groovechick

If you ask you can get a glass of squash made up in the bars because they have the orange/blackcurrant/lime cordials, but it is not free and IIRC was horrendously expensive for what it was, so we take a bottle of squash with us and top up stocks in port.

Just scratching my head here groovechick!:confused:

 

Did you tip the head waiter for getting you the Pistachio recipe or the Chef who'd created it?

Neither, actually. I praised the cake and said how much I liked it; on the last night of our cruise we found an envelope in our cabin, with a note from the head waiter saying he'd asked the chef for the recipe for me because I'd enjoyed it so much. I have no idea who the chef is and couldn't find the head waiter to thank him.

Above and beyond is the Glass House head waiter on our last cruise who lent my husband a corkscrew because the bottle of wine we'd bought onshore had a cork rather a screw top (mea culpa). It is the same head waiter who got me the recipe for the pistachio cake we had during the taster dinner, from the chef, because I loved it so much. If it is true that P&O apply the auto grats for service above and beyond, that is ridiculous and a massive assumption.

They will unless they are wishing to end up in court.

 

The current menus do not contain sufficient allergy information and the waiters (nice as they are) don't have a clue about the ingredients.

 

Add to that you have P&O constantly misdescribing menu items (chestnut risotto when it is chestnut mushroom risotto) and the kitchen making substitutions without mentioning it.

 

All together you have a recipe for disaster (boom tish, I am here all week).

LOL! And precisely. It doesn't matter for us now because both children have outgrown a severe allergy, but in my experience P&O are still very hit and miss when dealing with this. I don't know how they can be contemplating this given the growing number of allergies and intolerances.

Surely they will have to continue the existing system in some form to cater for those with other allergies/intolerances, e.g. egg, dairy/lactose, nuts, etc. - all common ingredients?

There is lots of info on the P&O site about their children's clubs and the age ranges, but I would highly recommend them. They are very well organised, the staff are lovely, they do a nice variety of fun, age appropriate activities and the staff are very good at ensuring everyone is included or, if the child doesn't want to do the main organised activity, ensuring they are doing something they want to instead.

You have to sign the child in and out. If you/your child wants they can go the children's tea with the kids club. If your child goes to the club at night, they tend to settle them down on big cushions and put on a film for them to watch ready for winding down for the night.

I won't shoot you down as I understand where your coming from .

 

 

Just to be clear ,did you mean your Fred or our Fred or that Fred that lives over the road ?

 

 

Maybe the other Fred who moved away ? Unless there was another Fred ? :confused:;p

 

 

It's clear to me without them prefixes ,we wouldn't have a clue who we were talking about .;)

Ey up, so we definitely need a "Like" button. :D

To be specific one would use the full name, Fred Smith but as a family member, my brother Fred, or my neighbour Fred. However, in the example I gave regarding "our Fred", he was a family member. I wondered if this would be used if Fred was but a neighbour. I have used the expression since returning home and garnered a smile or two :D

I might be shot down here, but AFAIK the use of "our" before a person's name to denote a family member is northern usage. It's something I use myself and only ever to refer to a family member. Maybe it stems from an era when people had bigger and extended families and the same name might crop up several times: our John, i.e. the John in our immediate family rather than the John who is my cousin Betty's son?

A major difficulty with offering cruises to fit the half term holidays is that they vary throughout the country. If they were fixed nationally, this would not be a problem but as they are locally fixed, national planning becomes impossible.

In practice they tend to cover a two-week period, so it wouldn't be that difficult for P&O to cover them. The February half term varies as much due to when Easter falls as for any other reason. Private schools and some church schools do differ - private schools often get 2 weeks rather than one. I like going away somewhere warm in the October half term, particularly if we've had a lousy summer; sets me up for the long, dark winter days.

Travel insurance documents and EHIC card if applicable. Notified your mobile phone service provider that you are going to be abroad (if necessary).

Made sure house plants are well watered.

Set central heating timer to tick over while you are away (unless you have one of these clever Hive thingies).

