themanwithahat

I never take much notice of those, it's just a whinge. I was on the 'infamous' cruise to nowhere just before Christmas and 98% of what was written about that was tosh.

We did the horse and carriage tour, which was great, people swear by the boat tour (never done it ourselves), but it's a really good place to visit. I don't know if there is a real "must must do", like Pisa => Leaning Tower, so to speak, but just a good place to potter about.

AFAICS they all do it and quite a few seem to have the 'pricey' option - book your cabin, get your dining allocation etc etc. and the 'cheap' option - chance everything as well under various names.

I've never really grasped the problem. It's not like the Cruiselines hide this, and Cruise Critic and similar sites make it obvious that discounting goes on.

It is one of those things that will work fine 99 times out of 100, it's what happens on the hundredth time that matters.

Each to their own. I like ACP ; some like Parking4Cruises, some CPS, and some like the private parking option.

I am a book at the last minute cruiser.

 

Last minute can sometimes mean within the last week before sailing. If you are prepared to keep looking several times a week you can get a bargain. An example being the Ventura last May for 14 nights @ £679, with flights to Venice.

Swings and roundabout isn't it. If you absolutely *must* have that cruise, say it's a golden wedding and your other half is desperate to go to Venice, you might pay more.

I do sometimes wonder if some cruisers want to spoil their own holiday. If someone gets a good deal, good luck to them I say. Met someone on our first cruise who'd got it for £199pp, well done them.

We once got an upgrade. Most people who we mentioned it to (we didn't go around announcing it) wanted if anything to know 'what we'd done' (no idea at all !) but you could see the odd one starting to sulk. Such is life. Same sort of people who look down on inside cabin people or Thomson cruisers etc.

I booked my June cruise last November and went to look at it yesterday and it's £100 MORE pp!

That's kind of the point.

I remember when they had 'Right to Buy' at first and everyone was buying their council houses. Some people made a lot of money. Some people lost money because their house dropped in value. The latter started 'demanding' compensation for being sold a house that lost money. I wonder if the house had doubled in value, would they have given the profits back ?

I booked a cruise early for August 2015 for very specific reasons. I'm sure I could get it cheaper. You make a contract at the point you buy the cruise. Some people will get the same deal cheaper than you.

It is the responsibility of the purchaser to do a bit of work themselves and not just charge in blindly and complain if it doesn't suit them.

Even posting here gets lots of answers ; DaiB (is he ever at home ?) has a huge amount of knowledge about P&O for example. An hour spent just browsing this forum would get you up to speed I think.

It would seem that there is never going to be a "tipping point", the best time to buy a cruise, if only because if there were everyone would wait for it and the P&O would adjust accordingly.

I think it's a sense you develop over time of what goes for what and when is the right time to step in and buy.

That's my concern. ACP could trash my car (though I'm sure they wouldn't) but they are clearly a 'proper' operation to use.

It's something that looks better and better the longer your cruise I suspect.

I think it's worth considering but people need to be careful and look at each case individually.

I take your point about the other parking companies but it would be easier to go after them. I know some parking companies, especially the "meet and greet" type have got caught parking the cars on ordinary roads. ACP come over to me as a professional outfit. Some of them look decidedly dodgy

ACP and the other cross-the-water parkers do have the advantage of plenty of cheap space, unlike those close to the docks.

A 25 day cruise is priced at £143 there, as opposed to £125 on the £5 deal. I suspect CPS would double that. You pays your money and you takes your choice.

Most places AFAICS have things to do and see. Unless somewhere is absolutely port-only why not just explore. We had a stop in Brest last cruise, place about which I knew very little, there was plenty to occupy us in the town. Not every stop has to have exciting once in a lifetime visits.

Well, the going rate seems to be about £5 a day. For a week that's £35, then there may be transport costs as most aren't that close to the Docks.

I would also have insurance concerns. I don't know what your insurer may think about you leaving your car on someone else's drive for a week, and it may be difficult to claim against the driveway owner.

