Raymondo111

Ok, I wasn't aware that travel agents names were not to be included, as this travel agent probably does a great deal of business with P & O I thought it relevant, my apologies.

41 minutes ago, 9265359 said:

I always make sure I tell the TA I am a Carnival shareholder and ask if they will process the claim for OBC for me or do I need to do it myself.

 

 If they failed to advise me that OBC was not available because ‘reasons’ then I would be making a complaint and would expect them to cover the loss.

I wasn't aware that this was a special price, I knew there was no OBC included in the 'deal" from P & O but assumed that I would get my shareholder benefit as I had before. I haven't cruised with P & O since 2015 but the itinerary and pre-cruise stay appealed so booked it. I have been cruising with Celebrity but prices have shot through the roof so decided to try P & O again so not impressed with how they treat their shareholders.  

I recently contacted Carnival to request my shareholder benefit to be applied to my upcoming cruise on Azura in September but received an email back to say that my application was denied due to "the promotions applied to your booking are non combinable with shareholder benefits, you have been given a net rate discount through your travel agent therefore with this promotion given its not combinable" The cruise was booked through the TA I have used for the last 14 years, I asked for a quote for a stay and cruise on the Azura and was happy with the price so booked it. I didn't get any OBC so not sure what Carnival are saying? Anybody else experienced this? 

• Ship:  Silhouette
• Length of Cruise:14 nights
• Cruise Sail Date:   Sep 8th
• Date email offer received:  29th July
• Captain’s Club Tier: Classic
• Booked through TA
• Current Cabin:  1A
• Bid?  Yes/No: Yes

If YES -  Bidding Details:

• Cabin Category: FV
• Bid Offer: £250 PP
• Notification Date: 5th Sep 
• Accepted 

We did a short cruise on Eclipse last year and would agree with you. Whilst it is a beautiful ship with very spacious cabins and fantastic public areas, the basics were not as appealing. The cabin staff gave me the impression they would rather not be there. The food in the MDR and buffet looked amazing but the quality was poor, plastic ham, chewy meat, rotten broccoli.

My daughter was not keen on the kids club either, but perhaps that is because she is so used to the P&O clubs.

 

Overall, very glitzy but " All fur coat and no knickers " as my late gran would say ;)

Our experience on the Celebrity Silhouette in 2013 and 2014 was completely the opposite, staff were the best that we have ever experienced, food was very good and the ship felt classy, however, the same can't be said for our latest cruise on Britannia in November 2015. Ship was over hyped, too many people for the amenities/sunbeds/entertainment venues etc, too many drunks and feral families

that ended up with people being kicked off the ship on a couple of occasions. We like the better mix of Nationalities that you get with Celebrity as it seems to give a better atmosphere, yes it is geared towards the Americans but they expect good service and thats what you get with Celebrity.

We are on in 4 weeks time and that video makes me a bit apprehensive. Seems to bear out the earlier thread about food quality, that food in the buffet looked really poor quality. I don't know, it seems worse seeing it than reading about it.

Sums up exactly what we thought of Britannia with the exception of food in the Peninsular Restaurant which we found acceptable but definitely not as good on our previous P & O cruise on the Azura in 2010. I doubt very much that we will ever sail with P & O again as standards have definitely dropped, perhaps its the same with all the cruise lines but for the moment we will be doing land based holidays and then going back to Celebrity if the right itinerary and price come up.

I thought I'd read that the 'favourites' had been reduced and incorporated into the main menu. Can anyone assist plse

 

JACKIE

The always on items have been reduced to just Steak as a main course, no salmon or chicken breast, starters are I think prawn cocktail, caesar salad, tomato soup. Desserts is bread and butter pudding I think, this was the case on Britannia in November last year.

I don't think I would like to on a long coach trip with him :)

 

It is the same build as Britannia, my perfect ship would actually have the piazza (atrium) of Royal/Regal Princess plus the cool haven of Britannias Crows nest.

I thought that looking at the various area's of the ship (excluding back stage) the Regal Princess had the wow factor versus Britannia's ok but nothing special and made Britannia look like the poor relation. It certainly looked as though Britannia was fitted out on a far lower budget when looking at some of the areas on the ship especially the theatre where the seats looked far more comfortable on the Regal Princess.

Sounds like P&O have really lost the plot now. :confused:

 

Crikey if I had been booked and been looking forward to this cruise and suddenly became aware of all these changes and restrictions I would certainly have been looking for my money back. I would be walking away from P&O and giving them up as a lost cause. :mad:

My thoughts exactly, as a long time Shareholder I am really considering selling my shares as I doubt very much much that I will be sailing with P & O again.

