Denarius

On 3/5/2024 at 5:05 PM, Denarius said:

They certainly appear to have. I am looking at one of those cruises as well, as a single passenger. As a rough estimate of 50% effective single supplement that works out at about £5700 for a 14 night cruise even after a 35% discount. This summer I am going on a similar cruise to the Baltic - different ports - on SofA which cost me £4700 after a 35% discount. Thats works out at about a 20% increase.

Got the call this morning and booked. Price with 35% discount £5221 which is considerably lower than estimated above, compared with £4636 this year. That works out at a 12.6% increase year on year, which is not unreasonable.

45 minutes ago, LandC said:

We’ve just booked one of the Scandinavian cruises in July 2025.   A Standard cabin on D Deck worked out at £272 pppn with a 35% discount.  Prices seem to have gone up a fair bit!

They certainly appear to have. I am looking at one of those cruises as well, as a single passenger. As a rough estimate of 50% effective single supplement that works out at about £5700 for a 14 night cruise even after a 35% discount. This summer I am going on a similar cruise to the Baltic - different ports - on SofA which cost me £4700 after a 35% discount. Thats works out at about a 20% increase.

1 hour ago, nosapphire said:

Thanks - same tip worked for me.

Now I can see that there has been some cut-and-paste, but no proof reading.

The last Med cruise (on the Adventure) blurb refers to Israel and Cyprus, neither of which are on this itinerary.

All is revealed when reading that Alexandria is a new port of call for the Discovery...

Blocks of text taken from the Discovery cruise this year that was originally including Israel.

Mind you, no idea where the reference to Port Said came from...

 

The whole thing is a mess. More examples; Norway's Highlights is offered in May, but it is only when you click on the link that you find that the same cruise takes place in September. And for Coastal delights of France etc the map is at odds with the published itinerary. Must do better!!!!

10 hours ago, Cruise-Cat said:

Try clearing your cache in Firefox 

Have done and it worked. Thanks for the tip.

45 minutes ago, Medeba said:

May have been a tad hasty.  I checked a couple of cruises and they worked where previously they came up with 2024 dates.  Have just looked again and the Natural Wonders of Iceland cruise is showing when I use Chrome but not Safari.  I haven't been through them all - am trying to get my ironing finished! 😂

Interesting. I use Firefox as my browser of choice. After reading your post I opened the cruise schedule in Edge instead and both the missing links worked; but they still do not work in Firefox. Looks as though they work in some browsers (Chromium based ones?) but not others. It was much better when they sent you a pdf attachment which you could save and browse offline!

7 minutes ago, david05 said:

Haven't looked at all of them but at least some of the links which didn't work earlier are working now, at least for me.

Maybe they are working their way down the page and correcting the inoperative links one at a time. Unfortunately the three I am most interested in are down towards the end and two of the links don't work.

4 minutes ago, nosapphire said:

Scrub that.

SOME of the link works.

Some cruises simply put you over to the current year special offers.

 

Glad I am not the only one having that problem. Clicked on two links, the first put me through to details of the cruise - as it should. The second just put me through to current offers. Not impressed.

When you get your final documentation which includes the time your car will (or should) arrive it should include a number to ring if it does not.

41 minutes ago, Windsurfboy said:

 

We've been in more than 5 metres on both  Queen Victoria and Elizabeth and hardly felt it. I wonder either SOD feels waves worse (isopods and fancy stabilizers not as effective ). Or Saga has just become very very risk adverse.

 

A bit of both I suspect. At 58K tonnes SofD is significantly smaller than the Queens at 90K, and smaller ships feel the weather more than larger ones. Doubt if pod propulsion is the issue as both QE and QV use it. But it is also true imo that Saga is somewhat risk adverse compared with many other lines and this has probably increased since the unfortunate incident with SofD in Biscay which resulted in many passengers being injured.

1 hour ago, Windsurfboy said:

At 2euros per head the fixed price taxi (mini bus) shuttle is good value, although need to wait for at least 4 pasengers.

