zoe sproodle

We are on Oceana's repositioning cruise from Dubai to Malta next spring which also offers 2 embarkation dates, it's actually advertised as either 13 or 14 nights. The option is either a night on board in Dubai or embarking and sail the same day. Hope this helps, although it may not of course work the same for the cruise you're looking at.

I recently read an article on Oriana (1959) in the magazine of the Ocean Liner Society. How I wish I could have sailed on her and her contemporaries.

Correct me if I'm wrong but does it not get published occasionally in Horizon that unattended items on sun beds will be removed? Never seen it done though.

I was going to ignore all this but finally decided I’d have a look in my account.

Couldn’t log in

Submitted a ‘forgot my password’

Got a message back that my email address was unknown to the system

Re-registered

Loyalty Club question was the first one

 

What a shambles

 

I suggest everyone should check, just to be on the safe side. A few clicks on a keypad now beats doing battle with P&O at some stage in the future

Just gave it a go and the same happened. Got re-registered then logged out. When I logged back in again personal details and loyalty/contact options were blank. Tried to re-input and got the message 'unauthorised user'. I eventually got everything re-input but have noticed that when I'd logged in previously it had said my personal details were locked down due to current bookings, which now doesn't seem to be the case.

According to a leading TA's e-mail the provisional name given to the new ship by P&O is Olympia.

So we could have Britannia and Olympia. Is it coincidence or is there a nod there to Titanic's sisters Britannic and Olympic?

Completely understand your point, Bell Boy, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that we turn into a bunch of hermits the moment we step on board. I for one also like to get out to the public areas, but sometimes like to chill in the cabin for a bit - not necessarily for long and quite often with a g & t...

Many thanks for your comments and advice. I've done a bit of digging and found some reviews, it seems almost all of them say the place is wonderful and one mentioned that there are a couple of 'private' showers if you're prepared to wait for one, so that should allay any concerns.....

Thanks for that, etruriaguy. One more question if I may, I have read that you are required to shower without swimwear before entering the baths, is this the case? We will have my 80 year old mother in law with us and feel she may be a little uncomfortable with this, even in separate shower rooms.

We are on Aurora to the fjords and Iceland in June and are thinking about this excursion from Akureyri. Has anyone else done this and, if so, was it any good?

Zero chance of an upgrade from an inside to anything other than a perceived better inside. For our upcoming cruise on Azura this Friday we booked a guaranteed PE inside cabin on an early saver and have been allocated a PB grade which we are quite pleased about.

Sorry to argue but on Arcadia 18 months ago we got an upgrade from an inside to a deluxe balcony. I assumed at the time this was because it was the North Sea in November and the more expensive balconies just weren't selling.....

Honey roast peanuts and Snyders jalapeno pretzels for nibbles with a g & t whilst getting ready of an evening!

Further to the earlier post I have used Smiths many times and have always found them to be very reliable.

Ours updated the day after we received the upgrade email.

Does anybody call the toilets on a ship the "head"? Or is that naval slang?

I think that's a Royal Navy thing. A friend of mine is from a Naval family and has picked it up, he refers to any toilet anywhere as 'the heads'.

While I'm here another thing that annoys me is when cruise ships are referred to as 'liners'.

One ship which did have 'the' in her name was The Topaz, the ex-Empress Of Britain operated by Thomson, she had 'The Topaz' painted on the bow and stern (not the front and back!). I remember my in-laws cruising on her in the late 90s and loving it.

I'm finding this thread very entertaining - I too hate it when people refer to ships as boats and have relations who do it deliberately to wind me up.

Thanks for the replies. I was just curious to know if the increases have become more frequent more recently.

Out of interest and apologies if this has been asked elsewhere, but how often and by how much have auto gratuities gone up in recent years? We've cruised with p and o every year since 2010 but can't really remember much about them prior to last year's increase.

While holidaying in Jamaica I saw the cruise ships coming into port and thought it looked amazing travelling to lots of different places. And the thoughts of flying..............

Was that Ocho Rios by any chance? We saw the cruise ships there whilst on our honeymoon but didn't really pay them any mind. Little did we realise then that 20 years later the cruise bug would have well and truly bitten!

I contacted P & O about this as I was unsure as to what constituted a 'slogan', as they put it. Sorry I don't still have their reply to copy here, but basically it said what the previous 2 posts have said - if you bought it 'off the peg' and it hasn't been personalised by you it's fine (so long as it can't be deemed offensive presumably....)

Relaxing, good service, nice people and plenty of things to do. Our holiday is being onboard and not particularly the destinations. Put simply we enjoy it.

Couldn't agree more. To us a cruise is about being on a ship and going to sea - although we like to go ashore for a wander the ports of call really don't matter and we don't mind returning to places we've been to before. Plus living close to Southampton if we time it right we can leave home and be relaxing in our 'hotel' in little more than an hour.

If I remember correctly this used to be published on the P & O website but was removed for 'security reasons'.

To be fair I think they do introduce new material occasionally. There was a geography quiz on our last cruise which we expected to be the same as one we'd done a few times before but was new to us...

And after a few cruises you get to remember all the answers!

It's always struck me as odd that you can't smoke with kids in your car but it's perfectly OK to sit in traffic with the windows down surrounded by lorries, buses, 4x4s, etc

P&O certainly do seem to be cramming us smokers into smaller and smaller areas.

We were on Oriana at the beginning of the year on a 50 night cruise and almost all of the starboard prom deck was smoking.

 

We've just got off Oriana yesterday and now, just about a third of the prom deck is smoking, and they have changed it to the port side. Maybe non smokers complained that they couldn't sit at tables outside the pub without having smokers among them.

 

Perhaps we smokers need to fight back a bit when we fill in our guest comments.

One of my favourite things about Oriana was that you could sit outside the pub and smoke. Our next cruise is on Oceana which if I recall had a similar set up, it'll be interesting to see how this has changed post refit.