arlowood

The article did say that Cunard had suggested to the gentleman concerned that Holiday Extras could offer up £25000 cancellation cover and to contact them to see if they were able to offer anything above that to meet his requirements. He did contact Holiday Extras but not only were they not be prepared to cover his cruise cancellation figure (£43000), they confirmed that their maximum cancellation figure was £15000, not the £25000 that Cunard alluded to. So it would appear that Cunard passengers who have booked expensive cruises costing more than £15000 will be struggling to meet this requirement of cancellation cover for the full cost of their cruise. I'm really a bit puzzled by all this. Surely the onus is on the customer to insure him or herself against the possibility of having to cancel their cruise. If their cruise costs £43000 but they can only insure up to a maximum of £15000 then surely they must decide if they are willing to stand that shortfall if they have to cancel. I don't see it as Cunard's business to deny them boarding because they have not covered the full cost of their cruise. Maybe I'm missing something

Just read a cautionary tale in the Business and Money supplement of the Sunday Times. Their Money "Agony Aunt", Jill Insley reported the plight of an 83 year old gentleman who had booked a 103-day world cruise with Cunard and paid a deposit of £14,187 against the total cost of £46000. Cunards T&C's (as P&O's do) required him to have a minimum of £2million cover for emergency medical treatment and repatriation which was claimed to be impossible to buy for this gentleman. However the nub of the problem was more nuanced than that. The sticking point for Cunard was that they were insisting that he had cancellation cover that would cover the total cost of the cruise if he were unfortunate enough to have to cancel after he had paid the balance. He had found it impossible to find any cancellation cover above £15000 and contacted Cunard to see what could be done. They refused to allow him to cancel and return his deposit - instead offering him the option of a cheaper cruise where the £14185 could be covered by insurance. On his behalf Jill Insley went to battle but found it impossible to find any company willing to offer more than £15000 of cancellation cover. She speculates that this cannot be an isolated instance. She did however manage to persuade Cunard to refund his deposit. Obviously it is likely to only apply to a relatively small number of passengers who are on world cruises or segments of world cruises in the more expensive staterooms. However when I read the Cunard T&C's there does not appear to be any specific reference to the requirement for cancellation cover to meet the full cost of the cruise. They have the £2 million emergency medical and repatriation requirement but that would apply after the cruise has started. P&O's T&C's are a mirror of the Cunard wording so maybe it would be worth any potential world cruisers to check whether P&O would take the same view.

Yup - Greenock port schedule have Arcadia listed for tomorrow (30th). Cruise Mapper has her heading for Gourock but that's unlikely - never heard of large cruise ships using Gourock before.

Our 1st May cruise on Arcadia was cancelled at 3 weeks notice. The reason given was that crew were needed to be redeployed to the larger ships due to an overall shortage within P&O . From comments here it would seem that Iona etc have benefited from this at the expense of Arcadia and also possibly Aurora. Clearly from the information posted it would seem that Arcadia has been reintroduced with a less than adequate crew complement and the passenger experience is suffering as a result. We can only hope that the shortages are being addressed and things will gradually improve. We're on the J216 sailing leaving 30th August and I was eagerly anticipating sampling the delights at Sindhu but I may be disappointed.

Seems Saga might be missing a trick here. Have been on Viking where they have a dedicated sales person on board who will handle future cruise bookings with a whole range of benefits. These include double past passenger discount, additional discounted fares, included Silver Spirits package and balance payments fixed at 6 months prior to departure. This last benefit is directed at their US passengers as they are required to pay their balances up to 12 months or even longer pre departure. UK passengers are on the 6 months date as standard. We also had the situation in 2021 when we were on one of their "Welcome Back" UK staycation cruises. Towards the end of the cruise we were contacted and offered a back-to-back at half price. Sadly we had commitments that prevented us taking up the offer. I think Saga could encourage some extra business if they took a similar approach

