Venice Port changed to Ravenna for 2022 sailings

[mappyuk]

We booked the NH hotel too! It looks very nice. Looking forward to meeting you too.

 

Michael

[oddjob16]

1 hour ago, oddjob16 said:

The cancellation of Venice as port is expected, but it was, until now, a guessing game as to what port would replace it. Best option would be Marghera, but who knows, they might get there for the later cruises this year.

Sorry. I read past a few posts in a hurry. Looks like Ravenna will be the port for all "Venice" cruises this year. Good of Azamara to give as early notice as possible.

[tyler6597]

When we took our 16 night cruise on the quest last Oct and Nov of 2021 we flew to Venice and then they had buses to take us to Trieste Italy which is next to Slovenia. A long bus ride but it seems to be equal distance with Revenna.  You will have to see what airports Azamara will be picking up passengers at. Ever since the Italian Government stopped ships that have a tonnage over 41,000 everything has changed. They are constructing a terminal at some docks a few miles away from Venice in a industrial section of that area but who knows when that will be completed. The days of pulling up in a cruise ship in downtown Venice and just a walk or water taxi away from the heart of Venice are over unless the cruise ship is under that 40 gross tons limit. We've been to Venice by cruise ships 4 times and have stayed in hotels before or after the cruise and it's our favorite place to just walk around and get lost. We found a lot of great places to see and to eat at. If you ever get there make sure you just walk off of St. Marks square and get lost. Take a map of course.

Tyler

[roberts2005]

14 hours ago, tert333 said:

I agree that those that have booked a hotel independently should also get the complementary transfer, which is consistent with the way they are handling Airport Transfers.   However, as it is not 100% clear, I am hoping they can clarify.  I am sure their help desk will be very busy tomorrow.  I tried to get in touch with them earlier this week on a separate issue and gave up after an hour on hold.

We are in the same situation, with two nights in Venice on our own.  At this point a free transfer to airport would be welcome 

[curmudgeon98]

I got our official notification forwarded from our TA this morning.  I went ahead and dutifully filled out the survey form detailing our flights (on Wednesday) for a cruise starting on Saturday.  I'm not sure it will be much help to Azamara in scheduling transfers.  It would have been nice if they had left a spot to enter "we'd like seats on a transfer leaving at 1pm from either Pl Roma or the airport".

 

We've got plenty of time to sort it out, so I'll probably wait until we have cruise docs before fussing too much about it.  We can always take the train.

 

[BBQ Lover]

15 hours ago, oddjob16 said:

The cancellation of Venice as port is expected, but it was, until now, a guessing game as to what port would replace it. Best option would be Marghera, but who knows, they might get there for the later cruises this year.

We are on Journey in October, and we have also been switched to Ravenna

[radarcruiser]

Got notified that our Onward embarkation is switched to Ravenna as well.  Hopefully they will pick us up at the train station there. 

[Host Jazzbeau]

@CC71 – since it now seems that all 2022 Azamara Venice cruises are switched to Ravenna, I changed the title of this thread.  Thanks for bringing the news to all of us on these cruises!

[AJCM]

Received the following response (provided very quickly by Azamara) :

 

"Regarding your ... query, we are working on an option to book the transfers from our cruises to your hotel in Venice. We will let you know once the option gets available."

 

No indication whether transfers will be complimentary or not but all will be revealed sometime. "option to book" doesn't sound promising.

 

If a fee's involved, wouldn't it be nice if they let us defray the new FCC to cover the cost.

 

[curmudgeon98]

18 minutes ago, AJCM said:

Received the following response (provided very quickly by Azamara) :

 

"Regarding your ... query, we are working on an option to book the transfers from our cruises to your hotel in Venice. We will let you know once the option gets available."

 

No indication whether transfers will be complimentary or not but all will be revealed sometime. "option to book" doesn't sound promising.

 

If a fee's involved, wouldn't it be nice if they let us defray the new FCC to cover the cost.

 

Private water taxis in Venice are pretty expensive.  I wouldn't expect those to be covered at no cost.  It would be nice, though, if they could at least do pickup/dropoff at Pl Roma for those with hotel stays in addition to the airport stop.    

[laurieb]

37 minutes ago, AJCM said:

Received the following response (provided very quickly by Azamara) :

 

"Regarding your ... query, we are working on an option to book the transfers from our cruises to your hotel in Venice. We will let you know once the option gets available."

 

No indication whether transfers will be complimentary or not but all will be revealed sometime. "option to book" doesn't sound promising.

 

If a fee's involved, wouldn't it be nice if they let us defray the new FCC to cover the cost.

 

I don’t think any cruise line would ever cover the cost to transfer you to a hotel.  

[AJCM]

1 hour ago, laurieb said:

I don’t think any cruise line would ever cover the cost to transfer you to a hotel.  

I suspect you're right. I've posted flight details to Azamara's link, even though the flights are 3 days after disembarking. If they don't provide transfers to Venice for those of us already booked into Venice accommodation post-cruise, I'm hoping they'll at least give the option of a complimentary transfer to Marco Polo and we can get into Venice ourselves from there. 

[tert333]

5 hours ago, AJCM said:

I suspect you're right. I've posted flight details to Azamara's link, even though the flights are 3 days after disembarking. If they don't provide transfers to Venice for those of us already booked into Venice accommodation post-cruise, I'm hoping they'll at least give the option of a complimentary transfer to Marco Polo and we can get into Venice ourselves from there. 