 

We saved energy by using shuttle as we were planning on walking up rock and back. On way back had to use bus from WW2 tunnels and then shuttle as legs wouldn't work.

When I was there the charge was £2, payable in either UK or Gibraltar currency. If they also take Euros on a par with Pounds then it is cheaper to pay in the former!

For the benefit of those who have not been there, the currency on Gibraltar is the Gibraltar Pound which is on par with the Pound Sterling. The Gibraltar coins look like UK coins apart from the wording on them and both are acceptable in Gibraltar - but not in the UK (officially at least). So it is wise to check your change and spend the Gibraltar coins rather than the UK coins whilst you are there.

Unless things have changed since I last visited a few years ago, an agreement with the local taxi drivers prevents a shuttle bus service being operated in Gibraltar. Instead, the taxi drivers provide a fixed price shuttle service between the cruise terminal and the town. Alternatively you can walk. It is a straightforward level walk of a mile or so to the main square at the town entrance which a reasonably fit person should be able to do in 15 minutes or so.

Confused by the references to half term. Friday 29 March 2024 is Good Friday and Sunday 31 Easter Sunday. So the school holiday will be full term not half term, marking the end of the Spring term, and will last 2 weeks.

2 hours ago, JoJo1947 said:

Did hear a rumour Southampton might be back next year but I can't see it myself. 

Neither can I.

I sailed from Portsmouth in February of last year and facilities were primative to say the least. In particular, the baggage claim area was basically a tent. I sailed from there again last month and the place was unreconisable. The new terminal is now in use and everything proceeded like clockwork. Portsmouth are obviously serious in growng their cruise business and geared up to servicing small ships like Saga's rather than the monstrocities of the seas. They will I believe make it in Saga's interests to stay.

31 minutes ago, nosapphire said:

Maybe we're all looking at this the wrong way round.

Instead of wondering why Saga are so late releasing cruise itineraries, it should be, "why are other lines releasing itineraries so early?"

Seems sometimes that it is the same as shops having Easter eggs on sale by the end of January, Christmas decorations up in August... everybody trying to be the first to get their offering on sale.

 

 

Good point. When I was a young man Summer holiday brochures were not usually published until December of the previous year; eg, brochures for 1974 Summer holidays would be published in December 1973, most people waiting until the New Year before booking. Booking holidays two years in advance would have been seen as odd to say the least. This was still the case when I started cruising in the 1990s. But in recent years brochures have been issued earlier and earlier, presumably to bounce people into booking early for fear of missing out.

32 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Yes it did seem steep. It is this one as quoted from the Commodore package.

 

Villa Maria ‘Seaspray’ Sauvignon Blanc New Zealand | Crisp and Refreshing Expect lively acidity and flavours of kaffir lime, capsicum and fresh herbs, plus a distinctive briny seashell character.

 

Our waiter actually encouraged us to choose this one as it was the dearest on the menu, others hovered around the £30 mark.  

 

This wine is a single vineyard offering from Villa Maria. A bit more upmarket than their standard Sauvignon Blanc, it is currently on sale in the UK for £17.99 a bottle (Majestic) So at £47 a bottle you are talking of a mark up of around £30 a bottle on UK prices. A nice little earner for P&O!

8 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

This might help.  Anything with a "C" is available.  

 

There are other wines etc which do not appear on these menus, including some expensive ones at around £16-£17 for a 250ml glass.  Strangely one of those was a Sauvignon blanc from New Zealand which was on our Commodore wine package yet on the MDR menu for £47 a bottle and £16.50 for a 250ml glass in the Atrium bars.

 

 

My-holiday-menus.pdf 1.74 MB · 0 downloads

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc at £47 a bottle. That sounds a bit steep. Even top brands like Cloudy Bay and Dog Point sell at less than £30 retail in the UK and whilst one would expect to pay more in a restaurant a mark up of £20 a bottle - more if the wine concerned is a less prestigious brand - seems a triffle excessive especially when you consider that onboard prices are presumably duty free.

