lumines

I’m on my iPhone and I’m not having any problems so far (touch wood!)

I wonder how the early saver cabins are allocated. Is it completely random or is loyalty status taken into account?

One of our memories of our 2018 cruise on Azura was that it seemed very crowded, with not enough seats in public areas - but I had put that down to us being in an inside cabin on that cruise, and therefore more reliant on seating around the ship than we were on this cruise, when we mostly used our balcony. There were times when Brodies was full and there were no seats during some quizzes, or no seats in Manhattan or Malabar at popular times - but I find that to be true on every ship I've ever been on. You need to get to popular events early if you want to be sure of a seat. I didn't see anything to suggest this cruise was a booze cruise, but perhaps with the types of ports, people were more focused on getting up early for sightseeing rather than drinking!

Funny you should mention the noise! Generally we didn't notice it being particularly loud, until the last morning when we were waiting to leave and decided to do a couple of hours work on the laptop - we went to the coffee shop in the Atrium and couldn't hear ourselves think for the 'background' music. We ended up sitting just inside Sindhu where it was lovely and quiet!

This was our 22nd cruise and our 14th on P&O, but it was our first Mediterranean fly-cruise. We try and avoid flying if we can, but we do Caribbean cruises as long as we can fly Premium Economy, either with P&O or using our airmiles. The last time we were on Azura was in 2018. This was a last-minute bargain booked 5 weeks ago as we just wanted some sunshine for a week. We booked a saver fare, so I was amazed when we were allocated a mid-ship cabin on Deck 10. The balconies on Deck 10 are brilliant. Half overlooked by some cabins above, but they are so deep that the back half is not overlooked at all. We had already booked a Deck 10 cabin for our cruise on Ventura in October. The downside of the saver fare was that we were allocated second sitting, way too late for us. We much prefer freedom dining. We tried on 4 different occasions to see if we could swap but each time we were sent to a different dining room or told to come back at a different time. In the end we gave up. We had already booked Sindhu and the Beach House for two of the evenings and planned to eat in the Glass House at least twice, so it was no problem to miss evening meals in the MDR. We ended up at Sindhu twice, the Beach House once, twice in the Glass House and twice in the buffet. We seem to have such varying experiences in the speciality restaurants! We don’t like Sindhu on Arvia at all, but we thought Sindhu on Britannia was amazing, and Sindhu on Azura was just average. Tasty but quite stodgy, certainly no comparison to our last experience on Britannia. The Beach House on Azura however was really good. I love the Beach House on Britannia when you can sit outside, brilliant in the Caribbean, but the food last time on Britannia was not great. We ate twice in the Glass House in the evening, the food each time was ok, again not as nice as we found it on Britannia or Ventura. But still good value really for what you pay. The food in the buffet was always decent, and it never felt as crowded as it does on Arvia and Iona. We always ate breakfast and lunch in the buffet, but we do tend to eat earlier rather than later - 8am for breakfast and 12 for lunch. We missed The Quays on Arvia and Iona - we rarely go into the buffet on those ships, as we much prefer The Quays and of course there’s so much choice with all the other dining venues on the two big ships. Probably our biggest disappointment on Azura was the cocktails, although I think this is true of all the ships now, not just Azura (although I can’t speak for Aurora or Arcadia as we haven’t been on either of those ships). The same poor selection in most of the bars. It gets a bit monotonous seeing the same few uninspired cocktails every time. We don’t drink enough to make the drinks package worthwhile, but we do like a cocktail at the pool and a couple of cocktails during the evening. For us, our reasons for usually choosing cruises over land-based holidays is that they always seem to be such good value - especially P&O when flights are included. Often for us the ship is the destination - our favourite P&O ship for this reason is Arvia. But sometimes the itinerary is the main reason for the cruise, sometimes the company (we often cruise with our son and daughter-in-law and two small grandchildren, and if we cruise with them then we are happy to repeat ships and itineraries), and sometimes - as on this cruise - the weather is the main reason. Azura visited some lovely ports (Civitavecchia, La Spezia, Cannes and Ajaccio) but it was too hot for us to be bothered to do much sightseeing, certainly not if it involves hours travelling on buses or trains. We got off the ship at each port in the morning and explored the local areas for a couple of hours. Ajaccio was particularly lovely. But I would say that the majority of the people on the cruise made the most of the brilliant sightseeing opportunities - particularly Rome and Pisa. In the theatre one night, the comedian asked who had cruised before and who were first time cruisers, and it seemed half and half. For whatever reason, I saw a lot of the classic bad passenger behaviour when most of the time I genuinely don’t see any - the people on the balcony next to us smoking and vaping, some people on another balcony leaning over the rail, holding out Pringles to try and get the seagulls to eat them - I’ve never seen that before. Someone in the buffet next to me actually coughed on my plate of food, and a man in front of me blatantly filled up an empty plastic water bottle from the drinks dispenser, despite there being an A4 notice stuck on it, asking people not to do it. But all these were isolated incidents really, generally everyone on board was really polite and friendly. The entertainment was quite good for us. There were two evenings of quizzes with the new multiple choice remote controls (just like the audience have in Who Wants to be a Millionaire!) We first saw these on Britannia in March, and then on Iona in June. They are great fun allowing up to 200 people to play but P&O need to come up with more sets of questions - the questions we saw on the first quiz on Azura were exactly the same as we had seen on Iona! Pulse were ok. There was a Freddie Mercury tribute act who was very good. There were a couple of silent discos out on the open deck which was nice, but as usual the songs they play are not great (in my opinion!) - they just pick songs that seem to encourage everyone to shout loudly rather than songs that are good to dance to. Captain Neil Turnbull kept us posted and entertained with amusing updates - he’s as entertaining as Captain Wesley Dunlop! Azura was beautiful, very well-maintained and really much better than I was expecting. Our flights were with Enterair from Gatwick, we’d never heard of them before but they were fine, the plane was clean and comfortable and the crew were great. Our flight home was later in the afternoon, with a departure meeting time of 1pm on the ship - I had been expecting day cabins to be available for the last day as they have on the Caribbean cruises, but this didn’t happen. I suppose it’s not possible really with everyone coming and going on the same day, but it was a shame that our last day was really spent hanging round waiting after having to vacate our cabin at 8am. We didn’t fancy sitting in the sun or walking round Valetta getting all hot and uncomfortable before our flight home. Having said that, the time did fly by! All in all it was a great cruise, especially as it was a good price and we ended up with a lovely cabin and sunny weather, which was exactly what we wanted. I will certainly be keeping my eye out for future Mediterranean fly cruise bargains.

