Taking drinks on board Azura

[terrierjohn]

2 hours ago, 9265359 said:

 

And they will have a staff member sat at a desk just past where you scan you card as you get onboard to declare and hand over any alcohol - but the staff member will be sat there twiddling their thumbs as nobody has handed over anything at all all day.

 

Even when they have the security xray conducted on the ship and the crew can see bottles in bags nothing is handed over.

TBH, I have not seen a honesty table on any of our post covid cruises.

[9265359]

25 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

TBH, I have not seen a honesty table on any of our post covid cruises.

 

I have - pre-Christmas cruises on Azura this year.

[zap99]

29 minutes ago, 9265359 said:

 

I have - pre-Christmas cruises on Azura this year.

We have seen the honesty table a few times....not much on it.🤔

[BandBlady]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:56 PM, cuatbar58 said:

I only noticed this practice on my recent cruises. I am sure it has been happening a while but once you see a smartly dressed gent leaving their cabin with glass in hand you tend to notice more. I can never get over the penny pinching some people do.

We are not penny pinching at all and never take alcohol on board with us .We do however buy bottles of wine from room service and sometimes take the last glass with us to dinner .The price of a bottle is the same as ordering in the dining room so no difference .Also now they don’t keep your wine in the dining room for next day consumption ,your left carrying a bottle with you all evening ,so makes sense to take it back to the cabin. .We do always ask for glasses from room service .Happy cruising 

[Son of Anarchy]

18 hours ago, terrierjohn said:

TBH, I have not seen a honesty table on any of our post covid cruises.

They had one on our recent Ventura jolly.  I did see one lonely passenger using it one day.  As mentioned earlier, scanning staff weren't telling pax to hand their grog over.

[Fionboard]

Tables at all stops on current Arcadia cruise. Nothing on them! Wine kept overnight in MDR if on fixed dining. 

[tring]

On 1/1/2024 at 1:56 PM, cuatbar58 said:

I only noticed this practice on my recent cruises. I am sure it has been happening a while but once you see a smartly dressed gent leaving their cabin with glass in hand you tend to notice more. I can never get over the penny pinching some people do.

 

 

We often leave our cabin with drinks in our hands, but that is because we have returned to the cabin with them from the restaurant, or from a bar on the way to the restaurant.  It is often easier to stop by the cabin for a bathroom visit and after dinner we often pick up the following day's daily sheet to find out timings.

 

We almost always take drinks from bars into the restaurant as we prefer to sit with a bar type drink, (e.g. orange with a spirit), whilst ordering and waiting for the first course.

 

Regards drinks in cabins, that is easy as there is no restriction on mixers and more often than not, we will buy bottles of spirit for cabin use once onboard as the price difference does not really make it worth carrying the bottles along with the rest of our luggage on embarkation.  You can get a litre bottle if spirit for not much over £20, though may be more like £25 now that onboard prices are rising. 

 

Beer is another matter admittedly, but if we had taken something like that on board at a port of call, we have been caught, so it was taken from us and returned shortly before leaving the ship.  We had wanted to take it home with us though, so that was not a problem.  Always a risk you would have alcohol taken off you, though as said that is not likely if security done in a port, which is often done in the bigger ports now.

 

Edited January 3 by tring

[tring]

44 minutes ago, tring said:

 

 

We often leave our cabin with drinks in our hands, but that is because we have returned to the cabin with them from the restaurant, or from a bar on the way to the restaurant.  It is often easier to stop by the cabin for a bathroom visit and after dinner we often pick up the following day's daily sheet to find out timings.

 

We almost always take drinks from bars into the restaurant as we prefer to sit with a bar type drink, (e.g. orange with a spirit), whilst ordering and waiting for the first course.

 

Regards drinks in cabins, that is easy as there is no restriction on mixers and more often than not, we will buy bottles of spirit for cabin use once onboard as the price difference does not really make it worth carrying the bottles along with the rest of our luggage on embarkation.  You can get a litre bottle if spirit for not much over £20, though may be more like £25 now that onboard prices are rising. 

 

Beer is another matter admittedly, but if we had taken something like that on board at a port of call, we have been caught, so it was taken from us and returned shortly before leaving the ship.  We had wanted to take it home with us though, so that was not a problem.  Always a risk you would have alcohol taken off you, though as said that is not likely if security done in a port, which is often done in the bigger ports now.

 

 

Partly got my cruise lines mixed up.  It is Fred, (if we have the drinks package), when we take drinks into the restaurants.  On P&O we have a drink in the balcony before we head off to dinner.  Still not unusual for us to take drinks out of the restaurant via the cabin though or likewise from a Captain's drinks reception, when heading onto the restaurant.