TBH ACP charged £57 for a week last cruise we went on, including transport and I'm not that keen to save that odd tenner.

I am sure you must know that no Pando ships have an arcade, if you have done your research.

 

Stick to what you know, the kids will be happy.

https://ask.pocruises.com/help/PO/life-on-board/kids_prog says that there are games consoles as part of the kids club, which may be better.

I should look at Ventura, Britannia and Azura in that order. I think one will be med fly cruises which are a bit awkward. You should like these ships and I would say consider inside or deluxe Balcony.

 

Regards John

Fly/Cruise may suit celticfc - he may well be Scotland resident :)

Hi all, I have been on 10 cruises all sailing from Southampton with RCI, however I refuse to pay the over inflated prices for summer 2015.

Many thanks

I guess you are British from your moniker (?) - this matters because P&O is very British in style.

I've never been on RCI (up front here). I sort of get the impression that the big American lines operated with a "Disney" sort of approach, lots of people, lots going on, lots of spending and younger.

Then there are the expensive lines, Regent et al.

Then there are the more European lines. Culling from our families experience (P&O, Celebrity, Cunard, Fred Olsen) these seem to be not too dissimilar in quality (and price). Some do some things better than others, but it probably balances out pretty much. Not really much like dodgems, climbing walls, water slides, those sort of things. (I do not know anything about the childrens clubs but they seemed happy !) A bit slower, a bit quieter, a bit more 'old fashioned' cruising for want of a better word. And everyone's enjoyed each one they've been on (there are pathological complainers on boards/reviews who throw a huge strop if their room service is more than 5 minutes, those kind of people ....).

We went on a 7 day fly cruise Genoa/Venice on Ventura (2014) and I've uploaded the daily magazines and the menus here http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2025644 so if you have a look through those it will give you some idea of what P&O is like, what happens every day, what the food is like (there are also sample menus from the speciality restaurants). I find the daily magazines far more informative about what happens than the brochures, but you can't tell the 'style' .

I'd say, unless you like really all action something happening every minute type holidays, it would be worth a try. Your worst case scenario may be, yeah, it was okay, preferred RCI maybe.

Our first cruise was a four night Bruges/Guernsey P&O in 2013, it was nothing like the 'hen parties' I had been warned about. No different to our subsequent longer cruises in style and so on. Would certainly do it again.

We have used Alternative Cruise Parking twice now http://www.alternativecruiseparking.co.uk/ and really like it. It's slightly cheaper (more so on long haul I think ?) but actually we would use it if it was the same price.

It has been very efficient on both occasions, much better than our one experience with the preferred providers (utter shambles). They have a contact system which works well (despite on one occasion being stuffed by Cunard changing everything late on .... had to wait 20 whole minutes :)

You don't have to drive into Southampton - you can go on the A326 turning off the M27 and it takes about ten minutes to get to Marchwood down quiet roads. People and drivers are very friendly and know a lot of short cuts and so on that I wouldn't be able to find.

There were lots of young children on this cruise all well behaved and enjoying themselves. I hope your children had a good time.

 

Embarkation was a lot quicker than usual at the Ocean Terminal. This was due to the fact that the secure screening area is now a lot bigger than it used to be with more x-ray machines in use. We were directed to the priority check-in area (Platinum members) and were on the ship within about 10 minutes of arriving at the terminal - the fastest time ever. In fact, almost too fast. :)

Children always seem well behaved on cruises. I've read complaints about them - on cruises I have been on - but the ones I've come across have been very pleasant and sensible, and I suspect the younger ones spend most of their time in the clubs anyway.

It was very quick getting on the QE2 for the non-Amsterdam cruise. One person in the queue for the registration, maybe a couple of minute wait in the vastly improved checking area.

When I mentioned in an earlier post about a “near mutiny”, it was meant tongue in cheek, but the newspapers seem to have seriously used that term. It was difficult to ascertain the number of passengers around the pursers desk, the lobby, up the staircase and looking over who were complaining and who were just onlookers. After the captain mentioned about the £75 credit, some people actually laughed out loud. It was quite embarrassing.