You are correct Helen, waiters do not come into the theatre to take orders or serve drinks, but you can bring in drinks. IIRC there are holders on the end of the armrests, although I think s.o. said the glasses do not fit in them! Could be misremembering though.

Correct, there are holders but you struggle to get glasses into them plus due to the width of the seats it's very uncomfortable with the holder digging into your thigh. I don't remember the Seats on the Azura being so narrow so probably another Britannia foible!!

I think I owe Raymondo an apology for calling them a snob - I re read your post and can see you are referring to those people who exhibit offensive behaviour - swearing, drinking too much and being offensive, inappropriate dress... etc etc, rather than the perceived class of passengers. I can understand how this would ruin one's cruise experience and hope that these groups are in the minority.

 

However, that said, I still don't think there is anything wrong with P&O attracting younger clientele who might be viewed as the type that would holiday at Butlins rather than Center Parcs. I would also love P&O to attract a more international crowd. I have enjoyed the mix of nationalities on Celebrity and NCL and will likely miss this on P&O

I am glad that you now understand where I was coming from believe me I am not a snob my wife and I were both brought up in Council house's as both sets of parents were never inclined to buy their own house, however, when I got married my wife and I decided to buy our own house as even 38 years ago the chance of getting a Council house was very slim so we scrimped and saved and with a bit of help from a redundancy payout we bought our first house. We have both worked hard throughout our careers and are now retired so we like to have nice holidays before we get too old to do long haul flights hence the Caribbean cruise on Britannia. We were brought up to say please and thank you and always be thankful for what we have achieved but when you spend over £7k for 3 people in a balcony cabin I expect something better for my hard earned money. This was the most we have ever spent on a cruise and I consider it our worst cruise ever, especially when you know that some of the people that I referred too spent a lot less than us. As I said in my original post I don't have a problem with people from all walks of life but I do have a problem with rude belligerent people who don't have any concern for other people only themselves.

Not everything on the Britannia was negative, some things were fine, the majority of the people working on the ship were excellent, food was pretty good in the Peninsular Restaurant, Sindhu was also excellent. We found that the Horizon Buffet was hit and miss and the Grab and Go awful, hygiene standards when entering the Horizon Buffet were very poor and the amount of people walking out of the toilets and straight into the buffet without washing their hands was unbelievable.

Entertainment was again hit and miss when you could actually get into a venue, but the one redeeming aspect was the party band Pulse who were superb and really worked hard. The other acts that were good were the Bruno Mars tribute, the 3 Motown singers from South London a comedian and the ventriloquist, the rest of the acts/performers we didn't actually see because we couldn't get any seats in either the Live Lounge or the Theatre.

Overall we enjoyed being off the ship and visiting some of the Islands that we hadn't been to before but as soon as we got back on the Britannia we had the feeling that something else was going to kick off.

P & O are aware of the problems that occurred on our cruise and hopefully they will try and improve things for future cruisers but all the time they sell off cabins too cheaply the situation will not improve and the review ratings will stay low. Reading a lot of the recent reviews it would seem that a lot of the reviewers are new to cruising and I would guess that as a first experience they didn't know anything better hence the 4 and 5 star reviews whilst the seasoned cruisers hopefully will tell it as it is.

There is so much choice these days when it comes to choosing a cruise holiday. Like most other people we look towards trip adviser, cruise critics and others to get an overall slant on what to expect.

 

Why is it that only 54% Loved it ? That is an average of all opinions, they can't be all wrong. Never listen to die-hard P&O fans, you never get a true picture.

 

When we analysed a wide selection of the comments we conclude that the P&O have squeezed in too many people. It has the same footprint as Regal Princess but has 800 more passengers, it doesn't take an expert to realise that Sea days will be a nightmare with everyone fighting for deck space. Their commercial brain over-ruled their design sense with the $ sign sparkling in their eyes, which has resulted in a Butlins-At-Sea - a real shame when it could have been so different.

 

We will not be taking the risk, we will choose others as the average opinion are seldom wrong !

We sailed on the Britannia in November on it's maiden Caribbean cruise, we went with an open mind as having cruised with Celebrity in 2013 and 2014 around the Med we chose Britannia for it's itinerary and the fact that it was P & O's newest ship and was being touted as it's flagship. However, this wasn't the case, we have sailed with P & O on the Azura which we enjoyed but the Britannia in our opinion left a lot to be desired, the main gripe we had was the behaviour of a lot of the passengers. As you stated Sea days were a problem with people reserving sun beds as early as 6am, drunken behaviour and the feeling that something was going to kick off at any time spoilt it for us. This was proved correct with a brawl on the Lido deck one night between 2 feral families and resulted in people being kicked off in Antigua, prior to this people were also removed in Aruba. I have never seen anybody being kicked off a ship prior to this cruise.