We're like Eglesbrech - make sure there are quick and easy meals in the freezer for at least the first couple of days, so we don't have to go out and shop straight away (apart from maybe milk and bread).

We are on the same cruise on 14 July. I suggest you do a fair bit of research on excursions. Nearly all are much cheaper if you do independently rather than through P & O. We have booked a fjord safari in Flam and a trip to the glacier in Olden. Intend doing the funicular in Bergen but no need to prebook at all (you gain nothing) and it looks to be a short walk from where the ship docks. All of these are cheaper if done direct.

No saving moneywise if you prebook the funicular, but can save a considerable amount of time because the ticket office queues can be huge. Either get there very early, or prebook if there are going to be a couple of ships in port to avoid the queues. It wasn't particularly busy the day we went and we still queued for about 20 mins. Same applies to the Flam train journey. Our cruise didn't call there, but according to advice on here it is cheaper to book tickets direct than a P&O package and again, get there early if you want to get a good seat.

Stavanger and Bergen are easy to DIY/just wander around and pretty.

In Stavanger there is a Petroleum Museum just a short walk from the quay, which sounds deadly but is in fact very interesting and well worth a visit. There is also a Canning Museum, which I haven't visited but believe is also good. There's a pretty lake area to walk round and the cathedral is worth a visit. A family who were on our table at dinner took a boat from the quay to visit the tropical gardens on an island, which they said were brilliant and the excursion much cheaper than the same offering from P&O. I think there are companies offering other boat tours from the quay too.

In Bergen, depending on where the ship is berthed you can either walk from the ship to town, or you will have to catch a shuttle if berthed in the container port. The shuttle drops off by a lake in the centre, from where it's a short walk to the fish market and old harbour area, the funicular railway up the mountain and several museums dotted around the central area. If you take the funicular there are great views (weather permitting), a café and nice walks at the top of the hill. En route between the lake and funicular there is a small indoor shopping centre. The café on the top floor does reasonably priced (for Norway) filter coffee and a free refill is included in the price.

In Olden the main excursion is to the Briksdal Glacier. If you search the forums here there is quite a lot of info on DIYing it, likewise the recently opened Floen Sky Lift. We did the glacier on a ship's tour. It was great. We opted to walk from the coach drop off point to the glacier - we are fit and healthy but it was quite a long and steep (in places) walk. Alternatively you can catch the troll cars (buggies) from the car park which drive you to the glacier. I believe the glacier has shrunk a lot since our visit in 2012. In Olden there is a little road train which runs round the village and lake, but the village itself is very small.

The fjords are magnificent. Hope you have a lovely cruise.

They should have thought themselves lucky that they weren't in the basement. :)

Could have been worse - could have been Davy Jones's locker!

Not so. Just because many people say it doesn’t make it correct! If the name written on the side of the ship said ‘The Aurora’ then you would refer to it as ‘The Aurora’. If the name says ‘Aurora’ (as it does) then you call it ‘Aurora’ or you might refer to it as ‘the cruise ship Aurora’, but not ‘The Aurora’. Just as, if your name is Fred, you don’t expect people to refer to you as ‘The Fred’. No idea what the correct terminology is in the US but that’s the correct use of the English language in the U.K.

As a linguist, I wonder if this is something that is creeping/has crept in from European English, which comes of our European neighbours applying their grammar and syntax to English and/or ropey translations on multilingual websites.Wikipedia, etc. Several European languages, German in particular, use the definite article much more than English. In spoken German one would say "Where is the Selbourne?" (Wo ist der Selbourne?). It bugs me too.

And yes, agree, cabin, deck, ship.

Unless it has changed it is only free if you buy a coffee. :(

No, you're right. Same applies in the Costa area on Aurora.

Forgot to mention afternoon tea in my original reply, and that you can take food back to your cabin from the buffet, grab and go or whatever. I never have (apart from hubby once brought me some goodies from afternoon tea when I spending part of the afternoon packing to come home) and like P&O Sue don't feel the need to snack with so much food available.

