terrierjohn

Clearly I am a philistine when it come to "gourmet" dining, especially on cruises. I have never had what I would describe as excellent cuisine on P&O, certainly nowhere near the quality of Murano on Celebrity Eclipse, or the style and ambience of Tuscan grill, and the service is rarely exceptional, and usually quite lengthy. However we have enjoyed dozens of MDR meals, with wonderful table companions, all packaged in a neat and tidy 90 minutes, and this to us is one of joys o cruising.

Several people have stated they were unable to get seated in the MDR, and had to use the buffet, quays or pay extra in one of the speciality dining options.

The old days were not all fixed dining, 2 out of the 3 MDRs offered freedom dining with no pre booking permitted, you just turned up when you wanted and were seated, rarely were there queues. That was true spontaneity.

I do agree with you that without some system there will likely be long queues quite often on the 2 new ships . However that is primarily because there is not enough MDR cacity on Iona and Arvia, compared with the smaller ships, including Azura and Ventura. Pre covid there were very few occasions on Azura and Ventura when we have encountered long queues, although we have seen queues, or been asked to take a pager on Britannia. Which leads me to assume that there is not enough capacity in the MDRs on Iona, and it is even worse on Arvia because, despite P&O thinking the Olive Grove and 6th Street Diner are alternatives, the passengers don't seem to agree. It will be interesting to see how this new protocol works, but IMO without adding more MDR capacity it is going to be a disaster.

ICF you clearly have not considered the implications of this new proposal. If, as I suspect, there is insufficient MDR capacity on the new ships, then the restaurants will be fully booked well before everyone has had a chance to make a reservation. Couple that with the fact that many passengers cannot use the booking app, and that many bookings will not be honoured, and the result will be many hundreds of disgruntled passengers every night.

I agree this is now the way that both P&O and Princess are operating, and it is not the Freedom or Anytime dining that we have enjoyed for the last 20 years or so. I have just had to book all 14 days of our next Princess cruise dinners, putting in guesses for what time and what restaurant we will be using. I realise that the new ships with much higher passenger capacity, will need more careful management, but I suspect that the MDR capacity per head is far lower on the big ships, than on the likes of Arcadia and Aurora, and that is the main reason for the problems being reported. Unfortunately I imagine that all this proposal will do, is leave many passengers unable to find a free slot at any time, and certainly not one they will be happy with.

My first car was a 1959 Morris 1000, bought in 1964, but already the rear carpet had to have papers underneath it, to protect it from the rusty pinholes in the underfloor.

I dont imagine that Arcadia's pricing is because it's nicer, it's just easier to fill a 2000 berth ship than a 5200 one. We have only been on Arcadia once, however if it had similar sized accessible balcony cabins to its bigger sisters, then we would be happy to try her again. Although I was disappointed with its poor atrium, I did like the size of the standard balcony cabins, and their balconies, liked the theatre and the dining room as well. For those of you that enjoy cruises on her I do hope the proposed refurb is extensive and gives her a new lease of life.

We booked G501 whilst on board during launch week, so as well as the launch discount we also only paid £50pp deposit, just in case we find at our age that world wide insurance is almost as much as the cruise.

Nithered, according to Paul, the weatherman on Look North Leeds,it means very cold.

Strange but our 2 visits to Opal on our 2 Iona cruises was our least favourite MDR experience.

But checkout really only means vacating your room, you can always lounge about in their lounges, if you just want to kill time.

I definitely agree with you about the positioning of security, I am not sure that the queues at city terminal are much shorter than at P&O, but the process seems slicker, and the fact that you get the worst over at the beginning certainly makes the entire boarding process seem far less stressful.

I have never known a hotel that wants you off the premises, but they do want you out of your room so it can be serviced. In 2017 we watched Hudds Town draw with Sheff Wed in the 1st leg of the championship play off on my tablet, sitting in the breakfast are of the Holiday inn express until about 2:00 pm.

I doubt that many speedometers are accurate enough to tell the difference.

Apparently Virtuosa now only boards passengers at Southampton.

It is some time since we last had a P&O accessible excursion maybe 2015, but we have never had a free carer place, and the same applied to all the accessible excursions we had on Celebrity. Is this a recent phenomenon?

Problems with boarding are not really the staffs fault, it's more the procedure that P&O use that causes the frustration, see my post #36.

Comparing wait times for boarding cruise ships and airplanes is a bit pointless, you need to compare boarding between cruise lines. So why is it that the comparison between RCI & Celebrity at City Termiinal and P&O at all Southampton terminals, shows P&O to underperform on so many points. A major point, IMO, that causes passenger unrest is that City terminal has security first while P&O has it last. I know that the length of time to go through security is about the same, but getting the queuing over first does make the process much less stressful. Then there is the ship docking times at Southampton for City terminal are around 4-5 am, whereas P&O is around 6:00 am, this enables disemabarcation to be completed sooner and allows boarding to start at 10;00 or 11:00 am, or even earlier. Rather strangely even when a P&O ship arrives in Southampton early they still stick to the same disembarcation times, and thus the same later boarding times for the following cruise.

Yes David can you please tell us what you consider the problem is with the Princess boarding system.

Princess, which is part of Carnival does allow you to make MDR reservations both prior to sailing and once on board, and amendments can also be made. But as they get booked up the choices of times, restaurants and whether sharing tables or tables for 2 are available does diminish, with some restaurants becoming fully booked. However I am not certain I am going to enjoy the experience, especially if I find I cannot move my pre booking time, if I want to make it fit an entertainment venue I want to see. I very much preferred the old first come system for freedom dining, which for us was what Freedom dining was meant to be.

Not sure that RCI have dining sorted. Our last experience on Indy, nowhere near the biggest ship in the fleet, had long queues at the freedom MDR, with lots of laid tables awaiting their pre booked guests. Fortunately wheelchair users where waved to the front of the line so we never had to queue, but I assume the waits at peak times were quite extended.

You can deposit cash into your bank account in a post office, I believe.

I aotally agree with you for most of the older ships including Azura and Ventura, and even Britannia for most nights, although we have experienced some long queues, as well as being told there would be an hour wait with a pager. However Arvia and Iona definitely need a working app.

The only way is up now, but it may be quite a few years before they get anywhere near the 2019 highs.