P & O need to get their act together as this seems to be becoming the norm which has resulted in the recent poor reviews, too much capacity and the need to fill ships is dumbing down the cruising experience by selling off cabins too cheaply which attracts the wrong type of people.

A recent reviewer of Britannia on Cruise.co.uk really upset a lot of people from up North and Scotland with his comments but some of his comments - not all, were true, but you cannot tar everybody with the same brush. Over the years we have met some lovely people from all over the Country and still keep in contact with them but in all honesty some of the passengers on our cruise were the worst that we have experienced over the many years of travelling.

Mine is paid automatically twice a year. For some reason the revenue got wind of it and want their share :mad: Never mind, they say my tax affairs are so simple i don't have to fill in a return anymore :) I suppose the couple of investments I have which pay gross interest must tell them about it.

 

I will be officially ancient next month, an OAP :eek:. The pension will come in handy as well and I got word today that it is a bit larger than i thought. I am going to spend it wisely and book better cabins in future. :D

 

HMRC want their 20% of that as well :rolleyes:

I thought the rules changed in July 2015 when the Chancellor said that any dividend income up to £5k was tax exempt, the example I saw quoted showed a portfolio of £125k with a 4% return would be taxable?

You can't get away with any of State Pension as it is paid at the gross rate but your tax number is adjusted down by the value of the State Pension, any private pensions are then taxed using the lower tax number, so it's swings and roundabouts and you pay 20% on all pension income.

I would favour Celebrity and according to the reviews so do most others - 86% Celebrity to 54% Britannia, I think that speaks volumes. I agree that the significant difference is that Passenger volume is too large on Britannia which leads to most of the complaints.

Celebrity suite passengers only have a very small lounge that is reserved for them and more recently a suite only restaurant but thats all. All Celebrity open decks are available to all with no additional charges whilst Britannia have extortionate charges to use the Retreat open deck to avoid the overcrowding elsewhere on the ship.

 

Celebrity is definitely our choice, only wish it sailed from Barbados to avoid US customs/immigration hassle, but even for that they still come out on top. OP - Give Celebrity a try, I am sure you wouldn't regret it.

We haven't been on the Eclipse but have sailed on the Silhouette twice and the Britannia once, the two lines are like chalk and cheese, Celebrity is far better especially if you get the drinks package, if you enjoy cocktails upgrade to the premium drinks package for $11.50 per day each as the Classic Drinks package included is a bit restricted on the cocktails. We upgraded to the Premium and everything apart from champagne was covered, the Martini Ice Bar and the Molecular Bar are really something else.

The passengers tend to be a mix of Americans/Canadians/Australians/Brits plus European and it's far better than the Britannia which is predominately Brits who on our cruise in the Caribbean in November last year left a lot to be desired.

I doubt very much if we will sail with P & O again as our experience has really put us off, mickey89 summed it up well, look at the reviews for the two ships 54% versus 86%. The Britannia looks good on paper and the adverts on TV but the reality is instead of being P & O's flagship it is becoming known as "Butlins at sea" which I totally agree with.

Yes I know that little things are being downgraded by all the Cruise Lines but P & O's philosophy now seems to be just fill the ships up, sell the Select fares early at top prices and then when it's getting nearer the sail date and cabins are unsold just knock them out at cheap prices which attracts the wrong type of clientele and alienates the repeat P & O customers that they should be looking after.

Me Sindhu

Service was lovely. Food was lovely . This was on Aurora .

Ditto

Sindhu on Britannia is excellent, I can recommend the soft shelled crab as a starter and then Atul's signature plate as a main.

Thanks Groovechick, useful information. Sounds like using texts on a mobile holiday package will be as cheap.

It depends on where you are, most mobile phone Companies offer some sort of pay per day plan in Europe to avoid data roaming charges etc, however, it's much more expensive if you are anywhere else in the World. Also I think if you use the ships mobile network if you are at sea then this may not be included in the Mobile Phone Companies daily rate.

We are about to book our second cruise with P&O. Four years ago we enjoyed a cruise on Oceana.

We are looking at cabins D504,D338, or D334.

Any relevant info on these cabins on Britannia would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

We had cabin D509 on Britannia which slept up to 4 with a sofa and it was nicely positioned midships but you have to rely on the lifts as there are no central passenger stairs above deck 7, only other alternative is either aft or forward stairs which are quite a distance. The other cabins are nearer to the aft stairs so may be a better option?

This is the 'always available' menu from the P&O site.