 

Edited January 3 by tring

[GOQ]

23 hours ago, 9265359 said:

 

And they will have a staff member sat at a desk just past where you scan you card as you get onboard to declare and hand over any alcohol - but the staff member will be sat there twiddling their thumbs as nobody has handed over anything at all all day.

 

Even when they have the security xray conducted on the ship and the crew can see bottles in bags nothing is handed over.

On initially boarding the cruise either at Southampton or Barbados etc I usually have my 1 litre of whisky in my back pack, nobody has every checked my bag so I could have had 2 litres in it, I suppose.

 

On my last cruise in December, Aurora to the Canaries, an announcement was made over the ships PA system that any alcohol brought onboard in the Canaries was to be declared on boarding. 

 

However on our last port of call (Lisbon, so not the Canaries) I noticed many people boarding with large bags of bottles which were not being checked. Then I found 1 lire bottles of Bells whisky for 10 Euros a bottle, so of course, I bought 3 bottles. Again nobody attempted to check them.

 

But this was the last port of call.

[amurray88]

7 hours ago, GOQ said:

On initially boarding the cruise either at Southampton or Barbados etc I usually have my 1 litre of whisky in my back pack, nobody has every checked my bag so I could have had 2 litres in it, I suppose.

 

On my last cruise in December, Aurora to the Canaries, an announcement was made over the ships PA system that any alcohol brought onboard in the Canaries was to be declared on boarding. 

 

However on our last port of call (Lisbon, so not the Canaries) I noticed many people boarding with large bags of bottles which were not being checked. Then I found 1 lire bottles of Bells whisky for 10 Euros a bottle, so of course, I bought 3 bottles. Again nobody attempted to check them.

 

But this was the last port of call.

We are not big drinkers at all btw - I don't want it to come across that we're planning on taking 40 bottles of wine onboard. My wife drinks wine and was planning on 1 or 2 bottles, I drink beer and was planning on taking a few bottles (6 maybe?) as well as maybe a couple of cans of coke. Just didn't know what the rules were.

 

I'm more concerned that  they didn't check your backpack...do they not normally go through an X-ray? 😱

[GOQ]

My bag did go through X Ray, but I had a big bottle of water in my bag as well. Perhaps X-rays are clever and knew it was water. 😁

On 1/2/2024 at 12:29 PM, 9265359 said:

 

And they will have a staff member sat at a desk just past where you scan you card as you get onboard to declare and hand over any alcohol - but the staff member will be sat there twiddling their thumbs as nobody has handed over anything at all all day.

 

Even when they have the security xray conducted on the ship and the crew can see bottles in bags nothing is handed over.

On initially boarding the cruise either at Southampton or Barbados etc I usually have my 1 litre of whisky in my back pack, nobody has every checked my bag so I could have had 2 litres in it, I suppose.

 

On my last cruise in December, Aurora to the Canaries, an announcement was made over the ships PA system that any alcohol brought onboard in the Canaries was to be declared on boarding. 

 

However on our last port of call (Lisbon, so not the Canaries) I noticed many people boarding with large bags of bottles which were not being checked. Then I found 1 lire bottles of Bells whisky for 10 Euros a bottle, so of course, I bought 3 bottles. Again nobody attempted to check them.

 

But this was the last port of call.

[amurray88]

1 hour ago, GOQ said:

My bag did go through X Ray, but I had a big bottle of water in my bag as well. Perhaps X-rays are clever and knew it was water. 😁

On initially boarding the cruise either at Southampton or Barbados etc I usually have my 1 litre of whisky in my back pack, nobody has every checked my bag so I could have had 2 litres in it, I suppose.

 

On my last cruise in December, Aurora to the Canaries, an announcement was made over the ships PA system that any alcohol brought onboard in the Canaries was to be declared on boarding. 

 

However on our last port of call (Lisbon, so not the Canaries) I noticed many people boarding with large bags of bottles which were not being checked. Then I found 1 lire bottles of Bells whisky for 10 Euros a bottle, so of course, I bought 3 bottles. Again nobody attempted to check them.

 

But this was the last port of call.

Got it...I thought when you said no-one has ever checked your bag you meant it wasn't x-rayed 🤦‍♂️...what I should have read was, it is x-rayed but they're not overly fussed about checking things like that. 

