Cathygh

Yes of course they should. Last time I travelled with Princess we had a Princess transfer fomr the hotel to the port (in the US). I selected an arrival time of 12.30 on the app, but was allocated 2.30, which was the time the coach arrived at the port. Very sensible joined up thinking.

On May 27th I can verify that the teminal building had every seat free with probably 50-100 people outside in the naughty queue. There was also an early arrivals queue inside the teminal. At the top of the escalator boarding times were checked again and any one who had slipped through early was directed to the queue. There weere 6 people in it who went through check in fairly quickly.

I like the Princess app, you can do lots through it before you sail eg choose your embarkation time. You can order any drink anywhere on the ship and they will bring it to you. (But they can struggle to find you on the open decks.) MDR food is on a par and sometimes better than P&O and there is more choice. We were able to get a curry for my husband one night when it wasn't on the MDR menu. They try to help, rather than fob you off. If you plan to sail when our US cousins are on board just be prepared T shirts, shorts and caps in the MDR.

I have a complaint about Iona, but that hopefully that issue will be resolved by the new booking system, if that is rolled out to Iona.

I welcome this change and it solves the problem we had trying to eat in the MDRs on Iona recently.

According to google maps it is a 20 minute walk to West Quay from Ocean Terminal, not great in this heat. Also I would not recommend going into Southampton with any valuables especially a passport unless it is very securely hidden. There has been a spate of passport thefts from people wandering around until it is their time to get on the ship. I met the partners of the victims of passport theft on recent cruises, one in April and one in May. Those who had lost their passport were denied boarding. I suspect there are many more.

There will be some outside when you leave the ship. Or you can order an uber when you are ready and they will collect you from the prebooked taxi line

Sensible solutions. People have mentioned on here and elsewhere how unfair it is that everything is booked up before they get on board. Opening bookings at 8 am is a little early for me 9am would be better.

Oh dear. Well I suppose you could pop home and do your laundry🤣🤣

I miss the port talks. I used to watch the recodings in the cabin. There is no reason why P&O can't pre record them in HQ and have them on the TV.

That is very reassuring. The itinerary has cahnged alot and now includes Liverpool which I thught was a bit odd (no offence to Liverpudlians) but we visited the city on QM's Coronation Cruise and loved it and I can't wait to go back.

We are booked on the Arcadia cruise on August 8th, it is expensive but we booked it because it coincides with our 20th wedding anniversary and the Princess one doesn't. I have also heard negaive things and it is a pity that the refit she was supposed to have last year won't happen until later this year bbut we will just try to make the best of it.

Veyr true, but at one point cabin stewards were redeployed to the restaurants to help with this instead of doing the turn down. I am not sure they are still doing this. On Iona recently there were 5700 passengers and 1600-1700 staff. Iona is meant to have 1800. So a shortage of about 10% with a very full ship. I am not sure which departments have shortages but I have seen adverts for marine engineers and chefs recently.

I love the Princess system. It doesn't do stupid things like allocate a 12.30 boarding tie for people arriving by coach at 2 pm, they have a 2pm boarding time

1 MSC board from 10am, and passengers from the previous cruise can stay till noon although cabins are vacated by 7.30. It works well. 2 Cabins on MSc are not ready till early afternoon.

I was in the terminal on May 27th, the only people in the terminal were people checking in the desks. All the seats were empty with people queing outside. So absolutely no danger of the terminal being over crowded. In fact that is really dangerous. And why nor let people in?

Can you find out how many passengers are on board please?

P&O did not say there were problems with the app, and neither did I. On the first night the MDR manager told us preboooking of the same dining time is only available between 5.30 and 6.30 on Iona. A few days later we discovered you can prebook a later time by getting a pager every day by 6pm. This put an end to the uncertainty of when we woud get to eat. On formal night you could only join a virtual queue ( 2/4 virtual queues were closed by 6.30 and did not reopen) no walk ins, no pagers, 2 hour wait and agin lots of empty tables were ready and lots more waiting to be cleared. On Iona and Arvia P&O need to revisit how they manage the MDRS when the ship is full and even offer fixed dining in one restaurant.

Yes that's fine if you want to eat early. It depends how busy the ship is and how well staffed they are. I can only go by my experience on Iona G316, where waits for the MDR could be 2 hours or more. One night (not celebration night, that's a differnet story)we checked the virtual queues at 6.30 - there were long waits and the queues then became full so we couldn't join them. At 7.45 we went to Coral and we were told there were 300 people in the queues ahead of us. After complaining that the system was ridiculous we were shown to a table for 2 (we were happy to share) staright away. We were surprised to see lots of empty tables and also table that had not been cleared. The expereince on Iona was the opposite of what we had on Azura in Octoober 2022 where we could just walk in whenever we wanted. On Virtuosa in April, which is a similar size to Iona, we could also walk in when we wanted but TBH Virtuosa was not full. Just to mention, some of our family who were on Iona like to eat early, so they joined the virtual queues when they opened at 5.15. The restaurants opened at 5.30 and most nights they were called between 6 and 6.15.

However it is possible that the prices will drop after final payment.

I have just checked and at the moment it is only 2024, unfortunately

I have also looked at booking the Princess deal, it's very good compared to next year's prices. They are also offerring Princess Plus at half price atm.

Thank you

Yes it does include it. I don't understand how it would be a "missed departure" when the ship did ot dock at a scheduled port. Can you explain this please?

Ok I might have got the words wrong, but Holiday Extras are making things difficult. They have the letter from P&O saying they won't refund the fees/taxes or whatever for not going to a sheduled port and not replacing the port with another but Holiday extras are asking for proof they have tried to claim "elsewhere" when in fact there is no where else to claim from.