sherri3802

This is a long shot, but can anyone here share their experiences on similar cruises? There are 4 of us who have done a few cruises, pretty much through Princess and P&O Australia, but never have we been near a MSC ship, nor have we been to Europe before. In particular, if anyone has any tips on how to best get from the port back to the airport, it would be appreciated.There are taxis and private car hires but they seem expensive. Has anyone tried the bus? As far as I know, the ship docks in Port Merghera. Our cruise is not till late September but we like to be organised! Thanks in advance for any information about these ships.

I'm jealous. Sounds as if you hit the jackpot as far as shows went. On our cruise, they were always packed out. Maybe it varies from ship to ship or number of passengers on board, I don't know. As for the cake squares, I know it sounds as if all I was harping on about is food but I recall a Princess cruise way back in about 2009 where one day, they had all manner of desserts from cheesecake to pavlova to choc mousse etc. This was one afternoon up in the buffet. Plus icecream every aftrernoon. Free pizzas, burgers etc Okay, so P&O has never had all that but they have definitely cut down on the quality & quantity of the food, as far as I could see. And I would have loved a few different desserts in the buffet. I would genuinely love to hear how other cruise lines compare these days. I am finding some of the P&O prices are right up there eg one cruise I was looking at is over $1,500 I think for 5 days in window cabin. And close to $1,200 for an inside cabin.

I am so pleased, in a way, to see your post as I was wondering if it was just me feeling like this. I went on a Pacific Adventure in April, to the islands, and it was the worst cruise ever. I had about 5 cruises before that but all pre covid. Two had been with P&O. All I can say is the cut backs were disappointing. I didn't mind the look of the restaurants but the food often wasn't good, (especially for anyone with dietary requirements). Small serves, not much choice on the menu, pay extra for things that used to be included. And the buffet-little squares of cake for dessert every day? That the best they can do? In the past, the dining was pretty good, we felt we were being a bit spoilt with all the good food. Not this time. Cabins cleaned once a day only (which we could live with, that is fine) but things such as beach towels not restocked unless you nagged. Everything too crowded, having to get to the marquee 30-40 minutes before showtime just to get a seat. Not much going on in the day unless you love trivia & karaoke all the time. No daytime movies in the marquee, for example. I could go on... and on. What i would love to know is what cruise lines are people enjoying now, what has changed on eg Princess post covid? I haven't written off P&O completely but OMG it would have to be extremely cheap before I would bother again.

Don't know if it is the same on all ships but I was recently on Pacific Adventure and wanted to do a load of washing. In the laundry there was a box on the wall that was supposed to dispense powder sachets I think but it looked non functional. probably it should be removed. I went down to the reception desk and asked and was handed 2 metal tokens and 2 sachets of washing powder. It was scanned to my onboard account. The tokens work with either the washing machine or dryer. I am not 100% sure of the cost. I think the tokens are $2 or $2.50 each. I was charged about $5 in total so he may have given me the powder for free, I don't know. My advice with the powder would be if you can, dissolve it before you add it to the machine as some of it went clumpy and stuck to some clothes. I used both sachets in the one load though, maybe it was too much.

That's really interesting. I had no idea that people could not buy candles as gifts. Like you, I would never have any intention of using them in a cabin. I actually would not buy them as presents either as I have a bit of a thing about them, ever since a friend had most of her house burn down with one. But as you say, you can't trust all people to do the right thing. I was also interested in what ELep wrote, about the emphasis on the danger of fire at sea being non existent on Pac Adventure. I was on the ship in April & that was my impression too. I was in an inside cabin so I have no idea if people on balconies were smoking or not but I would have thought that even if someone is in isolation, they should still not allow smoking in rooms or balconies. One thing I did hear though was that the cruise before us had a lot of covid on board and I think it may have been the case on our cruise too. My daughter caught it but no symptoms till the day after the cruise, so she was lucky. One thing that also surprised me onboard the ship was that, considering Covid is still around, there seemed to be less emphasis on using the hand sanitiser than there was back on my pre covid cruises. I recall back then (On Princess) someone would always be near the sanitiser as you walked into the main dining room at night, making sure you used it. On my recent P&O cruise, the sanitiser was there on the desk & about a dozen servers were lined up to lead people to their tables but most of the passengers didn't bother using it. I noticed the same at the buffet. Somehow, I had expected it to be policed a bit more.