I did the same thing as my flight is a few days later.   It would only be fair for them to get their passengers to the city that we were scheduled to arrive at no additional cost. 

 

This is our first Azamara cruise and have heard so many positive things.  I would expect they will handle their customers in a reasonable fashion.

[BBQ Lover]

8 hours ago, AJCM said:

Received the following response (provided very quickly by Azamara) :

 

"Regarding your ... query, we are working on an option to book the transfers from our cruises to your hotel in Venice. We will let you know once the option gets available."

 

No indication whether transfers will be complimentary or not but all will be revealed sometime. "option to book" doesn't sound promising.

 

If a fee's involved, wouldn't it be nice if they let us defray the new FCC to cover the cost.

 

Azamara told my TA that they are planning to release another email today. The email is supposed to contain information about a complimentary transfer to the Venice city center

[tyler6597]

1 hour ago, tert333 said:

I did the same thing as my flight is a few days later.   It would only be fair for them to get their passengers to the city that we were scheduled to arrive at no additional cost. 

 

This is our first Azamara cruise and have heard so many positive things.  I would expect they will handle their customers in a reasonable fashion.

Although it's always hard to please everyone, Azamara goes above and beyond to please their passengers and I'm sure this will all be worked out. They want their customers to come back and cruise again. After our first cruise with Azamara we were over whelmed with their customer service, crew professionalism and their willingness to exceed the cruise normalcy. When we did the 16 night cruise in oct 19, 2021 to nov 4, 2021 the entire crew was so glad to see passengers after the pandemic that we felt like we were coming home to see old friends and some new ones. So enjoy your cruise and the Azamara crew.

Tyler

[cruisinclined]

On 3/30/2022 at 9:14 AM, Mrs Miggins said:

According to Google Maps its a 2 and a half hour journey by road to the Airport - longer to Venice itself.  Feel sad for those hoping to visit Venice and not actually doing a pre - or post cruise visit.  

I am interested in seeing Ravenna having had the good fortune to stay in Venice several times.  

It looks like Azamara were hoping to dock in Marghera but havent managed to secure permission - guess we will never know.

Ravenna is an attractive small city to visit and you can see the highlights in a day. There is also a public beach in view from the ship which, I assume, would be nice to spend time at. 

I am not due to sail from or to Venice this year but have done so many times and wonder if AZ is shown as the port or Ravenna. If Venice then I would expect the ship to get me there and back without charge but as has been stated this is a very long journey, if Ravenna is the official port stop then we will know that we are nowhere near Venice and can plan accordingly. Probable interesting excursions from Ravenna including Bologna I believe.

We will probably have to wait at least until 2023 before Marghera, which is a short trip away from Venice becomes feasible.

[Mrs Miggins]

Except that Viking have been using Fusina/Marghera for several months.

[mchell810]

50 minutes ago, Mrs Miggins said:

Except that Viking have been using Fusina/Marghera for several months.

 

And that is the plan for Silversea as well (as they did last fall).

[Azamarajunkie]

Last time we went to Ravenna on AZ , there was an excellent shore excursion to the Ferrari Museum in Bologna. Thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the money for petrolheads like me!  Will be interesting to see if it’s repeated this year.

[excitedofharpenden]

39 minutes ago, Azamarajunkie said:

Last time we went to Ravenna on AZ , there was an excellent shore excursion to the Ferrari Museum in Bologna. Thoroughly enjoyable and well worth the money for petrolheads like me!  Will be interesting to see if it’s repeated this year.

I did that one too a few years ago and it was amazing. Best of all I did a test drive in a Ferrari California afterwards around the streets of Maranello arranged through one of the concessionnaires on the day. It was a Sunday so the roads were quiet and was great fun. 

 

Phil 

Edited April 1, 2022 by excitedofharpenden

[curmudgeon98]

I'm actually reasonably content with the shift to Ravenna, especially with including complementary transfers from Venice this year.  There was not going to be a perfect solution, but given the limitations of Fusina/Marghera, I think Ravenna is a decent alternative.  With a little more time to plan, I think we would have enjoyed adding a couple of days for Ravenna/Bologna before our cruise; maybe next time.  

 

I'm still grumbling about losing the library on Onward, but we'll see how that goes when we are onboard next month.

[combine]

Excursions are available to book from Ravenna for our Quest 23rd April cruise, where we have an overnight. At the moment nothing going into Venice , could be work in progress? 

[Tuscany4]

We’re also reasonably content. We’ve done Venice a few times and have managed to change our flights with BA. They have 4 flights a day to Bologna, and it’s somewhere we haven’t been before. Our return flight is at 11.40am so will need to leave the ship by about 0830 at the latest. Our last day has an overnight in Ravenna so we will visit then.

i will miss the sailing away past St marks square but alas that is a thing of the past with the new restrictions. For those that have never done it I strongly recommend trying it just once with someone like Windstar, or Ponant etc who have the really small ships that are still allowed to.

[holidaysaregood]

We have also changed our flight to the flight leaving Bologna at 11.45 for LHR on the 21st May.  Our TA has arranged a taxi pick up at 7.45.

[Mrs Miggins]

I would like to do the same but our flights were booked via Azamara as I was worried about our eventual docking area and transfers. which I knew were tenuous.   We are on the 17.15 from Marco Polo.