Thanks, that’s good to know

I applied a couple of days ago with my iPhone and a screenshot of my p&o status, and was approved within 24 hours. We have our first virgin cruise in September, but does anyone know how many more voyages until we reach deep blue extras? Will it still be on our 5th voyage? TIA

Just a thought - given how many complaints there have been over drunken behaviour on board, perhaps this is P&O’s way of trying to reduce these types of incidents?

We are currently on Arvia (14 night transatlantic) and I just asked at reception if they are offering this tour. She said no.

We have done the October transatlantic on Britannia a couple of times. We live 45 minutes from Manchester airport, so it works out well for us to drive to the airport and leave our car there so it’s waiting for us when we fly back into Manchester two weeks later. One thing to be aware of is that although the coach is included, you do need to phone P&O to book your seats on it. They will then tell you which coach you are on and what your departure time is. The coach leaves from the coach terminal at the airport. On all other cruises we drive to Southampton rather than using coaches, but for the transatlantic the coach really is the most straightforward. As Megabear said, you would probably want to come down the night before from Scotland and maybe stay in one of the airport hotels. We are on the Arvia transatlantic this October, I phoned P&O last week to book our seats on the coach down. Our departure time is 8.30am. Hope you enjoy your cruise!

So sorry to hear your sad news. Deepest condolences.