First Cruise in a Suite!

Hi. I'm new to the forum, so please bear with me if some of these questions have been asked already.

Next year I will be travelling with my parents to the Norwegian Fjords on Azura in a B4 (Aft) Suite! It is the first time we have been in a suite and the first time with P&O. Therefore, I wondered if I could get some asneers to a few questions I have. :D

1. Where is the best place to park in Southampton?

2. Where would you stay overnight?

3. What is included in the cost of the suite? What are the advantages?

4. Do you 'tip' the butler each time you see/ use their services or only at the end?

5. How many formal nights are on a 7 day cruise?

Thanks for reading!

Parking you could use CPS parking for parking only. Hotel stay one night pre-cruise Holiday Inn Herbert Walker Avenue. They do a Park and Cruise option if you stay a night pre-cruise. That is an alternative for the parking. If a queue is at the quayside to park with CPS, it normally clears quickly but if you do Park and Cruise you are in a taxi and not queuing. Suite guests get priority embarkation within the terminal so waiting around is minimised.

I should tip the butler once otherwise you are going to be messing about a lot. Find out what butlers do! They will pack and unpack your cases if requested for example.

P&O have number of Formal Nights and any theme nights on their website. You download your ship and date and can view what is on your programme. Whilst they give numbers of each type of night they do not tell you thw days they are occurring.

Bon Voyage.

John

Hi John.

Thanks for your quick reply.

I will certainly look into the options you've suggested.

Maybe it's a stupid question, but what do butlers do?

Thanks again.

Sam.

Parking you could use CPS parking for parking only. Hotel stay one night pre-cruise Holiday Inn Herbert Walker Avenue. They do a Park and Cruise option if you stay a night pre-cruise. That is an alternative for the parking. If a queue is at the quayside to park with CPS, it normally clears quickly but if you do Park and Cruise you are in a taxi and not queuing. Suite guests get priority embarkation within the terminal so waiting around is minimised.

 

I should tip the butler once otherwise you are going to be messing about a lot. Find out what butlers do! They will pack and unpack your cases if requested for example.

 

P&O have number of Formal Nights and any theme nights on their website. You download your ship and date and can view what is on your programme. Whilst they give numbers of each type of night they do not tell you thw days they are occurring.

 

Bon Voyage.

 

John

Hi. I'm new to the forum, so please bear with me if some of these questions have been asked already.

Next year I will be travelling with my parents to the Norwegian Fjords on Azura in a B4 (Aft) Suite! It is the first time we have been in a suite and the first time with P&O. Therefore, I wondered if I could get some asneers to a few questions I have. :D

 

 

1. Where is the best place to park in Southampton?

2. Where would you stay overnight?

3. What is included in the cost of the suite? What are the advantages?

4. Do you 'tip' the butler each time you see/ use their services or only at the end?

5. How many formal nights are on a 7 day cruise?

 

 

Thanks for reading!

Welcome to the forum. To take your questions in turn;

1) The most popular operator (and most convenient) is CPS (Cruise and Pasenger Services). Most passengers use them as they get the parking free as part of the booking with P&O, but work on around £10 a day if not.

2) As a suite passenger, you will be able to check in from around 1115 (the earliest you can drop a car with CPS), wait in a dedicated priority boarders area with free tea, coffee and cakes, and will board at around 1215 (you will be first on board). Personally, I would only stay overnight if you live more than around 4 hours from Southampton. If you timed your journey to arrive at around 11am, you have still got around 5 hours contingency time should you encounter a major incident. Others who use hotels can advise of the best ones.

3) For us, the main advantages of a Suite are priority embarkation and disembarkation, priority tender passes, the extra space of a suite (bigger living area, bigger bathroom and bigger balcony) and having access to one of the Select Dining Restaurants for breakfast - a nice civilised way to start the day.

4) We find the Butlers to be superfluous and, at times, a slight irritation. We ask them to provide the next days main dining room menus (lunch and dinner) and they bring the (poor) canapés each evening. They are covered by the automatic service charge of £6 per passenger per day (as is your cabin steward and all waiters in the main dining rooms and buffet), but we find it difficult not to tip in addition, but do so once, at the end of the cruise. We tend to give them around a third of what we give the cabin steward as the latter is the one who does the real work.

5) There are always 2 formal nights on a 7 night cruise. The first will always be the first sea day, which in your cruise will be the day after embarkation. The first and last nights are always casual, so your 2nd formal night will be the last but one evening.

Finally, I would say that a 7 night Fjords cruise is the best choice for your first cruise. Shorter cruises can be a bit hit and miss from a service and entertainment perspective. but a 7 day one is a proper cruise with normal service levels and entertainment. You will also have great views in the Fjords from your aft suite. Be warned, you will get hooked and your first cruise is always your best! Enjoy.

Just to add to the above replies. You can ask your butler for the breakfast menu from the main dining room and order your breakfast with your butler the night before. He will bring it at the requested time and lay the table with a white cloth. Very civilised. You can also order lunch and dinner if you wish.

Enjoy

Val

Also, if you order anything from Room Service, do so through your Butler and you won't be charged. Particularly useful now that everything apart from continental breakfast is chargeable.

