Sussexboy

I am on Arvia in 26 days time. Mine still say coming soon for the bookable venues.

I watched her sail away from Southampton yesterday after lunch on the Solent Ships live webcam on YouTube.

On Prima last year we just filled drinks bottles from the tap and left them in the refrigerator with no caps on. The water tasted fine after a few hours.

Mrs SB and I have happy memories of Oriana. As I have a significant birthday this year, I suggested that she should buy me the old girl as a project to keep me from being under her feet all day. She declined somewhat forcefully…..

I think you may be getting mixed up, apparently P&O is meant to be Butlins-on-sea, not Butlers-on-sea….😉😂😂 I’ll get my coat

Thanks everybody, lots of reading to do!

Thank you very much for that. We will be there on a Monday so miss the tour, but the itinerary on Google maps is very helpful. I will show it to my better half and see what she thinks.

We are on K410 in May. We have no plans yet for Valencia, Barcelona and Alicante. Are they easy places to DIY in? We are little restricted in walking too far as Mrs SB has dodgy ankles (from a functional rather than aesthetic point of view I hasten to add!). Thanks in advance for your insights.

We are on Arvia in May. For the first and probably last time we are in an aft suite. Two days ago I received an email asking me to bid for an upgrade. I don’t think we can do much about that. I know it’s probably an automatic process that drives the email, but it seems such sloppy admin. As a former quality and business process manager it the sort of sad thing that annoys me. It could quite easily be managed out of the process.

I am pretty sure that the public toilets in Olden only took cards as well.

I think you have hit the nail on the head there, it appears that there is no contingency plan, and a serious lack of communication to the end customers who actually pay for this fiasco. Here’s hoping that Yorkie69 has a great cruise once they can get there…..

I agree it’s a shambles, and in your place I would be extremely angry at being messed about like that. I also agree that the decision to use Maleth has probably lost customers. However that must be weighed against what would have happened if they didn’t use Maleth. With so little air passenger capacity available P&O would have been forced to cancel many customers dream Caribbean cruise, which would have been disastrous. So they took the least worst option. The question that springs to my mind is why did Maleth have that passenger capacity when others did not? That should have rung some alarm bells when setting up the contract.

I showed the pictures to the sainted Mrs SB and she declared the paving as manageable. So it looks like we have a go situation.

Thanks, every picture tells a story!

Mrs Sussexboy and myself are on Arvia in May trolling down the coast of Spain. Our first port is A Coruña where we are looking to take the excursion to Santiago de Compostela. Has anybody done the guided tour excursion? If so, how much walking was there and how was the terrain? Mrs SB has both ankles fused after an early onset arthritis and her mobility is decreasing. She can manage several hours walking but steps and uneven ground or cobble stones are getting to be show stoppers for her unfortunately.

We had a lovely trip out on a catamaran in Grenada, followed by a beach lobster bbq. It was a great day to finish our cruise proper before sailing back to Barbados to catch the flight home. Thank you for sharing those photos, they made me think back to happy memories.

Go and enjoy it. Sometimes getting away from problems at home helps put them in perspective. They don’t go away, but you get fresh energy and insight to deal with them on your return. Have a great time and recharge those batteries!

Watching you live on YouTube now! Have a great trip.

I used to fly regularly with BA for work travel pre pandemic and retirement. It was going downhill then. We flew to Bucharest back in June to use up our avios points. Going out business class was nice, coming back cattle class was more akin to Ryanair.

They always used to be Sealy mattresses. Indeed on the Sealy website you can purchase the Sealy Cunard as supplied to ………Cunard (and others)! I don’t know if that is still the case as times and contracts change.

Wow, every day is a school day. Makes sense though when you think about it.

Just pop along the high street to Boots and look for flight socks, or sometimes called travel socks. https://www.boots.com/health-pharmacy/travel-health/flight-socks?paging.index=0&paging.size=14&sortBy=mostRelevant&criteria.category=health+~+pharmacy---travel+health---flight+socks

We had a missed port claim back in September with Admiral. They took about two weeks also. It was very easy and the communication was clear and timely, I started the process online and then received follow up phone calls from Admiral to advise me on the progress of the claim.

The porterhouse on Prima back in September was excellent. Couldn’t say the same for the service. They snatched my plate away virtually as I put down my knife and fork, before my wife had finished eating her fillet. I thought it quite rude, my wife on the other hand though it a crime worthy of having the waiter flogged against a hatch cover at Captains Mast (article 15 I believe for our transatlantic chums).

We always use Boots anti viral foam, it has anti viral and anti bacterial ingredients. Seems to be kind to our delicate office hands as well.