6 hours ago, Pine Man said:

It's then a very, very long walk along the old river bed, now a park, to the city centre or catch a local bus when dropped of the shuttle.

Or there is a public bus service which picks up at the port entrance and takes you right into the centre.

23 hours ago, arlowood said:

Definitely no shorts for men if it's a Greek Orthodox monastery. We visited one in Cyprus and several men were turned away because they were wearing shorts.

Not sure if long shorts covering the knee would be accepted but maybe best not to risk it.

Having said that in some of the more popular tourist religious sites, I have seen shawls offered to cover shoulders and also fabric wraps to cover knees and legs where required

St Peters basilica in the Vatican has similar restiction, and I remember men wearing shorts which finished just below the knee being turned away. All was not lost however as local tradesmen were doing a roaring trade in long overtrousers which satisfied the dress code!

3 hours ago, owadbucket said:

Sorry misread, Vigo also no shuttle but from memory ship docks convenient to town. 

In Vigo cruise ships tie up at the cruise terminal, right in the centre of town and close to the seafood bars - oysters a speciality.

Dress codes in religious building vary from country to country and even within them, and I have no personal experience of them in Malta. As a general rule however, I have found that in Roman Catholic or Greek Orthodox establishments the general rule for both sexes is that shoulders and knees must be covered. Which for you means a short sleeved tee shirt would be fine, but not a sleeveless one. And long trousers not shorts. As regards your wife, a knee length dress with sleeves would probably be fine as would be jeans or other long trousers with a sleeved top, but not shorts.

Perhaps someone has specific details of the establishment you are visiting.

On 4/14/2019 at 10:46 AM, silversurf1 said:

We needed coins for the toilets when ashore in Norway.

But a 2 years ago in Stockholm the public loos were card only! I suspect that the larger cities are largely cashlesss but smaller places have yet to catch up.

One thing to watch out for is that whilst the initial single supplement for sole occupancy of a twin cabin may be a reasonable 50% or so there is a limit to the number of cabins available at this rate; once they have been sold the supplement increases substantially. So late bargains for couples may not be so for singles when the higher single supplement is taken into account, as I have found out a number of times over the years.

On 1/19/2024 at 10:22 PM, sleepingcat said:

We disembarked from 2 weeks on SoD yesterday. There were 3 formal evenings. however one of them was on a port day, which I have never experienced before, and having been ashore all day it seemed like too much of a faff to get in to formal wear. and by the look of the numbers of people dining in the Grill, it may be that quite a few people felt the same as us. 

 

Plenty of DJs and sparkly dresses around on the 2 nights we did bother. And yes, @GerryL13 I had a well loved LBD worn with a brand new chiffon jacket to smarten it up a bit. 

Interesting. I sailed recently on SofA and we too had formal nights on port days although there were plenty of sea days available. Tradition used to dictate that only sea days were formal. The formal nights coincided with onboard functions such as the captain's reception, the Britannia Club get together and the farewell gala dinner so there was some logic to it. But it meant that passengers were encouraged to dress for dinner on nights which many would have preferred not to. Having said that, the majority of passengers did although there were noticably more men wearing lounge suits rather than dinner suits than I have experienced on previous Saga cruises. The the fact that (according to the captain) some 400 passengers were new to Saga may well explain this, but it may be a sign of things to come.

There is Chardonnay and Chardonnay. Or more precisely it ranges from the big and relatively inexpensive wines of Australia to the much more refined - and expensive -  white wines of Burgundy. The former may well be included in a standard drinks package but the latter will probably not; they would fall foul of the maximum price limitation. Best to find out more precisely what the package includes - and what it does not -  and whether it includes wine you would choose to drink before commiting yourself.

Just leaving port and they‘re shooting at us! A gun salute from one of the old forts. Blanks I hope.