We use CPS to park. About £100 pounds for the week. Have only had a mini-suite so no butler, but the cabin next to ours on Aurora this year was two ladies (mother and daughter) where it was their first cruise. Their Butler was very helpful as the mother mostly stayed in her cabin and the daughter went out on excursions and the Butler checked on her at various times to see she was OK.

With a suite and mini-suite, you get a bowl of fruit and a bottle of champagne on arrival. You also get canapes each evening, we got ours about 5.00 p.m. and we enjoyed them all (particularly the chocolate dipped strawberries on formal nights).

Which cruise are you on we go on Azura to the Fjords on the 23 June, but this time in a balcony cabin.

Can't help with the first two questions as we are brought down on the day of any cruise.

However, we nearly always have a Suite (our first was in 2005) so we know quite a lot about Butlers.

It is up to you whether you give the Butler an extra tip or not. He is now included in the automatic gratuity that is added to your bill, this didn't use to be the case.

We only give an extra tip now if we use him a lot. For instance, we had a cruise in July on Arcadia to Norway and, because we only used him for what he is supposed to do, we didn't tip him any extra. However, we were on Adonia in August and used him a lot more than normal because it was a hot cruise and we had lunch and sometimes breakfast in the Suite, and had a lot of drinks delivered, and, therefore, felt we should give him extra. This we always do at the end of the cruise, the last evening is the best time.

We actually quite like the canapes (but, funnily enough, not the strawberries!) and do make sure you tell him if you are intolerant or allergic to anything. He will arrange to have Chef do something else for you.

We nearly always ask him to unpack (just the clothes though) as it enables you to enjoy the ship more that first day. Just make sure he knows what you DON'T want him to unpack. We don't normally ask him to pack as we can just throw things in,whereas he couldn't do that.

We also ask him to bring the Britain Today paper and ice (if needed). He should give you the menus for the next day every evening. Ask for them if he doesn't. You can have breakfast, lunch and dinner in your Suite if you wish, although breakfast is available in Epicurean (used to be called Seventeen).

As already mentioned, ring him for anything you want off of the Room Service menu, do not ring room service.

If anything goes wrong in the Suite, call him. Do NOT ring Reception.

If you wish to book any select dining restaurants ask him to do it for you. We also get him to take any letters/postcards down to Reception for us.

He has been known to buy things we suddenly needed from one of the shops on board as well - this is exceptional service if it happens.

We always try to get a relationship with him by having a little chat whenever we felt he wasn't rushed. That way you get a good rapport going.

Ultimately it is up to you how much you wish to use him, but you've paid for a Suite and, therefore, a Butler and it would be a shame not to use him. You don't get one at home (I assume!). 😊

Sent from my Sony Z1 Compact.

Hi Selbourne.

Thank you for your detailed reply. It was most helpful.

Welcome to the forum. To take your questions in turn;

 

1) The most popular operator (and most convenient) is CPS (Cruise and Pasenger Services). Most passengers use them as they get the parking free as part of the booking with P&O, but work on around £10 a day if not.

 

2) As a suite passenger, you will be able to check in from around 1115 (the earliest you can drop a car with CPS), wait in a dedicated priority boarders area with free tea, coffee and cakes, and will board at around 1215 (you will be first on board). Personally, I would only stay overnight if you live more than around 4 hours from Southampton. If you timed your journey to arrive at around 11am, you have still got around 5 hours contingency time should you encounter a major incident. Others who use hotels can advise of the best ones.

 

3) For us, the main advantages of a Suite are priority embarkation and disembarkation, priority tender passes, the extra space of a suite (bigger living area, bigger bathroom and bigger balcony) and having access to one of the Select Dining Restaurants for breakfast - a nice civilised way to start the day.

 

4) We find the Butlers to be superfluous and, at times, a slight irritation. We ask them to provide the next days main dining room menus (lunch and dinner) and they bring the (poor) canapés each evening. They are covered by the automatic service charge of £6 per passenger per day (as is your cabin steward and all waiters in the main dining rooms and buffet), but we find it difficult not to tip in addition, but do so once, at the end of the cruise. We tend to give them around a third of what we give the cabin steward as the latter is the one who does the real work.

 

5) There are always 2 formal nights on a 7 night cruise. The first will always be the first sea day, which in your cruise will be the day after embarkation. The first and last nights are always casual, so your 2nd formal night will be the last but one evening.

 

Finally, I would say that a 7 night Fjords cruise is the best choice for your first cruise. Shorter cruises can be a bit hit and miss from a service and entertainment perspective. but a 7 day one is a proper cruise with normal service levels and entertainment. You will also have great views in the Fjords from your aft suite. Be warned, you will get hooked and your first cruise is always your best! Enjoy.

Just a quick update!

Firstly, I wanted to say a MASSIVE Thank you to everyone who contributed. Your replies were very useful.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with the suite we booked (I think it may have been double booked), which is why there has been such a delay with replying. In the end, The option we chose was to 'downgrade' to a Superior Deluxe Balcony cabin with a discount.

We were very disappointed not to have a suite, especially as this would be our first time, but hopefully there will be no more issues and we will have a fantastic cruise!