fruitmachine

It doesn't improve on the standard package. If anything it might get worse!

Today the 43 is £3.00 from South Queensferry to Edinburgh each way, but it was announced just this week that this will change to £2.00 from the 30 June 2024. These new fares are also integrated into the Lothian-wide £5 DAYticket and TapTapCap of £4.80. https://www.lothianbuses.com/news/2024/06/lothian-announces-cheaper-fares-and-new-routes-for-west-edinburgh/ The £2 maximum fare scheme is for England, not the rest of the UK.

In my experience, their premium wifi was little better and still useless.

Yes. Whether you take the X99 or the train, you don't need to buy your ticket until you're here. The X99 ticket includes all-day free access to all the city buses and the tram. It doesn't give access to the HoHo routes. Although one of the HoHo routes passes The Royal Yacht Britannia, it'd simpler and quicker to get the tram. (https://edinburghtrams.com/) Most visitors would say not to miss Edinburgh Castle because it's so iconic. I might suggest that The Palace of Holyroodhouse is better! (https://www.rct.uk/visit/palace-of-holyroodhouse) In the 15 minutes to walk to the station, you could easily be half way into Edinburgh on the X99 if it's about to leave. For a Princess ship, they will leave at least every 15 minutes. You're here on a Saturday, and morning train times are 07:40, 08:05, 08:19, 08:40, 08:59, 09:29, 09:40, 10:02, 10:20, 10:47, 11:17, and 11:42 so the gap between trains is between 11 and 30 minutes. And adding some information on pre-purchasing attraction tickets and timed entry... Edinburgh Castle is the only location where they will be sold-out. Others will encourage you to buy in advance (they're then guaranteed the sale) but you can buy on the day. With a standard ticket, the Castle now let you in up to 15 minutes before your timeslot, and as long after as you wish. I also see that they have launched Flexi Tickets. They are £10 more expensive, but let you in (once) at any time and on any day over their 7-day validity period.

You may find that they are "involved" in assessing this as a low risk to the point where you never see them. And this only talks about customs, not immigration. Customs is something, both here in the UK and in other European and Nordic countries, that typically involves walking straight through a green lane or taking yourself into a red one to declare goods. Here in Edinburgh, we don't even have that - there's a phone on the wall to declare anything you need to. If an international flight connects to a domestic one, you don't see your bags until the final destination, where they appear on a belt with all the other purely domestic ones.

Oooh, a different email address than the one I have (erin.odonnell@azamara.com) but I have had radio silence from my one since I sent her an email last weekend. Perhaps I'll try your alternative.

Just don't call it a lake! It's a loch. 😉 For some reason, there is one lake in Scotland. The Lake of Menteith.

+1 for the compression socks. They help prevent DVT and my experience is that I feel much better on arrival, even after a UK to NZ length journey.

I'd be interested to see what those that have been along the shores of Loch Ness in a coach think, but - having driven this more than once in a car - I noted just how little you can see from the road. Trees and bushes obscure the view for most of the route. If you want to get a good view of the hills and scenery, then a cruise on the loch is going to be much better.

To get the thread (slightly) back on track, I note that the Premier Inn referred to in the title is not a Hub hotel and the OP is asking about Premier Plus rooms. I've stayed in Premier Plus rooms in a couple of PI hotels. It's marginal whether they are worth the additional charge. "Ultimate" Internet (normally chargeable over the free "standard" speed) is included in the rate, but the speed of this at both locations was anything but high. I ended up hot-spotting from my phone. You get a room that's a bit nicer, and with a chair rather than a sofa bed, plus a fridge and coffee machine. At this particular location, it looks like the Plus rooms may be the only ones with air conditioning, but that could be a marketing ploy - only mentioning it on the Plus description.

https://www.azamara.com/static-assets/content/videos/Exclusive_Loyalty_Webinar_QA_with_Azamaras_New_CEO.mp4

If a cruise line does not provide what was promised on the website/brochure, then those of us in locales with good consumer protection (like EU & UK) can do something about it. That's why they will try their hardest to ensure that information is accurate.

Does this help?

