Cathygh

2 hours ago, david63 said:

Nope. All my wife's cruises up to 2019 (cut off was 2017 I think?) were brought over but none of mine. I had a discussion with the Captain's Circle people and was told that it is an IT glitch that happens from time to time

That happened to my DH,he got Platinum  and not to me but Princess did let me have Platinum too. Theyagreed straightway but tokk months to alter my account,

1 minute ago, david63 said:

It would go some way but the bigger issue is that arrival times are allocated with a total disregard as to how/when passengers are arriving.

 

We all know of passengers being given an arrival time of, say, 13:00 but are on a coach that is not scheduled to arrive until 14:30 and similarly there are passengers having an arrival time of 15:00 who are on a train arriving at 12:30. There needs to be a correlation between designated arrival times and physical arrival times with an ability to arrive within 30 minutes of that time

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.

2 minutes ago, sistersontheseasuk said:

 

Prior to these changes of people being asked to wait outside had you ever arrived at the terminal and found the building to be full? I know I haven't and I have sailed on full Iona sailings. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I also don't believe the queuing area outside would house as many people as the building could?

 

 

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.

Just now, daiB said:

You are confusing Iona and Arvia. I have not seen many complaints about Iona.

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. 

13 hours ago, cruising.mark.uk said:

I'd be fascinated to know why not.  If it is possible for people to get to the terminal, drop their luggage and check-in, why is it not possible for those same people to get to the terminal, drop their luggage and then go into town for a couple of hours and return?  I understand that the arrival of coaches is timed to allow passengers to board straight away.  So, all other passengers must have got to the terminal under their own steam or been brought by others.  So, why can't they drop their luggage and then use their own steam or that of others (or, worst case, a taxi) to take them into town and then bring them back again?

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

59 minutes ago, molecrochip said:

The need to be onboard early to make bookings is an issue. If that is influencing arrival times then it’s self defeating.

 

Maybe certain things like 710 club need to be released at 8am each day for the following day, like the kids club, or at 6pm once everyone has boarded.

 

Another option is for everyone to be limited to 3 visits to the 710 club so that all those who want to can visit over the course of the cruise.

 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.

27 minutes ago, Splice the mainbrace said:

Yeh the Faroes was dropped due to their whaling policy, an Iceland port was dropped and basically going the opposite way round now Norway followed by Iceland. I’m not impressed at Liverpool being an added port of call 1) it’s only 40 minutes away from where we live and have been there many times, 2) We also only went there 2 weeks ago on a round Britain cruise where we just got off the ship and mooched for an hour or so and got a couple of bottles of cabin wine!🍷

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.

3 minutes ago, Splice the mainbrace said:

We’re on that cruise as well despite itinerary changes since we booked. We were on Arcadia last October and were perfectly satisfied with her. We are also on her in September 2024 for a 30 night USA and Canada cruise.

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.

9 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

 I don't think they have the staff to turn the tables in the same way as they once did.  

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.

4 minutes ago, Josy1953 said:

We have never had a problem with the Princess system. 

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

38 minutes ago, david63 said:

There are two aspects to that:

 

1. Getting passengers onboard which with the way that disembarkation works these days passengers could probably start boarding around 11:00/11:30. The problem then comes as to where do all these passengers go bearing in mind that many are lugging cases around with them?
2. Having cabins available. There are only two ways to have cabins ready quicker - either have passengers vacate their cabins earlier, which is not really practical or have more crew preparing the cabins. Currently a cabin steward on P&O has around 20 cabins to service in six hours which, at best, is 20 minutes a cabin.

 

The current system at check-in has certainly speeded the process up - the main hold up appearing to be with the photo and the fact that there are still passengers who, for any number of reasons, do not do all of the online check-in procedures. On Princess where everything is done on line by 99% of passengers check-in takes only a couple of minutes.

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.

1 hour ago, molecrochip said:

The purpose of the queuing is not to hold you back but to ensure that the main checkin terminal is not overwhelmed with people.

 

Therefore if checkin is running smoothly, the ship has allowed passengers on board, then you should see that they start to allow those early arrivals in.

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?

5 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

What you are describing is not a problem with the app, but they can probably be attributed to the pre booking system where many tables are being held for future time slots, rather than be allocated to the next people in the virtual queue.

I know that the 2 new ships are much bigger, and therefore will need a more organised MDR system to ensure everyone is to be able to dine without enduring long queues. However pre booking is, IMO, not the best way to achieve this, all that happens is that too many tables are left unoccupied for unnecessary lengths of time, and passengers who have not been able to pre book are subjected to long queues. If the virtual queue system was the only option, no pre booking, no walk ups and no pagers, and if everyone only joined the virtual queue when they were ready, then I feel that this would result in much shorter wait times, with no need to physically queue at all, until your table was ready.

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.

5 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

But the virtual queue was still available, and on our 2 cruises despite all the bookable slots being full, we were still able to dine between 6:00 & 7:00 with hardly any wait or long queues.

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.

11 hours ago, No pager thank you said:

As it happens, we are booked on the Arcadia sailing...we did get a more significant discount than what I shown on the web now, quite considerably in fact. 

 

Looking at the prices now, the Princess one seems to be better value for money.

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

27 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

They told me Princess Plus is not on 2023 only 2024.  Is that incorrect? I've looked at $60 per day, at $30 it would be great.

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.

48 minutes ago, Cloudyrain said:

We had a missed port and the claim was settled quickly through the holiday extras recommended insurance - you just need to click that you have tried to claim through other means already and aren’t able (i.e. the cruise line, and you have your letter to prove it).

Thank you

1 hour ago, FangedRose said:

Specialist cruise travel insurance (often an 'add on' to normal tavel insurance) may pay a fixed amount (depending on your cover) for Missed Ports. Does the Holiday Extras insurance include this? If it does that is the route to take.

 

Tip: you need to claim for 'missed departure' as the standard claim forms don't (usually) have a box for Missed Ports.

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?