to confirm that our billing address matched the card info. But again, there was no issue with supplying my US address. (If there was a problem, I could have gotten around that by using paypal, but we prefer using our card.) I do feel much better about being able to buy from a UK rail company in case of operational issues. Several trains were cancelled only a couple of days ago because of "switching" problems. We will be doing this again later this year, so it's nice that I'm all set up now and will know what to expect next time. Thanks again for your help!!
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