yorkshirephil

I always thought the saying "mend fire" strange but "purra bit o sleck on" fine. All these old sayings mainly lost in the modern world. We went to visit friends yesterday and ended up going to Fleetwood as there is a quilting shop there that the girls wanted to visit plus a good fish wholesaler. I have to say I wouldn't rush back, although it was nice to see the trams running through the town. Dry dull day here after a sunny crisp start, we were forecast a frost but the sun had burned it off by the time we were up and about. I have been reading about Warwick Davis and sadly the passing of his wife. Warwick is one of my favourite actors and always comes across as a smiley and genuinely nice bloke with a cutting wit. RIP Samantha Davis.

We got ours applied for the December cruise, hopefully soon they will update the Dec 31st 2024 till 2025 end and we can apply for the January cruise.

Lots of people have had the email so I don't think P&O would want to reverse that decision now, especially as they would have to return monies paid. It does make me wonder why people were told that bookings would be cancelled by customer services unless it was a consideration. Enjoy your meals.

Switching to that approach would probably be a smart financial move as they would have a considerable amount of peoples money in the bank in advance. However maybe not so good for people who want to use OBC when they get aboard but find the speciality restaurants full. As they say "You can't please all the people all the time"

We got that too. It doesn't affect us but there was much ado on facecloth with people threatening to cancel cruises as they couldn't get booked but other people on their cruise groups had. I can understand that they are not happy but threatening to cancel the cruise seemed a bit dramatic, especially when it was pointed out that there was no guarantee that they would have got booked anyway.

The P&O email does say that bookings will be honoured. This seems to be the fairest way to deal with it as it was the P&O system fault that allowed it. I would imagine that the phones have been red hot which has probably pushed them to send the email. I did see a couple of posts on facecloth where people had reported that they were told that bookings made beyond the 14/15 day window would be cancelled, which probably caused the phones to get even hotter.

The P&O experience is fine in my opinion, still very British vibe, but sometimes that can apply to other cruise lines that sail out of Southampton. It is usually more than £40 a night for the drinks package although if they have an offer (10-20% discount) with any loyalty deductions you would get close. Wi-fi is not included. P&O cruises have tips built into the cost of the cruise. The Princess loyalty level is not transferred to P&O, it used to be. As you say there are some European cruises with good prices, however depending on how popular they are the price may go up, or on the other hand there may be good discounts if the cruise isn't selling well.

Still lots of problems reported on some of the P&O facecloth groups. Some people seem to be booking OK well in advance and others getting the usual "coming soon" message. It is similar for people trying to book online, working for some not for others.

Absolutely, we have to put up with the bad hip or back, the where did I leave my car key moment so why not embrace the benefits, I got my pizza at Iceland today, 10% senior discount. I saved £1.80, shame about the £2.00 for parking though, a 10% discount on that and I would have broke even.

We have taken several cruises with Ambassador and loved them all. I would compare them favourably with P&O smaller adult only ships as they have a lot of similarities, plus they do have some interesting itineraries and hopefully will add to that if/when they get another ship. The Ambassador entertainment is excellent and their speakers have been very good and varied. The ships are older and have the older ship issues as do Aurora and Arcadia which is why I would only compare Ambassador with them. They do have some strange pricing structures sometimes but we are used to that as they follow the model of CMV who we used many times.

Whatever Fred are doing they seem to be making it work at the moment as they are keeping their prices high with not much in the way of offers. When we cruised with them their costs were on par with P&O and they had the better itineraries for us. We were usually the youngest on board but that didn't bother us, plus we could get some practice in for when we get old😉. Notice the smiley wink for anybody that may feel offended on our behalf. I would pay the higher price for a bucket list itinerary but not for the routine cruises that we have done before.

I think you may need to wait until P&O have sorted their web site to get the full story. The 120 days was being bandied about all over facecloth yesterday but some people who had phoned P&O because they couldn't book the restaurants were being told that this was an error caused by the site faults and it was actually still 14/15 days and that those that has booked well in advance would be cancelled?.

I think this will sell out quickly, it is ideal for us retiree's who would prefer not to fly, it is well priced too for Aurora to say it is over two years out. I will keep an eye on this but don't expect and late availability.

Mushy peas

Our clinic starts jabbing on Thursday this week. Apart from the email requesting volunteers I haven't seen it publicised. I know the take up for the last one was very low. Funny old day today weather wise, we have had sleet, rain, wind and brilliant sunshine and it is cold. We went to the Hardwick inn near Chesterfield for lunch with relatives, very nice it was too, nice plate of steak and Guinness pie, chips and Yorkshire caviar.