DamianG

I’m not loyal to any particular brand either. I’m pretty sure you don’t need to use the app though, and I’ll be looking to get the deal before catching the train for my next working trip to London in a week’s time.

Congratulations, hope you had a lovely meal.

Are you taking full advantage of the current McDonalds offer of a sausage McMuffin and drink for £2.49?

We've booked G626 & G627 - back to back cruises on Iona during the main school holidays. We've booked an ED grade deluxe balcony cabin which has worked out around £135 pppn. Considering that this is a fairly unique aft cabin during the peak school holidays we are quite pleased with the price and very excited about the back to back aspect allowing us to stay onboard on changeover day (I'll have the launderette to myself for one thing 😆). Presumably we will get double perks too, such as upper tier embarkation lunch, sailaway drinks etc? We are looking forward to revisiting Norway for the first time in years, Cherbourg which is new to us, and Northern Spain which we love.

I completely agree, sadly there were a load of passengers being intercepted on that particular cruise.

The couple that were in front of us were carrying a single small bag. They were stopped by a steward in the terminal who asked where their luggage was. "We are going to collect it now" was their answer. At this point they were directed to a waiting area and advised that general disembarkation had not yet commenced as luggage was still being unloaded and moved to the baggage hall. So they had either missed or deliberately chosen to ignore the disembarkation information that would have been left in their cabin for them to read. I do not think you will have any problems self disembarking and if challenged you will be able to deminstrate that you are carrying all your luggage (if you really need to).

We’ve self disembarked Iona (albeit not at full capacity) and Arvia (a sold out school holidays cruise) with no problems either time. As others have pointed out it’s an early morning time slot and though there was a large queue around the Atrium both times it moved quickly. We joined the queue both times around 7:30am and were on the road home before 8am. Just a general observation, on both occasions there were passengers in the self disembarkation queue without any luggage! They were being intercepted shore side and made to wait until the end of self disembarkation before being allowed to enter the baggage hall.

Fabulous photo, what a gorgeous girl. We struggle to get Teddy to sit long enough for a photo after his grooms.

It’s a few years ago but we also found taking the train to Den Haag very straightforward. We walked from the dock to the train station but these days would probably look to take a tram or other option from the public transport hub very near the dock (as mentioned above).

We've registered our interest in G626 and G627 and are now waiting for our travel agent to process and confirm the booking next week. Thanks again for all the comments.

Thanks Kalos, it’s also occurred to me that I’ll have the launderette to myself! 😂

Thanks for all the replies. We’ve now found an opportunity to sail on back to back cruises on the same ship (Iona) so are shopping around for the best price. Staying onboard between cruises when most others are disembarking & embarking sounds like a unique thing to do, and we’ve love to hear anyone else’s experiences of this.

We are looking at various itineraries during the main school holidays in 2026. Yet again some of the Mediterranean cruises have very few days in port, such as this one with just five and a half days: B618 Mediterranean (pocruises.com) At least there are some new ports (for us anyway) on certain cruises, such as Gijon, El Ferrol, Santander and Cherbourg (somehow we've never been there). It's also good to see Cagliari again on some itineraries from Southampton. Finally, I don't recall seeing an itinerary like this one before, with a combination of the Mediterranean plus a call to Madeira: N619 Spain And Portugal (pocruises.com) At first glance the cruises all looked a bit "same old" but after some research I think there are some more interesting itineraries (for us) than we've seen for a while. Best regards Damian

Hi all Has anyone ever done back to back cruises on different ships from Southampton? I have half an idea to do a week on one ship, disembark, then embark another same day (obviously from a different dock). I know that @daiB has completed many back to back sailings. Any advice Dai? It's just an idea for now but I would be interested to hear anyone's experiences of swapping ships same day in Southampton. Thanks Damian

An alternative strategy is to not buy the drinks package until your second day onboard. We have done that twice as we were pretty certain that we were unlikely to "drink our money's worth" (so to speak) on embarkation day, especially as we knew that we would get some complimentary drinks in the upper loyalty tier embarkation lunch and a sailaway drinks voucher. We missed out on the 10% discount for booking in advance but that was offset for us by skipping a day plus we were able to use OBC towards the cost. Also, going this way means you can "pay as you go" on embarkation day and get a feel for the drinks menu prices before making the final decision as to whether a drinks package is worthwhile for you or not (in terms of both prices and restrictions). It looks like the current discount for internet pre-booking is 15% but occasionally they offer as high as 20% so for us that is the better pre-cruise offer. We initially booked internet for our 2025 cruise with a 10% discount but later saw that it was being offered at 20%. Fortunately we were able to cancel our original booking then reorder it with the 20% discount. The refund was received on the same day. Good luck with your pre-cruise planning. Damian