jh1809

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.

A week or two back I booked a 2024 cruise on Aurora to the Baltic, though I noticed that P&O now call it "Scandinavia and Northern Europe", presumably to avoid frightening potential passengers who are geographically ignorant. As others have said, Estonia is in NATO and I believe that following the attack on Ukraine Finland have applied to join. The unexpected stalemate in Ukraine, when I suspect that Putin was confident of conquering the country in a matter of weeks, probably has discouraged him from trying his luck somewhere else. And with so much of their army tied down in Ukraine, Russia probably don't have the forces necessary to mount another invasion.

No, they won't. But if passengers have been put in quarantine then word normally spreads very quickly. I think it 's much more likely that you will hear rumours of outbreaks that haven't actually occurred than not hear of ones that have occurred.

When I was on Aurora in Nov/Dec about 25% of the crew were still wearing masks and 5% of the passengers. I didn't hear of any Covid cases on board.

I went on Arcadia pre-Covid and quite liked her, though not as much as I like Aurora. However I was surprised someone mentioned the "dedicated cinema" as a plus, as when I was on her it was just a tiny alcove off the library for which pre-booking was essential if you wanted a seat.

On Aurora's cruise to the Caribbean in Nov/Dec, Sindhu opened for "tiffin" lunches on some sea days towards the latter end of the cruise. It might be different on Iona, of course.

Though you don't need to put luggage labels on your hand luggage, it might be a good idea to do so. Then if you do leave a bag somewhere during embarkation in a moment of forgetfulness, it's more likely to find its way back to you.

I imagine the bigger the ship the more likely wind is to be a problem, simply because the bigger the ship the more sea-room it will need in which to manoeuvre and so the smaller the margin for error.

Ah yes, that's another change post-Covid: no more specialist wine waiters.

Whilst I agree with his importance, I've never been on a cruise where the Chief Engineer made an announcement.

As something of an introvert, I confess that the free coffee was the main attraction for me.🙂

Oh, one other change is that there are no longer any port presentations in the theatre, though I believe there are still recording on your cabin TV. They also no longer leave leaflets for all the ports of call in your cabin.