I did actually wonder if that was where the mutiny thing came from. I noted a definite air of humour in that comment. My view that reception was pretty packed but it wasn't really aggressive. I was certainly an onlooker, I'd come to ask about something else originally.

Objectively, the £75 is about right. Compensation is really supposed to cover actual loss, not some sort of thing like "hurt feelings".

I paid about £400pp for this cruise, e.g. £100 a day (you could make a case that those who were in the higher spec cabins etc. could get more, though perhaps not as their losses were the same)

The only real loss was the Amsterdam dock ; however you could also argue some of that loss was mitigated by the extra entertainment and so on that was put on on Day 3.

There is a lot of fuss and exaggeration coming from some quarters ; I think this is a small group trying to create a compo meme to get all their money back.

The Honeymooners who claim it was 'ruined' because they couldn't visit Amsterdam ; that says more about their attitude to life than the cruise really. About 3/4 of the cruise was identical to what it would have been anyway.

Maybe I speak to different people, but virtually everyone I spoke to was disappointed but not cross/angry/mutinous. Actually the crossest person wasn't annoyed about Amsterdam but about the standard of the cruise itself (I cannot compare it with any other Cunard cruise).

People should look at what they get for what they paid. I see this quite a lot in Cruise Reviews ; people paying £100/nt for Bed, umpteen meals, and entertainment, and travel.

I would have gone even if they did exactly the same show - I thought they were great.

Plans were to exchange the show team at Amsterdam. Obviously this was not possible.

This is part of the problem. It is rather like complaints I have read about the "Christmas Market" which was in the dance area on L2 ; yes, it was a bit perfunctory and the stuff was from the shops, but that's the best they could do. I presumed they were trying to recreate the relevant part of the shore leave to the best they could.

I don't know if they reprovision in Amsterdam, but I thought the food just went off, not hugely but noticeably. This may of course be the menus not fitting with my tastes too well.

I suspect staffing levels (e.g. bar wait times) were down slightly as they may have tried to give staff time off which they would have had in Amsterdam ; I can understand the rationale behind this. I didn't find it particularly bad though, though it was noticeable that if you ordered via a waiter it could be a bit slow.

I would freely admit knowing zero about running a cruise but it seems to me that they largely did they best they could. My queries would be whether this trip should even have been planned.

Not in room though!

You may both be correct. There were two levels, one broadcast through the TV and one presumably on speakers somewhere. Right at the front, we could not hear non emergency announcements without putting the TV on channel 40 or whatever it was. You could hear it as a sort of distant mumbling.

The problem was that they went right up to the entrance before finally bailing on Amsterdam, this was about 3-4 AM. So the previous nights newsletter was the one with virtually nothing on it. However, once you left the cabin to get breakfast or whatever, the place was littered with them.

One criticism I would make was that Leon's channel (22) should have been co-opted to explain the changes (and possibly the current state of play regards Rotterdam/Bruges/Le Havre etc.) rather than showing the loop.

I'm sorry to have hacked you off on Christmas Day, but again how were we meant to know this? As far as we could tell they were just going to be doing a repeat of the Saturday night. I do appreciate that they do repeat shows a lot, but on a four night cruise this isn't really acceptable. Surely the cunard singers and dancers could have done one of there other shows?

Well, maybe you missed the bit where they talked about the second, and that they'd changed their first set because of the second. It wasn't really a repeat show, it was the same band doing a different show. The impression they gave was they were always going to do two shows (before the cancellation).

I think the point is you were incorrect though. Maybe this could have been made clearer, perhaps. Communications do break down. I missed Bell's politics lecture because it moved. But the actual claim made is based on your error, rather than reality.

Maybe the singers and dancers could have done a different show. The other bands/singers/musicians and Ents staff did step up to try to fill gaps, I thought, but the onboard team were noticeably absent from that.

