terrierjohn

I guess it depends if you are cruising with young children, we went with our younger son and family on Independence of the seas, and despite it being in the main summer holidays and full of families, we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Whether we would have enjoyed it quite as much had we been on our own is difficult to judge.

I have never known a port excursion company that did not know the arrival and departure times of all the ships visiting their port. So all you need to do is ask them, and they will advise you which tours are suitable, which is more than likely to be all of them, because they want to ensure they have full coaches/minibuses for all their tours.

Same in Yorkshire, we always used jab for injections, although I know it is also a boxing term, and of course jabber is what young children do when you would prefer them to be quiet.

The tonnage figures we all quote are based on enclosed volume and not really the weight, although it will obviously be higher, having 2 extra decks and being wider and a bit longer. I did however notice that Iona seems underpowered compared to Eclipse at 61.7mw vs 67.2 me, but there is no comparable propulsion data on wikiperdia. However Eclipses top speed is 24 kts vs 21 kts, so it does seem Iona may not have the same oomph.

Iona may have a lot more passengers but she is not massively bigger than Eclipse. Iona length 1130ft, beam 138ft, total decks 19. Eclipse length 1040ft, beam 121 ft, total decks 17.

That's normal but it does enable you to make a reasonable guess as to arrival and departure times.

I am disappointed that Iona seems to be struggling with windy weather, she has azipods and these should make her far more manoeverable than all the other P&O ships, except for Arcadia. I wonder if in fact the lack of azipod ships to train on in the P&0 and Princess fleets could be the major problem. On our Celebrity Eclupse cruises the Captains could turn her on a sixpence and on one occasion in strong winds we managed to dock in Stavanger when 3 other ships failed.

Maybe it's the forecast gales for northern Scotland that has necessitated the change?

If you believe Yorkypete, then its Costa del Leeds that you need to book for your next holiday!

I would need to check what Huddersfields was, but I doubt it was anything like that, certainly not in the west of the town towards jct 23, and anyway there were no waiters to fetch me a cooling drink.

Both Ventura and Azura will need a large amount of money spending on the cabins to bring them up to a reasonable standard. Maybe they should ask Specsavers to sponsor some big new widescreen TVs for them both.

If you genuinely live in Yorkshire then you know we only have about a dozen summer holiday weather days a year, and they can be quite spread out.

But not with Med, Canary or even summer Baltic weather.

But it is for many new cruisers, especially families, where shore excursions to explore further afield would be a big cost factor.

and has all the facilities of Iona or Arvia.

Me too but I prefer to have the waiter fillet it for me.

My policy still has the phone number for staysure as the emergency contact. Does that mean it's only new policies that Davirs & co applies to? Incidentally it was useful to check out my policy on the website, it confirmed that I had added a recent declareable hospital incident, which I had begun to worry that I had not declared it.🤔

Staysure's emergency team seems to be in house, if I am reading the policy correctly.

But since test kits are now available from chemists at about £2 each, it's not really a big problem to use these, even for a family of four.

Covid isn't really a condition, it is an infection that normally clears up and does not leave you with any disabilities. What the insurers are interested in are any chronic illnesses or injuries that require ongoing medication or could cause you to need treatment at some point in the future. Whether you had german measles or mumps as a child is not going to suddenly require treatment whilst you are on holiday.

If P&O continue to deny you boarding if you fail their health protocols, then surely they need to compensate you in some way?

But surely that is always the case, none of us are time travellers so we have no idea what the future is going to throw up.

I hope it's not the cruise immediately after the dry dock, since they are always likely to have snagging issues.

It would very likely to depend on how much they enjoyed the other part of their cruise, how long they were in quarantine, how well looked after they felt in quarantine, and whether they were adequately compensated.

That's just greedy.😉