sjcsviola

Cheers - this is my second time on Britannia- booked last minute Norwegian fjords last summer and loved it- highly recommend the limelight club too!

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Is there no 'roll call' for this cruise yet?

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Ah that's cool- I hear the tourist hop on hop off bus stops at the stazione maritime too :)

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You walk out through the buildings where you checkin. It's not a long walk. When you get to the main road you will see the bus stops. There are boards telling you which buses go where. Look for something like Aquarium or Porto Antico. There is a TIC at the port where you might find a map. Th funicular we caught goes from Largo Zecca to Righi but there are several of them.

Hi, is the terminal building the white square one you get on google maps when you search for the main cruise terminal? Is there only one terminal building? Just I've seen online that there's a new terminal and old terminal.... Just wasn't sure exactly where the ship stops!

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Ah that's a shame about the messaging but I suppose that's what the forum post are for hey :) thanks for the welcome anyway :)

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Hi there!

Just wanted to say hello (I assumed this was the 'hello' area but if I'm wrong, apologies!!)

Rather excited to have just booked my first cruise with P&O for myself and my partner- it's his first cruise but not mine.

Is anyone else out here going to be on the Ventura on 23rd July going from Genoa? If so, we'd love to touch base with anyone before the holidays begin!

Feel free to message or reply here (there's also the roll call in the ROLL CALL forum too :) )

Happy cruising :)

Sarah x :p

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Great advice. We are going to the Caribbean so I will suggest they use airplane mode only, because they do have music and books on their smart phones. Thanks. I did see were someone suggested to buy a calling card at a port to call home, any suggestions?

Simply put- go into settings and turn your roaming OFF for a start

Second, do some research- find a cell company who operate in the countries your visiting (like I'm going to Italy in the summer, so they use Vodafone or wind amongst others) and buy a pay as you go sim with 3G or 4g

:)

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Hi Guys,

 

We've only done one cruise before and that was on Ventura two years ago when we had £80 each OBC, we used it mainly for wine, drinks etc.

 

This year we are going on the Azura in September and we have £500 OBC to spend between two of us and I am wondering what we are going to spend it on. I'm sure we won't get down £500 worth of booze. :rolleyes:

 

I know it is not refundable so I want to spend it all and get my money's worth so we were thinking of leaving the excursions until we get on board and book them then because if we book now it wouldn't come off our OBC.

 

In your experience are there plenty of excursions left to book when we get on board? Are they dearer than pre booked excursions, if so how much dearer? Plus has anyone got any other ideas on how to spend our money.

 

Thanks for any information from experienced cruisers.

To be fair, I did a quick calculation based on two of us having two average priced alcoholic drinks each day on the 14 night cruise we just booked and it came to about £300 just on drinks.... So don't worry about £500 ... I doubt you'll have much problem- plus as has been said, TA £55.30 each for tips too!

But some soft drinks to take on board at each port and make the best use of your OBC for drinks in the bar etc.

Also, why don't you pre-purchase your tours on your cruise personalised? Then there's nothing to worry about when your on the ship :) .... Enjoy your cruise!!!

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Hi!

I did a very similar cruise with regent seven seas a few years ago an loved it! So much so that I've booked myself and my boyfriend onto the 14 night 23/07/14 Genoa/Genoa cruise on Ventura!

As said above, genoa and Kotor are really the only ones which are different but simply can't wait

Easter dates are 11-26 April so you shouldn't have many school age children around- depends on other countries holidays I suppose too!

This is my first p&o cruise so I've got a few things to learn too but from what I've gathered so far, the tours provided by p&o are not a great deal more expensive than competitors (contrary to past experience where I have normally bought from Viator or expedia to save money, I've done it through p&o this time as at least there are the guarantees should anything go awry!

Don't forget you can buy soft drinks and alcoholic drinks to bring on board to drink in your cabin - this can prove to be a lot cheaper than surviving off the drinks on the ship (20 cans of soft drink for £35!) otherwise regular bar prices generally seem to apply ..... Admittedly I'm a bit list in the drinks area because on the regent cruises, everything including alcohol and tours were included in the price of the cruise!

Hope your cruise goes well - would you let us all know how you get on and if there's anything particularly good to know before we go on ours?!

SJ :)

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We're going on the 23 July ventura fly cruise but did it through cruis118 and got a night before in Genoa tagged onto the front of the holiday so we're hoping to pick up some soft drinks before we board on the departure day!

Hint for looking around- it's not amazing quality but if you use google maps street view, you can work out where stuff is in comparison to roughly where your ship will be! Still looking for shops near the port where we can pick up soft drinks and wine/spirits lol!

Anyone else on that cruise?

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I don't know if this can be done but on previous cruises we have removed the auto tip and then tipped at the end of the cruise - we always tip around what the auto tip would have been but in my opinion it's the principal of actually having the option to do it yourself. Having said that, we just booked for the summer and we have decided that for sake of ease (as money is a bit stretched this year) we've pre-paid the tips onto the on board credit (14 nights works out at £55.30 each) by ringing p&o and putting the money on as a gift credit.

P&o don't like customers pre-paying money onto their accounts because they think if customers don't use all the credit then they will ask for the change- personally I like to know that at the end of a 14 day holiday, I'm not going to have an aneurysm when the credit card statement comes through!!! :p

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If you plan on buying any photos from formal nights or anything like that, make sure you buy them in the first week (the week where the vat isn't added) - we've had the same thing for our cruise in July Genoa-Genoa

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Having done this myself (minus any children) I would highly recommend either the Florence and Pisa in a day tour, or Florence on your own tour- it's about £40 to get to and from Florence and £65 for the tour which provides transport to Florence, a tour and then transport to Pisa and then back to the ship.

Now, I realise you say you don't particularly want to do the set tours but I've just had this conundrum with my own booking.

The only difference is that instead of a few kilos of child to carry around, I've got my partner with me and 10kg of camera gear (photographer)

I'm also a rather savvy tourist and booking with p&o was not even on my list of possibilities considering other companies are cheaper to book with, BUT, for this particular instance, I found that in general, the price differences between lets say, Viator, as an example and p&o, were a matter of a couple of pounds and actually some of the tours were cheaper with p&o amazingly!

The other massive benefit is that if the transport which is part of the tour provided by the ship is held up, the ship won't leave without you (or you'll be transported to the next port to meet the ship) .... If you do something independently and get stuck in traffic (it's happened to me in the past and very nearly missed the sail away time!) then you've lost the security of getting back to the ship without a rather hefty price tag!

If you simply don't want the guide part of the tour then consider the Florence on your own one, the transport to and from Florence is provided but you can do what you like for 7 hours!

I've just booked all seven of my cruise excursions :)

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