I just think that at the live demos, they seemed to make the point very clearly that smoking was not a minor misdemeanor. It was in your face & repeated, you couldn't miss it. I am not sure how things worked with the TV in our room. It is possible the safety video was on & I missed it, I don't know. The TV worked okay the rest of the trip. I was in and out of the room for a while. I was in a room for 4. It's certainly more convenient as a video I suppose, but I am just not sure how many people on board would have watched it. My bet is if someone was smoking (and it sounds as if that was the case) then the person will claim they thought it would be okay in the privacy of their room and must have missed that part of the video.

I understand that while passengers are off the ship, they are not spending money onboard. But from what I have seen, a good part of spending is on various drinks during the day and as quite a few people have drink packages, that could amount to a saving for the cruise line. I also think even with an overnight stop, most people would return to the ship for their evening meal or that's what I found happened when we had an overnight stay in Dunedin one time. I am not sure about what you mean about the ship having to go faster to make up extra time spent in port. Probably I didn't explain myself well. What I meant was for example, if a cruise was for 7 days, it could cut down on the number of ports if it stayed longer in those ports. Maybe just 2 ports instead of 3. In that sense, I think the costs could even out. Higher port cost but less sailing. Maybe I am in the minority here but I actually do think of a cruise as a mode of transport between different destinations. Sure, the cruise itself is also part of the holiday experience but the destinations are also an important part. To me, anyway.

I don't even think the tie will be compulsory, although it would be a good idea to bring one, just in case. I think as long as the pants are long, clean, in reasonable repair and the shirt lookes presentable, they will be fine. On my last Princess cruise, I found the only thing they were iffy about with men was no shorts. Open necked shirts seemed fine.

I don't know that it is not successful. I first went on a cruise in 2009 and I think there were only 2 cruise lines to choose from, P&O or Princess and about 4 ships between them. Something like that. Since then, I have noticed there are new cruise lines and more ships. I think it is popular here but we haven't the big population base of some other regions. To me, some of the problems with cruising here are that there aren't enough different destinations. Maybe we need a few more big ports or even medium ports the ships can tender to. I'm not a fan of too many sea days. I am just not into trivia or karaoke that much, the ship lines need to offer a lot more-movies in the theatre during the day & just not up on the outside screen would be a start. I'd be all for longer port visits. If I ever go on a cruise again, I'll be looking carefully at the number of destinations and quite a few cruises to eg sth pacific, have cut down the stops to 2 or 3 on cruises that last 7-10 days. They could do better. I would be willing to go on a cruise that offered fewer destinations but stopped overnight at a couple. The trouble with a lot of cruises is the limited time in port. If I cruised eg to Darwin, I'd love a couple of days there. Stopping longer at a limited number of destinations could be our point of difference to overseas cruises. I'm sure a lot of passengers would like the chance to see places in more depth.

Well, it seems the problem came down to a cigarette that set a bed alight. P&O should shoulder some of the blame for this. I was on it last month & the first thing I noticed was the old safety drill of the past was completely gone. On my previous 4 cruises, we had to attend a drill before the ship sailed. At each drill, I can remember we were clearly told fire was serious & there was to be no smoking, no butts thrown into the sea. Nothing hung on balconies. Nothing but toilet paper in toilets etc etc We were told that breaking the rules, especially with smoking, could see us put off at the next port. None of that now. When you board, they suggest you watch a safety video once you board. We didn't. I bet a lot of others didn't. We skipped it as we have attended several in the past. But I bet a lot of people who were on their first cruise skipped it too.Anything that is voluntary and not monitored is like that. I bet this passenger will claim he 'didn't know'. The old way wasn't perfect either, with too many people crammed into spots and having to stand for the whole presentation. Maybe they could have a compulsory attendance at 30 min intervals in the theatre, as people board, and people scan in on their cards. Cruising standards oin P&O have gone downhill in a lot of departments. Safety drill, food, staff.