All these maybe's though don't really support the absurd litany of complaints and nonsense about mutiny that some are posting. Most, not all people were sad to miss Amsterdam.

Probably the $75 pp is about right in terms of actual loss incurred.

This is not correct. I heard the 8:30am broadcast in my suite clearly - with the tv switched off. The 10:00am print was announced as beeing available at the pursers desk and it was available at the concierge too. Please read my live report of Dec. 21st 08:30 am in this forum.

The only way you could have missed the revised schedule was if you didn't ever come out of your cabin. Staff were handing them out and there were copies on desks, bars and so on. I didn't hear the 8:30 broadcast but having said that it was fairly quiet on our cabin unless you had the broadcast channel.

7. Entertainment repeats on many cruise lines. If you cruise often enough you'll end up seeing some shows more than once. As before, you could easily have entertainment yourselves if it was so bad. Or am I living in the past when people had imagination and ingenuity?

.

This is what hacks me off. Not you, but the original post.

It simply isn't true.

The entertainment on the last and 2nd night was a tribute band "The Beatles Experience". They were always going to give two shows (they said this before Amsterdam was cancelled) the question was would the second be a dance session (e.g. not in the main theatre).

However the two shows were totally different - there was not one song repeated. We enjoyed both.

On this forum, I didn't see any tantrums, but I did notice a hyper-defensive and highly critical response to those voiced their dissatisfaction with this cruise.

I have no problem with this at all, but much of what is stated as 'what happened' simply is not true, both by some posters, in the paper articles, and the associated comments. It is one thing to say you are very upset because the stop, the only stop was lost. I have no problem with that.

It is another to say no attempt was made to do anything, everyone was cross, the crew didn't care, the crew didn't tell us what was happening, people were staring into space as there was nothing happening and so on. Or that there was some sort of mutiny. I find it extremely irritating. With maybe three exceptions, everyone I spoke to had an attitude of "pragmatic disappointment". The only person who I heard of being genuinely angry I heard second hand from one of the Entertainment staff who was clearly shook up by it.

It's my first Cunard cruise, we've previously only done P&O - it was just a very good deal.

..and the casino?

 

And on the last sea day, they docked in the evening rather than the next morning as scheduled.

The Casino was open, save for the last night, because as you state we were docked at that point and I think that they can't operate in dock. The main loss on the trip was the Duty Free was closed (Mrs Hat wondered if some people might have run short of smokes, expecting to purchase in DF or Amsterdam ?) because we may legally never have left England.

There was a big chunk of down time on the cruise entertainments when people were due to be in Amsterdam, presumably because they assumed everyone pretty much would leave the ship. The original Day 3 was pretty much empty. Once it became clear that Day 3 was going to become a sea day, they rewrote the Daily Newsletter, added the usual sorts of things, added the 'market', three lectures (one by Bell, one by an RAF chap and one by the Ent Mgr on Astronomy which he knew a heck of a lot about), and reopened the facilities that were on hold like the Spa and Bridge lessons. I presume but don't know that they uprated the waiting, serving, catering and so on to cope with the enhanced numbers. Apart from Duty Free, there was nothing shut that would have been open after about 10:00 ish. It was pretty rough on the staff who both lost their time off and (apparently) their tips. We left the tips on, I never considered it the responsibility of the crew.

We docked slightly before 9:00 (to much amusement amongst the Beatles and their audience) and I think originally we would have docked early morning, so about 7 hours early and some people, quite a few I think, did get off early rather than spend the night on board and depart after breakfast. We did consider it - I can see advantages if you live on the doorstep or you have a long way to travel. Disembarkation was noticeably quicker because of this.

I presume, but don't know, that they went into Soton Dock at the earliest time they could for the repairs that should have been done in Amsterdam, but not so early as to incur extra berth charges, though as I say this is pure hypothesis.

One thing about this cruise is was a very slow one anyway. As it was a four night cruise with about 18 hours in Amsterdam there was never any rush. We went a long way west before doubling back.