Enterprise will pick you up for free within 10 miles. Others may do something similar. https://www.enterprise.co.uk/en/car-hire/free-pick-up-drop-off-service.html

It's a "come and get me" rate. Many that see it will have no intention of booking at that rate, but believe that if the cheapest is a bargain, then the more expensive ones must be equally discounted. Very frequently they're not.

Daylight is the best thing to hep reset your body clock - not just on your eyes, but on your skin as well. Maximise the amount you get, especially in the morning when you first arrive.

If you look at the graph of prices over time on Cruiseplum, you'll see that whilst the lowest-priced cabins may be cheaper than previously, the more expensive you go the more they have increased.

As others have said, prices are hugely fluid. £156 might be cheap one day, but another you wouldn't want to stay in a place that was charging twice that. The only way to get a feel for prices is to do a search on Google Maps, Trivago, Booking.com or any other of the multitude of comparison sites out there for the specific dates you want and look at the range of hotels and prices, picking out a brand or two that you recognise or which has been talked about already. I've just checked a hotel that my son - who works most weeks in central London - stays in. It has no windows, but he likes it because that makes it incredibly quiet and he always gets a good night's sleep. It's at the lower end of the price spectrum. On one day next week, it's more than treble the price of another. Most days it's over £150.

I think that once you proceed with the booking there is space for entering an arrival time.

Watch out! Most travel insurance policies require you to have their cover from when you're in the UK until when you return. You should double-check, as you may find that the additional policy is worthless if it only covers part of your holiday. In the event of a smaller claim, they may never notice, but for something much larger such as extended hospitalisation or repatriation, they're likely to check all the cover details before paying out, and those are exactly the instances when you really want it.

The X99 Cruiselink bus (https://www.lothianbuses.com/cruiselink-x99/) is a dedicated non-stop service that runs into Edinburgh on days when there is a ship at South Queensferry. About 25-35 minutes each way. You can use the £12 round-trip ticket on every city bus and the Edinburgh Tram all day. With the saving over a ship's 'on your own' excursion, you can buy a Royal Edinburgh HoHo combo-ticket (https://edinburghtour.com/royal-edinburgh-ticket/) from the X99 ticket sellers at the pier, which will get you on all the HoHo buses; entry into the Castle, Holyrood Palace and The Royal Yacht Britannia; and still have enough change for a light lunch!

Reiterating many of the previous comments on this thread... In early April Azamara sent a marketing email that included the following wording: In addition to your Quarterly Loyalty Savings, take advantage of our current brand offer and choose between a US$1,000 Onboard Credit or an Airfare Discount* credited to your cruise fare. These offers are also combinable with any Onboard Credits or other Azamara Circle offers you may already have. To take advantage of these savings, be sure to book before 30 June 2024. At the time, they were also offering additional 10% OBC for immediate payment. We booked the next day through a major UK travel agent (who confirmed the offer with Azamara) and paid them in full a couple of days later. From the outset, the US$1,000 OBC was on the booking, but the 10% immediate-payment OBC was missing. No amount of chasing by TA or myself seemed to resolve this, so I escalated to a TA senior manager on Friday. He was more candid with me, telling me that Azamara had admitted their mistake but that nobody seemed to have sufficient authority to resolve it. But when I looked at my booking, Azamara had removed the $1,000 OBC. Now it was zero! Talk about one step forward and two back! I'll report back on how an email to Erin O'Donnell expressing my utter frustration is responded to.

Averages are pretty pointless here in Edinburgh. Right now it's a very sunny 19C. I'm in a polo shirt and shorts and feeling hot in the sun. By next weekend it could be the same or completely different! 😎

Here's the map I made last year (though in the end we ended up taking a private-hire minivan with four others). https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@45.3885747,12.0996911,11z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!6m1!1s1GKnTzrLlOs04a7FwHDXhxyJ_rWUFDt4?entry=ttu You can see the docking location and the bus routes from both the airport and Venice. The closest stop is on Via Antonio Naccari (just over a 1km walk to the ship), but it may be better to take the bus to the end of the line in Piazzale Europa, where you're much more likely to be able to get a taxi to the ship.

The premium package has no additional wines - so you pay the full price of any non-inclusive wine you consume. Technically, that's still as you describe as the deducted price is zero, but don't think of it that way! 😉