jh1809

With Aurora and Arcadia, it's mostly Mayflower. (I've never sailed on Britannia.)

On my most recent cruise, on Aurora late last year, I thought the lectures were pretty good.

IIRC, on my Aurora cruise before Christmas they were still publishing a phone number in Horizon by which you could book select dining as an alternative to using the app.

It was more than once a week on Aurora during her Nov/Dec cruise to the Carribean, I think. My impression was that it was on all sea days from about mid-cruise. There was no publicity, though; I just happened to notice it appearing in the list of meal times in Horizon. That meant that the one time I went there were very few of us there.

Though I've read that most so-called "Indian" restaurants in the UK are actually owned and staffed by people of Bangladeshi origin, who are Muslim. I suspect that doesn't apply to the Indian restaurants on board P&O ships, though.

I noticed that for my cruise on Arcadia this summer, rather hidden away in the cruise personaliser it says that the specialty restaurants will be available to book from two weeks before the start of the cruise. It seems likely that that would be the same across the fleet.

I've noticed before that the balcony cabins on Aurora seem to be very expensive, much more so than on Arcadia which is a similar size. I've never bothered to check, but I'd guess that Aurora has relatively few balcony cabins.

Having looked at the 2025 cruises for Aurora and Arcadia, P&O do seem to have made an effort to include some different ports. I'm now pre-booked on Arcadia's April-May J503 cruise to the Eastern Med. The ports include Motril, Kusadasi and Heraklion, all of which will be new to me. The other ports are Palermo (a welcome change from Messina), Piraeus, Santorini (which I'm more than happy to visit for a second time) and Gibraltar.

I think the lady responsible - I know it was a lady as I happened to be on her table in the MDR for either breakfast or lunch on one occasion - may have been on her second childhood. 🙂

Yep.

I came across this for the first time on Aurora last autumn. I think they were woollen ducks, though I didn't pay much attention. It does seem a waste of time and effort - except for the outfits manufacturing and selling them, of course.

On Aurora in Nov/Dec, the specialty restaurants were not bookable in advance of boarding. I don't know if that's still the case. I suppose the thing for the OP to do would be to try it and see.

No, the brochure listing the shore excursions and had the luggage labels in it is not issued any more. It's a pity. You can view and book all the excursions online of course, but I find looking through them online much more fiddly than just flipping through a booklet. You can print off your luggage labels from the cruise personaliser and, with folding in the right places and stapling the ends together, they do the job, but they always seem a bit flimsy and I worry that with some rough handling they might become detached from my cases.

I've only had that problem once, when I suspect that the people in the next cabin were hard of hearing and so had their TV volume turned up very high. But when I politely mentioned it to them, they turned it down and I didn't have a problem after that. One noise problem, though, can be noise from the theatre, if you're in a cabin above it on one of the next couple of decks up. Not a problem with comedians or magicians, but it can be with musical acts and with the Headliners.

They were happy to do that for me on Aurora just before Christmas. However that was in club dining, and it may be they've decided it's too difficult in freedom dining.

When I was on Aurora just before Christmas, my cabin steward worked as a cleaner in the evenings, and I think I heard of some stewards working as waiters. I'd hope that they wouldn't be doing any food prep unless it was pretty basic stuff that didn't require any cookery skills..

Or maybe the greater number of meals that have to be prepared in a limited time mean that corners have to be cut on the bigger ships?

When I was on Aurora in Nov/Dec I thought that the MDR quality and portion sizes were OK. Having also patronised the restaurant for breakfast and - on sea days - for lunch as well, I didn't really need a huge meal in the evening. As the end of the cruise was only a couple of weeks before Christmas, one evening a couple of days before the end they had some Christmassy options on the menu. I had the roast turkey and was given two enormous slices of meat. One was hidden under the other, and I was quite surprised to find the second slice. And the Christmas pudding dessert was one of the nicest ~I've ever had. One thing I did notice was that the increase in vegetarian/vegan options meant that there were fewer meat options for committed carnivores like myself. I suspect that the predominantly elderly clientele on Aurora means that there are fewer vegetarians and vegans aboard than there would be on some of the other ships, but I don't think P&O take that into account. I wonder how much variation in the quality of meals there is from ship to ship depending on how good the head chef is.

Are you sure it wasn't 6:30 and 8:30? That's always been the times for Club Dining when I've been on Aurora, including last Nov/Dec.

Perhaps they're finding that memories of the Costa Concordia disaster are continuing to make cruises on Costa ships difficult to sell?

Thanks.

So what's EBITDA?

No reason why they shouldn't. I just hadn't been aware that the requirement had been dropped, and was looking for confirmation.

Unvaccinated? Are P&O now accepting non-vaccinated passengers then?

Though in that case you'd be just as well off in an outside cabin with no balcony. I've only had a balcony cabin twice - once with P&O and once, perforce, with Saga. In both cases the weather was too poor to get much use out of the balcony.