AchileLauro

She may be capable of tendering but would it have been practical to do so!

I would think that this would be because tendering is labour intensive on the crew and at a time when some sectors of the crew are deliberately limiting any unnecessary contact with passengers because of risk of infection. Making tendering not really practical especially when you consider potential passenger capacity.

Actually on Aurora and Oriana it would have been four cocktail parties. Two simultaneously in the Crows nest and show lounges for first sitting dinner followed by two for second sitting. It worked quite well. On Oceana, Azura and Ventura the central atrium was used. My personal view is that it simply didn't work. No atmosphere whatsoever with everyone bunching up around a staircase trying to catch what was being said, or trying to catch a glimpse of who was saying it, while all along passengers in shorts and tees shirts passing through and snatching drinks off trays being carried by the waiters.

We are on the following cruise (G224) and we too are slightly confused by the changes especially taking into account reports of recent Norway excursions and missed ports of call. We have taken the view that it it's not worth pre-booking anything as we are treating it as a mystery cruise. I don't think you have to concern yourself about tendering as I don't think Iona is set up for tendering operations as normal passenger capacity would make such operations extremely onerous and time consuming. We've experienced tendering on various ships and while many passengers don't enjoy the experience we actually look forward to it, but we've also seen how difficult it can be to get large numbers of passengers ashore by tender in a reasonable time frame. Some years ago while on Ventura it was nearly 2 o'clock in the afternoon before some passengers were able to go ashore in Sardinia, and they had to be back on board by 4.30p.m.

Our past experience of P&O customer service has to say the very least been abysmally poor. For instance replying about transferring a cruise to another ship after they cancelled our cruise, 12 days after the alternative cruise had sailed. Not to mention not informing us of the cancellation in the first place (we found out by chance from this very forum 4 days prior to sailing). However, yesterday my daughter contacted P&O regarding our upcoming holiday and an I.T. issue (surprise, surprise) and the lady that she spoke to could not have been more pleasant to deal with or more helpful. We heard the whole conversation on speaker phone, and speak as you find we give P&O a very positive ten out of ten on this occasion.

Only 55%, sounds like my ideal cruise.

The food in the "cafeteria" is quite acceptable, it's the noise and hustle and bustle that we don't want. After all it's supposed to be a cruise, a relaxing way to travel and see some of the world.

We are due to sail on Iona in 4 weeks time. We haven't used the specialty restaurants much on previous cruises over the years so personally we aren't too concerned about them not being available, though we do appreciate that this may be a big disappointment to others. What does however concern us is whether the loss of the specialty restaurants will place additional pressure on availability of the main dining rooms, especially having read reports that passengers on some cruises were unable to book tables in the main dining room on several nights. I personally would be extremely annoyed if we weren't able to use the MDR for either breakfast, lunch or dinner as it just seems so much more relaxed and civilised than the buffet. I know that we are all different and we have witnessed some passengers using the buffet for every meal. In fact we have come across a few passengers on previous cruises that took every meal in the buffet and even some who weren't even aware that there was anything other than the buffet. Dining in a cafeteria (the buffet) for more than the occasional meal has absolutely no appeal to us whatsoever.

Not ours either. In my opinion the program was not a good advertisement for Virgin.

We made the mistake of giving in to our young daughter and agreeing to going to McDonalds for breakfast while en route to embark a cruise many years ago. That then became a bit of a family tradition with our young daughters over many years of cruise holidays. We are now due to cruise on Iona in July along with our now grown up daughters, one of whom has already promised her daughter (our granddaughter) who is going on her first cruise that we can stop at McDonalds for breakfast as it's traditional. How I wish that I had never agreed to going to the place all those years ago. I hate the blinking place.

Plus they try if possible to build airfields in a cross configuration so that the aircraft can land into the wind.

I think there's a good many people who would like to be able to look into the future with regard to what the covid risk will be in October.

In the past P&O have employed suitably qualified temporary staff for the duration of the school holidays and I'm sure that they are probably considering doing that once again to allow for the greater numbers of children being carried. However I'm sure this will very much depend on a safe method of work being devised that considers the current and near future covid risk.

If similar rules are applied as they are on land the staff to child ratio is dependent on the child's age. If I remember correctly children up to two years of age require a staff to child ratio of 1 staff member for every three children. For children between the ages of two and four require a staff to child ratio of 1:4 I think (even less sure on this figure). So supervising very young children will require large numbers of staff. Having taken young and very young children on P&O in the past I can only say that this is one area where P&O have absolutely excelled in the past. The company absolutely exceeded our expectations even going so far as to enquire about food requirements for our one year old daughter and providing a light weight stroller so that we didn't even have to take our own pushchair for trips ashore. Saying that it became so much easier when our children grew up a bit as cruising with a very young child can be wearing and often take a fair bit of pre-planning. At times I just wish we could have left the kid's in the boarding kennels along with the dogs. LOL. Judging by the number of parents you see walking the prom deck of an evening pushing a push chair trying to get little one to go to sleep we weren't the only ones to go through it.

Are any of the dining rooms more suited to larger size parties than the others? I ask as we shall be cruising on Iona in July and there are seven persons in our party. I note that there is still a requirement to book your table in advance using the on board intrenet system. However I see that you can only book a table for a maximum of six persons using this system, so presumably we will either need to just turn up at the restaurant door and request a suitable size table or we will need to phone ahead to make our reservation.

Is this policy any different to how it's always been? It's quite a few years since we cruised with small children on P&O but I distinctly remember that it was necessary for one of us to be present when our youngest daughter was in the children's club in her early years.