durante

Hi sassy12, hope all this information from everyone on this thread will help you make your decision. If you need any more info/advice let us all know. I love getting out of London and going to beautiful Hampshire and Dorset for such a cheap price on mega train.:D If you are joining a cruise ship in Southampton, it's easily the cheapest and most comfortable way to travel from Central London! Carriages are usually pretty empty on this route. The faster trains as mentioned by Globaliser- ie 15 mins quicker, from my previous experience a few years ago were more crowded.

:)Thanks Bob for giving the extra information about megabus. It is such a bargain, isn't it.

Just to add I have done this trip on a Saturday booking on megabus website twice this year already, once to Southampton and then the really long trip to Poole, and the trains don't have Megabus signs now in any carriages. I remember the sign was on one carriage about 4 years ago.

hi, yes, it's a direct trip, the station you get off is Southampton Central and you don't need to reserve seats. I would be at Waterloo at least 20 minutes before departure. As soon as the platform number for your train appears on the signboard, go straight to that platform and get into whichever carriage you want, unless you are going for First Class. You can take suitcases with you.

If you don't mind waiting a few more weeks for dates in May to open up, you can get tickets on these particular Saturday trains departing Waterloo -7.39am, 9.39am, 11.39am or 1.39pm for ?9 each on the megabus website. You would select London for departure station and Southampton as arrival station. And you can only travel on the particular train booked on this website. You just print out the confirmation email showing the booking reference and show it to the guard to get onto the platform at Waterloo, and then show it again to the train conductor during the journey.

Otherwise , if you feel you must book right now and/or you don't want to travel on any of these 4 train times, you can book tickets now on other websites for any train leaving on a Saturday but it will cost around ?39 each.

Never had anything so long as a 3 hour dinner in any Oceania MDR ever...And never noticed any tables near us suffering such a long service. We always found service was excellent, food good and delivered quickly, and love the MDR, such a beautiful room. Something must have gone seriously wrong for you, such a shame

We also loved Red Ginger and Jacques.

Which website are you looking at? I see it as Nice from the official Riviera ports website.

http://www.riviera-ports.com/nos-services/croisiere/planning-escale

Seriously, you don't need a tuxedo, bow tie etc, I would say a good 1/4 of what you see of what men actually wear on the ship on formal night is incredibly tacky, red ties etc...green jackets and so on, however the majority just wear a nice suit, with a nice tie, so colour of the suit is up to you, preferably dark, and you will be fine for both formal and/or informal.

Sorry Richard Solent , I didn't mean you

Thanks, I appreciate your information. I now wish we were travelling on the bullet train instead, however this trip was all booked as a package.

:eek::eek:No, please don't try walking this one, unless you are doing a hiking holiday in the area. Extremely steep, many twists and turns.

Hi,

Hope there's a Beijing traffic and airport expert who can help answer/give an opinion on my questions

We will be staying at the Novotel Xinqiao in Beijing next month prior to flying down to Shanghai to start our cruise.

Our UK travel agent has us booked on an Air China flight leaving 7.15am on a Wednesday from Beijing Capital International to Shanghai Pudong. It has to be early in order for us to transfer to the cruise ship in time as it leaves early evening.

We have a transfer from the hotel to PEK included, however having read that it can take an hour by car, what time do you recommend we leave the hotel. I know it will be super early.

We have never been to China before, so unsure of how long it would take at that time of the morning or how long we can expect to go through everything at the airport.

To add to this, we are also having to do check in at the airport, because Air China does not allow us to access our reservation online, due to the flight not being booked on the Air China website.

Does Air China have a good record of not cancelling this flight?

Am wondering if I need to have a backup plan, in case something goes wrong, what would the advice be?

Many thanks and look forward to any replies, comments etc

Hi,

Hope there's a Beijing traffic and airport expert who can help answer/give an opinion on my questions

We will be staying at the Novotel Xinqiao in Beijing next month prior to flying down to Shanghai to start our cruise.

