brynmelyndavid

We also have Premier but when I booked speciality dining on the app it recognised my package and at checkout didn't charge me anything. I have heard of people booking the dining then having the charge refunded on board.

I think the problem with comparing P&O to Princess is you are comparing Premier Inn to Hilton. P&O isn't a 'premium' line. We've cruised with them several times and thoroughly enjoyed the experience, but more importantly we've enjoyed the price which has been very good value. The food has been consistently good, the drinks are from a much more limited range than Princess but very much cheaper, and the entertainment has been really good. Plus on a ship like Iona a standard balcony cabin has vastly more space than a standard balcony on Princess. Each has their own market and aims at a certain segment, but don't substitute one for the other expecting it to be like-for-like. Generally speaking you gets what you pays for!

We live in the UK and had a Princess cruise from Southampton to the Canaries booked for last autumn on Emerald Princess. due to dry dock issues they announced just after final payments had been made that they were reducing the cruise from 12 nights to 10 and cutting out two ports (Lisbon and Lannzerote - the two we were most interested in). We contacted our Princess personal cruise specialist as we had booked direct and were able to cancel and receive a full refund in FCC.

Comparing Princess to Viking is nonsense. Viking ships are all identical and every one has fewer than 1000 passengers. The cost of a Viking cruise reflects this. If you want the ability to simply board and waft around the ship and venues then pay the premium to cruise with a small ship line. Given that Princes ships have an occupancy of around 3000 on average (happy to be corrected as the exact number) it seems more than reasonable to me to expect a bit of compromise. PS. I love the ability to book things in advance of boarding...

same for me 😞

Frankly that should be more than enough for anyone....

We've cruised with P&O several times. They have a variety of drinks packages including a simple 'soft drinks and juice ' package at £10.95 per person per day and a non-alcoholic drinks package at £24.95pppd, so manifestly they find that it works for them. They also have 'Classic' and 'Deluxe' drinks packages which include alcohol. We have never purchased a drinks package from them, however their on-board drinks prices are considerably cheaper than those of Princess and they don't bundle other benefits with the drinks in the way that Princess does with Plus and Premier. It was never worth us buying a package on P&O as we never drunk anywhere near enough to justify the cost, given the cheap pay-as-you go pricing. For our Princess cruise next year however it was a no-brainer for us to purchase a Premier package, given the many additional benefits that come with it (some of which we will definitely take advantage of), and the (to us) relatively high cost of drinks on board, (plus gratuities). We only need to drink a handful of drinks a day for the package to save us money and having it will simply mean that we can totally relax and not worry about what anything is costing. Other people may have a different equation and only they can decided if a package is worth having.

I have noticed that Cruise forums tend to be dominated by people who have a grievance of some kind as opposed to those who simply have had a good time, (maybe the latter don't feel any need to vent their opinions?). We have in the last year sailed twice with P&O, once on Iona and once on Arcadia. In both instances I had been a keen follower of posts on Cruise Critic and Facebook as I like to be as informed as possible prior to boarding, and in both instances by the time it came to commence our holiday I was genuinely concerned because the overall postings on here and on Facebook had been so negative. However in both instances we found our own experience to be utterly different to that we had anticipated on the basis of everything we had read. Both were immensely positive and enjoyable and we realised that forums like this tend to amplify minor issues until they become huge monsters threatening the pleasure of everyone's future cruises! I have no doubt that there are people who have genuine problems and issues, and many who mourn the loss of perks and privileges and services that they had in the past and that are now no longer available or maybe available but at a premium. But most people I think simply let these sorts of things wash over them and allow them to be, in the context of their overall holiday, nothing more than minor issues. No holiday has ever been perfect, but they have still been wonderful experiences. I shall keep watching these forums and reading what people say, not least because we will be sailing with Princess for the first time next April and are really looking forward to it. But I also know now not to pay that much attention to what a lot of people have to say because I know that whatever issues people have will generally speaking have little of no real impact on my holiday.

Having looked into many different cruise lines it seems to me that these changes are very much in line with most other companies. Covid changed everything and things are not going to go back to how they were. Our next cruise will be with Princess (our first time with them) and they seem much more transparent and less 'nickel and dime' than some lines, (such as Royal Caribbean). We have booked Premier so this makes little difference to us other than to increase our dining options slightly but we are very happy with everything we see, including this change and it certainly wouldn't stop us booking with Princess again.

I was responding to whoever it was that said no cruise line puts on more than 2 productions shows. Clearly some cruise lines can.

We've just come back from a 12 night P&O cruise and there were 4 different production shows in the theatre, all of which were good and one of which was West-End/Broadway worthy.

Your other option would be a tour to the Atlantic Highway, claimed by some to be the 'most beautiful road in the world'. We are cruising in May this year and have booked this for our day in Andalsnes via P&O who we are sailing with. It's a long excursion (8 hours) and mostly by coach with very little walking, although it does include a fish lunch. I can't say how good it is until we've experienced it but from what I've seen of the Atlantic Highway I'm very much looking forward to experiencing it.

We're on Explorer 2 May 4th. I've been watching the Cruise control for weeks and although it shows Kora La and Surf and Turf available to book whenever I try it says 'no availability'. Bizarrely I can book for 3 people but not for 2, which is very frustrating. The sushi restaurant has just come up this week, which I could book but to be honest sushi doesn't interest me that much. Excursions however aren't showing at all which is also frustrating as I'd like to be making plans.

I'm booked on the May4th Adriatic Affairs cruise. Fully paid up and I've been watching my cruise control panel to try and book speciality dining, however despite it telling me there are 2 speciality restaurants available to book when I try and book it tells me there is no availalbity and has been telling me that for the last two months! It also only shows Surf and Turf apart from the first night when Kora La also appears. Is anyone else having this issue or is this normal? I've never sailed with Marella before so finding this somewhat frustrating.

I’m on Iona now (G238). 4 days in and I’m getting a good feel for her. First off there seems to be no issue with staff whatsoever. There’s plenty of staff everywhere. We haven’t had to wait to be served and no one looks stretched. The staff are great. Perhaps they have taken on more staff but they don’t feel remotely short-staffed now. The food has been consistently excellent. MDR’s all good, speciality dining really good. Have had lunch in the Glass House and we weren’t anywhere near a ‘corridor’ (and it was superb food). Will try the Keel and Cow in due course so reserve judgement. Forgive me though but isn’t the Glass House on Azura in a corridor off the Atrium? The App that isn’t an App has been great. We’ve booked everything we wanted, used it to book into queues for dining and never had to wait longer than a drink. It’s easy to use and is a significant improvement on the old ‘buzzer’ system as we can see how far off the front of the queue we are. Our cabin is also excellent (balcony, deck 11). There’s so much storage all 4 (yes 4!) of our cases have been unpacked and put away. I don’t need drawers when I have shelves and I have plenty. I know people who are used to other ships don’t like Iona (we’re comparing to Azura which we liked a lot) but so far Iona is proving every bit as enjoyable as Azura and in many ways it is far better for us.