[Cardiff girl]

On 12/31/2023 at 3:06 PM, elmsliebev said:

we were on in October and found an indoor market stall in Sardinia selling plastic 1.5 litre bottles of wine "en vrac" (like mini petrol pumps!). The guy gave us some tasters and it was really good so we bought a bottle to take back on (4.5 euros!), no problem taking it onboard. 

Was the market in Cagliari? Can you remember where it was? Sounds interesting, thanks. 

[elmsliebev]

51 minutes ago, Cardiff girl said:

Was the market in Cagliari? Can you remember where it was? Sounds interesting, thanks. 

Yes, the market in Cagliari, San Bernadetto I think. It was about a 30-40  minute walk.

[CruiseCrew123]

They were taking bottles off people last week on Azura 

[9265359]

On 1/4/2024 at 10:07 PM, CruiseCrew123 said:

They were taking bottles off people last week on Azura 

 

"taking" - were they demanding them from passengers after they had been identified by the x-ray machine / searching bags or simply accepting them if voluntarily handed over, as there is quite a difference.

[amurray88]

We boarded on Friday...was late on (flight delay, baggage delayed, last bus from airport etc) so just got on board. Went into Tenerife today and picked a few things up - security was done by the port and they didn't blink an eye. Once on ship there were no questions asked at all.

 

Problem is, I've now had to request a bigger fridge for the 44 cans of beer and 7 bottles of wine we've brought on!

[Dobbers]

2 hours ago, amurray88 said:

We boarded on Friday...was late on (flight delay, baggage delayed, last bus from airport etc) so just got on board. Went into Tenerife today and picked a few things up - security was done by the port and they didn't blink an eye. Once on ship there were no questions asked at all.

 

Problem is, I've now had to request a bigger fridge for the 44 cans of beer and 7 bottles of wine we've brought on!

The bigger fridge made me giggle. Enjoy x

[smilesonfaces]

10 hours ago, amurray88 said:

We boarded on Friday...was late on (flight delay, baggage delayed, last bus from airport etc) so just got on board. Went into Tenerife today and picked a few things up - security was done by the port and they didn't blink an eye. Once on ship there were no questions asked at all.

 

Problem is, I've now had to request a bigger fridge for the 44 cans of beer and 7 bottles of wine we've brought on!

Could I ask please where you did your drinks shopping ? I know there is a spar shop not too far away. Is there anything like a hiperdino nearby ? It is more for cans of pop really, maybe a couple of bottles of wine. Thanks.

[yorkshirephil]

10 hours ago, amurray88 said:

We boarded on Friday...was late on (flight delay, baggage delayed, last bus from airport etc) so just got on board. Went into Tenerife today and picked a few things up - security was done by the port and they didn't blink an eye. Once on ship there were no questions asked at all.

 

Problem is, I've now had to request a bigger fridge for the 44 cans of beer and 7 bottles of wine we've brought on!

Take the wine to the restaurant and ask the waiter to put them in the big fridge, then draw out a bottle each night.

 

More money saving tips from YP😁.

[9265359]

50 minutes ago, smilesonfaces said:

Is there anything like a hiperdino nearby ? 

 

The nearest SuperDino is https://maps.app.goo.gl/RiUYBxSmH1LtRwaR8 - stop in on the way back from a stroll to Parque García Sanabria.

[CruiseCrew123]

35 minutes ago, yorkshirephil said:

Take the wine to the restaurant and ask the waiter to put them in the big fridge, then draw out a bottle each night.

 

More money saving tips from YP😁.

They don’t do that anymore . Even people with a P&O wine package have to take away undrunk wine 

[Fionboard]

1 hour ago, CruiseCrew123 said:

They don’t do that anymore . Even people with a P&O wine package have to take away undrunk wine 

Only on Freedom dining. Not on fixed. 

[CruiseCrew123]

We were on fixed dining at Xmas and table mates had wine package which they had to take away 

[Adowsett]

On 1/3/2024 at 7:27 PM, amurray88 said:

We are not big drinkers at all btw - I don't want it to come across that we're planning on taking 40 bottles of wine onboard. My wife drinks wine and was planning on 1 or 2 bottles, I drink beer and was planning on taking a few bottles (6 maybe?) as well as maybe a couple of cans of coke. Just didn't know what the rules were.

 

I'm more concerned that  they didn't check your backpack...do they not normally go through an X-ray? 😱

We were on Azura from Malta.  We took 2 litres of Vodka on, which is the limit.  However, no one checked anything.  Once we checked into the cabin, we popped off the ship and into the terminal port duty free, and brought 6 bottles of wine, and brought them straight on as well.