I am relieved that my post has been received so well. I was a bit nervous writing anything critical. I think what concerned me was that if anyone had one of the more usual food allergies or preferences eg coeliac, nut allery, vegetarian, then their choices would be extremely limited at each venue. Each meal has a list next to it to indicate if it is vegetarian, gluten free etc There would most likely only be one choice for those people. If you have a more unusual allergy eg can't have onions or garlic, then I believe they do come up to you and run through the menu. To be fair, my daughter loved some of the noodle dishes at Dragon Lady and she enjoyed a meal at Angelo's. But again, there was only one option available so just as well she loves noodles. I'm no gourmet chef but I was also surprised by one dish on the kid's menu. Pasta and sausages. The pasta, which looked like penne, came with no sauce or topping at all. Perhaps it had had a tablespoon of olive oil stirred through but if so, I could not taste it as I tried some. Very dry. Four pieces of sausage on top ie one sausage. My granddaughter ate most of it and seemed to like it okay but I have never seen just plain pasta served anywhere.

Okay, I am no expert on cruises but I have done 3 P&O. Two were pre covid. The last one was on Pacific Adventure last month. Here are my observations, for what they are worth. 1. Nice enough ship, decor wise. 2. Prices can be really good. Sign up for emails as a past passenger and occasionally they will offer special deals. 3. The meals-there has been serious cost cutting. I mean, serious. Maybe this is so across all cruise lines, I'd be interested to know. But where once I can recall there were about 6 choices of main meal in the dining room, it is all arranged differently now. There are 4 mains. There are 3 main dining rooms and you are rotated through these, a different one each night. Each seems to have the same menu for 3 nights, then a second menu comes into play. I assume each venue rotates through its two menus. But here's the downside. My daughter is vegetarian and one of her children has a nut allergy. Each night, there was just one vegetarian option on the menu, for entree or mains. If you didn't like it, too bad. Our first night was in the Waterfront and her entree was basically just cubed beetroot. Mains was spicy beans. I'll eat anything but my meals were pretty average too. The creme brulee was very tasty but it was lucky to be 1cm deep, if that. If you wanted anything like steak, forget it. That is listed as 'Indulge' and will set you back about $35. No beef wellingtons or any of the special sorts of things I recall from the past. Even my poor little granddaughter, she ordered the trio of icecream and was told she couldn't have it as sometimes they have a nut topping. We asked if she could have just the plain icecream, no topping and were told no. I do understand they have to be careful with allergies but seriously, this was the kids munu-why have a nut topping at all and surely they could have icecream that had not been near nuts? We found the meals at the other 2 dining rooms were better. You can try to change your bookings but it is not easy. We changed one and could only get 8pm and my grandson fell asleep at the table. My daughter refused to return to the Waterfront on our last night as it was back to the hated menu so we had to go to buffet. 4. Entertainment. It was quite good on the whole. We went to every show at 7pm. What we found was that on the first night, we turned up about 6.45pm and had no problem. After a few nights though, even when we got there 25 minutes early, we had to split up and it was hard to get seating. On our last night, we turned up 30 minutes early and there were no seats to be had. My daughter, before she had children, cruised a long time ago on a much smaller ship called (I think) Pacific Star and she said she much preferred that as there was never a problem getting seats. But there sure was on our cruise. There are lots of activities teens might like though. The pools were good. My grandkids loved them. 5. During the day, unless you are a big trivia or karaoke fan, there's not a lot to do, it's a bit boring. That's my personal view. If I went on P&O again, it would depend on itinerary with a few ports. We were unlucky with one of our port days cancelled altogether and the oter washed out with rain so we only got off the ship 1 1/2 days out of 9. It would help if they put movies on in the theatre during the day and not just on the big outdoor screen. Who wants to sit up there in the cold or windy or wet weather. 6. The shops are a bit ordinary, I couldn't even find one that sold a bit of reading matter and I had finished my book. 7. Staff were obliging but some were obviously new to the job. There were repeated times they forgot to do things in our cabin eg replace beach towels etc I'm not trying to sound too negative. I had a reasonable time but out of my 5 cruises, this one was in 5thy place, probably as we had too many sea days. But my main disappointment was meals. Tasty enough but not the quality ingredients of the past.

I am in Melbourne too and like you, I found most cruises at the moment seem to leave from Sydney. There's a short cruise coming up in Jan to Tassie, leaving from Melb, which I thought was at least something different. I've only been on Princess (Sth Pacific & NZ) and P&O (South Pacific, Far Nth Qld, Moreton Island) I found Princess definitely up a notch or two, although P&O cabins were a better lay out. My last cruise though was last month on P&O. I have not been on a cruise since covid and I was a bit surprised by the changes. Not impressed. The cost cutting re meals etc was extremely evident. I don't know if this is the case across all cruise lines but personally, I won't be going on P&O again unless the cost is really a bargain.