Our UK travel agent has us booked on an Air China flight leaving 7.15am on a Wednesday from Beijing Capital International to Shanghai Pudong. It has to be early in order for us to transfer to the cruise ship in time as it leaves early evening.

We have a transfer from the hotel to PEK included, however having read that it can take an hour by car, what time do you recommend we leave the hotel. I know it will be super early.

We have never been to China before, so unsure of how long it would take at that time of the morning or how long we can expect to go through everything at the airport.

To add to this, we are also having to do check in at the airport, because Air China does not allow us to access our reservation online, due to the flight not being booked on the Air China website.

Does Air China have a good record of not cancelling this flight?

Am wondering if I need to have a backup plan, in case something goes wrong, what would the advice be?

Many thanks and look forward to any replies, comments etc

Lottie A, thanks so much for posting that link, I can now see our cabin numbers at long last!

Yes, I have number of guests showing as 0 too. really annoying. The whole point of this thread as I see it is nothing to do with the booking confirmation sent by the travel agent, but what information we can see on the Azamara website.

Lottie A, I totally agree. I don't think the people in charge of the shore excursion team know much, it's actually embarrassing to see some of the errors, especially when Azamara promotes itself the way it does. For example, we did the Auckland to Sydney cruise last year and were horrified/amused to see Sydney being promoted as the capital of Queensland. I get the jokes, but this was on the excursion booking area. We noticed many errors regarding New Zealand ports.

We are booked on another cruise this June which mentions going to Mykonos and Delos, however the itinerary does not include Mykonos...

And now, their shore excursions are so expensive, on a par with Oceania, which is something I never thought I would say about any other cruise line.

I've just reread and see you are wanting a hotel post cruise not beforehand. I would still recommend Hilton MS as it would be so easy to do the 10 min walk from San Basilio at the end of your cruise to where the free Hilton shuttle would pick you up and cross the canal to the hotel. It was great getting that shuttle boat and using it as a means to explore Venice on foot, and avoid paying for expensive water taxis or massive amounts of people on the water buses.

No, my Express pass is not yet available, which is the reason I was hoping to actually view my cabin number somewhere in My Reservations area.

We stayed at the Hilton Molino Stucky for 3 nights and thoroughly recommend it. It's a huge converted former old factory right on the canal where the cruise ships all go past. Azamara ships are docked right opposite at San Basilio pier. The hotel provides free boat shuttle throughout the day which has one of its stops on the other side of the canal, only a 10 minute walk from San Basilio, from memory there was only one bridge to walk over. The other shuttle stop was near St Marks.

To get from the airport we took the Alilaguna ferry as it has the Hilton as one of its stops, so very easy.

The location of the hotel is very quiet compared to the rest of Venice and we enjoyed watching the cruise ships arriving in the morning from our window.

I have tried following these steps but still can't see cabin number anywhere. I first logged into My Azamara, then selected My Reservations, saved this page as a favourite. Then opened an additional tab with the My Reservations favourite. I can go into the booking via online checkin, but it only shows itinerary, shore excursion, spa, and the online checkin area

We have had a quote from Cunard for full world cruise, where gratuities are included as well as a few thousand OBC, Not sure about the other things you mentioned, but priority disembarkation has always worked for us

If you arrive in Canada by cruise ship, then fly back to the UK, you don't need an ETA. We did this last September.

The only passengers in that photo are the couple in the middle...in case anyone was wondering...

For the last 3 years I have seen prices varying between £499 to £799 for a sheltered balcony,for Oct and Nov on the Cunard website, this included flight back to London. This price was offered a few weeks before the cruise date, however usually a few hundred more than that earlier on. The October TAs seem to be more expensive than Nov. I think they are excellent value compared to spring/summer TAs.

Tap water is ok to drink.

Interesting. We like both Azamara and Oceania, but after at least 10 cruises on both lines, overall prefer the ambiance onboard Azamara. Some of the food has been better on Oceania, not always though. If you get the chance, do try either Marina or riviera in the future, they are very nice. But yes, I do understand!

Upsell to the OS not from the OS

I really enjoyed your review, thanks so much!