In your cabin they provide some individual packets of biscuits (which get topped up) and a small dish of boiled sweets.

There are chocolate bars and small tins of Pringles available for a charge from the mini bar in your cabin.

In the bars they sell the usual bar-type snacks (crisps, nuts).

From the grab-and-go on the Lido deck you can get bacon rolls at breakfast, then sandwiches, salads, fruit salads and desserts from mid-morning to mid-afternoon. The grill on the Lido deck does chips, pizza, chicken bites, burgers and hot dogs over lunchtime.

In between the main meal services in the buffet, there is always a range of savoury and sweet food available right through until about midnight.

If you want other sweet/crisps type snacks, they have some to purchase from the onboard shop, or you could purchase items when ashore in Norway, although they're likely to be very expensive.

Bitterly disappointed that Aurora is becoming adults only. She's my favourite ship and my daughter's. I didn't mind Azura, but didn't like Britannia. Although our children are now adults (if we'd been cruising this year DS would have had his last cruise in kid's club) it's unlikely that Aurora's demographic, or that of any of the adult only ships, will suit people in their late teens/early 20s. We may get to sail on Aurora again (if she's still with the fleet) when DD and DS branch out into holidays on their own but I think we, too, may have to bite the bullet and look at lines like Celebrity/RCI/Princess, as ships around 3,000 pax capacity seem to be my limit. I really don't think the mega ships are for me - I like a ship that looks like a ship.

I expect it depends where you dock, but last August it was more like a 30 minute walk from the cable car to the ship, and we're fit and active. P&O ran a shuttle from the ship to a drop-off point in the town centre and from there it was about 5 mins walk to the cable car. We visited the Monte Tropical Gardens which were fab, and beautifully cool on a very hot day. There was also a very interesting exhibition of African sculpture. The toboggan wasn't running and Monte church was closed (it was a Sunday and the day before a major public holiday). Walked back to the ship along the prom. If you're there on a weekday you can visit the port lodges in the centre for tasting.

Our first P&O cruise was in 2012, when I think the grats were about £3.50. They have gone up by about £1 every eighteen months. They went up to about £5.50 just after we booked our 2015 Christmas cruise (in Jan 2014) and again last year just after we booked for the Canaries, to around £6.50, I think?

What I don't agree with is changing the goalposts after people have booked a cruise knowing they would be paying x amount.

That is exactly the problem I have, Glenn. We pay the gratuities and frequently give extra too, but every year now for the last 4 years, P&O have increased the gratuities after a lot of people have booked in the first flush when the itineraries are announced, so they can secure the cruise/cabins they want. If they're going to increase the prices, announce it when the new brochures come out, so people know where they are and what they have to budget for from the start.

I think it will probably depend on how many children they have in the age category on that particular cruise. Our teenage son was in a similar situation; he crossed over into a different kids' club age band a day or so into our cruise, so we asked if he could go into the older age group from the start and were told no because they were already at the limits for the age group. I know it might not be strictly relevant for your toddler, but I thought I'd post just to give you an idea of how P&O's thinking might work.

I wonder if any of the cruise companies will take a stand and change their registration in protest?

I don't know much about the subject, but I doubt it. Aren't there reasons (flexible registration and other laws, tax breaks, etc.) which are the whole reason why ships are registered in places like the Bahamas, Barbados, S. Korea, and so on? These will far outweigh any other considerations.

Thank you for the clarification Andrew.

How sad for those who have booked their special day with P&O. I, too, hope they will offer cancellation and full refunds as presumably the couple will have to organise a civil or church ceremony back home to make things legal?

Is it not the case that when at sea a ship is subject to maritime law, not the law of the country in which it is registered, which is why captains can conduct marriage ceremonies and burials at sea rather than it having to be an ordained minister?

Another vote for a stadium trip being an easy DIY, especially if you're used to making your own way around. DamianG's instructions are spot on.