 

P&O Cruises Favourites

Classic Starters

Atlantic Prawn Cocktail

with Homemade Marie Rose Sauce and Brown Bread

Trio of Melon

with Ginger and Minted Berry Compote (v)

Egg Mayonnaise

with a Fresh Tomato and Cucumber Salsa (v)

Chicken Caesar Salad

Romaine Lettuce, Anchovies, Parmesan Cheese and Croûtons

in a Creamy Caesar Dressing

(Also available as a vegetarian option)

Cream of Tomato Soup

with Basil Oil and Croûtons (v)

Grills

Fillet of Salmon

with Hollandaise Sauce

Prime Sirloin Steak

with Button Mushrooms*

Breast of Chicken

with Madeira Sauce

Served with a selection of Seasonal Vegetables

Today’s Speciality Dish

Regional / Best of British / Pasta / Curry

Exec Chef to decide on board

Desserts

Sultana Brioche Bread and Butter Pudding

with Cream or Vanilla Custard

Fresh Seasonal Fruit Salad

with Cream

Only main course on the "Favourites" menu on Britannia is now Sirloin steak, no Salmon and no Chicken

Moving on to Lunch in the MDR ;) The curries are pretty good.

From what I can remember on my recent Britannia Cruise the lunchtimes in the Peninsular Restaurant mainly consisted of soup and snack type options and no full lunch options i.e. curries etc. I remember having a lot more options for lunch on the Azura but it was 5 years ago.

Also every night there is one side on the menu that is called "favourites" or something similar which has chicken, steak etc and things like egg mayonnaise as a starter so if anyone is fussy there are always those options.

On Britannia a couple of weeks ago the only P & O favourite on the main course was sirloin steak, no chicken and no salmon.

Agree i would love to see some cocktail menus if thats possible thanks

Having been on the Britannia in the Caribbean a few weeks ago the cocktail lists are not very extensive and they will not deviate from what's available. For example you can get a strawberry daiquiri but you can't get a banana one as it's not on the list, my wife wanted a chocolate martini which again was not available although she did volunteer my services which were declined although she reckons I do a mean one. I think we got spoiled on the Celebrity Silhouette last year where you could get anything and some of the ones with liquid nitrogen were quite spectacular:D

We received it in writing from pando (we also booked direct) and it will show up in the interactive service on your TV.

 

Interestingly, the loyalty discount (5%, 7.5% or 10%) doesn't apply to OBC.

If you are cruising on the Britannia you won't see anything on the interactive TV, you have to go to reception to get a statement, terrible really on what is the P & O flagship.

I'm sorry but "at least" implies to me that you are guessing. Were you party to the removal of these people? In other words do you work for P&O or were you a member of these groups. If not, how could you possibly know that there were a number of foster children in a group?

No I don't work for P & O, when you see security officers and Police on the quayside and then see people being escorted from the ship and these people were part of one of the groups it doesn't take a brain surgeon to work out what was happening. Also when you get people clapping and cheering whilst watching people being removed who were probably part of another group then you form your own conclusions. People we met on the cruise witnessed the brawl on the lido deck where bottles, glasses and chairs were being thrown about and the bar staff and waiters pulled the shutters down and ran to safety. The people who were escorted off in Antigua may have been part of a large group of 25 that included a large number of children but I didn't really take a lot of notice of peoples faces so couldn't confirm this.

I agree that there have a lot of postings on the Britannia Facebook page quoting numbers involved which could have been misconstrued but suffice to say if you had been on this cruise and paid over £7k for the privilege of seeing this type of behaviour you wouldn't be happy.

I will not be posting any more on this subject as it would appear that some of the hardline P & O cruisers don't take too kindly to peoples thoughts and opinions on what was in my mind a floating boozy Butlins holiday.

Just to clarify, there were at least 2 sets of 2 people that were removed from the ship on 2 different occasions, there should have been more but one of the big groups had a number of foster children among them and it was felt that removing them was not possible due to this situation.

My family were on the Britannia from the 6th till the 20th November and were not impressed with the Ship, we thought that being the newest flagship it would be something special, sadly in our opinion it wasn't. We last sailed with P & O 5 years ago on the Azura which was a far better experience, standards have gone downhill and what with people being removed from the ship for brawling on more than one occasion I thought that if this is what P & O is all about now I will probably not be sailing with P & O again. Some aspects of the ship were fine but there were a lot more negatives and having experienced Celebrity for the last few years I think we will be going back to them again as no such problems with them at all. We booked this cruise as there were some Islands that we hadn't visited before and liked the idea of the Barbados set up which really worked well, we made the most of our holiday but sorry that we chose this particular ship.