I read of these problems on the other "Return of Arcadia" thread and was feeling a bit concerned about our forthcoming cruise scheduled for 30th August. @mickey1959 is on the current sailing and I asked specifically what the situation was and if things had improved. He responded by saying that he was on Select Dining and had experienced no problems. Also he was unaware of any particular issues with Freedom Dining. So on the face of it it would seem that they have got their act together somewhat but time will tell. Maybe they've totally ditched the app-based booking system and gone back to the old pager procedure. On the current cruise the main issue seems to be sticking to the itinerary - they've missed both Lerwick and Torshavn so far due to weather or "operational" reasons. I'm following to see where the mystery tour takes them.

Well Mickey seemed to think that she would return to her original schedule after Edinburgh which replaced Lerwick, and Invergordon that replaced Torshavn. So she should now call at Stornoway, Greenock and Holyhead on the way back to Southampton. Seems a stretch to complete that plan in the time remaining but who knows. Exciting times for Arcadia pax

Hi Mickey Enjoy Edinburgh - my son lives close to Leith so I have asked him to look out for Arcadia off Newhaven. I guess Arcadia is too big for the Leith cruise berth but you've been upstaged by The World cruise ship anyway LOL. What's happening with the other ports that were planned - Stornoway, Greenock, Holyhead? Have you been informed how the rest of the itinerary is working out before Southampton next week

Yes, they were due to call at Stornoway, Greenock (for Glasgow) and Holyhead all down the west side. Not many options on the east coast after Edinburgh so maybe they'll spend a couple of days there. Or possibly hop over to the Netherlands or Belgium to fill the time. They're not due back in Southampton until 2nd August so they have nearly a week to fill???

Yep - original itinerary showed Lerwick after Kirkwall then the Faroes, Stornoway, Greenock and down the west coast. Although some listings show Invergordon rather than the Faroes. Still looks like a change of schedule from her position today. Maybe someone on board can confirm

Hi Mickey Glad to hear you're having a great time. Are on Freedom Dining or on a Set Table?. There were issues on a previous cruise with long wait times at dinner for those on Freedom Dining. Are there still problems or have things improved? Also any idea on how full the ship is? As far as I can establish some of the aft cabins are empty and have been reserved for use as isolation cabins in the event of a positive covid test result.

Hi there Interested to hear from anyone currently on Arcadia for the British Isles cruise (J213). Information from at least one poster on this thread suggested that things on the previous cruise were a cause for concern. Mainly there seemed to be extra long waits for tables in the MDR if you were on Freedom Dining. I'm not sure if this comment was representative of the whole cruise or just a temporary blip in the staffing organisation. Also are the speciality restaurants still closed? We sail on Arcadia on 30th August when hopefully things might have settled down so I'm keen to hear any progress reports from those on board

Just got the email about the testing policy change. We're on Arcadia departing 30th August. Was on the point of booking a couple of walk-in LFT's at the Randox site at East Midlands Airport for 29th but thankfully that's no longer necessary with this change of policy. Was a bit concerned about having to test on 29th August as that's a bank holiday although Randox did confirm that they still operate on that date. Will now look to purchase a couple of kits from the local pharmacy and do the tests on the Sunday or Monday. I believe P&O set up a no testing trial for their Iona 7 day cruises. Perhaps they have analysed the data from that to allow this relaxation in policy. Our cruise is also a 7 day one so maybe they have extened the Iona trial to other 7 day sailings.

That must be a change in policy. We are well outside the 75ml range (abt 200mls) and we had a private taxi to and from the ship for our SoD cruise back in the middle of June. Our driver who took us to the ship was a Saga/Titan employee and he said that Saga were sticking with the private taxi format for all while there was still a lot of Covid around. Would seem like a rash move to go back to shared transport in light of the spike in cases of the new Omicron variants doing the rounds I would certainly consider paying for a private transfer if only to avoid a "denied boarding" scenario if one of your shared taxi occupants tests positive before embarkation

It wasn't a formal drill. As you say we just had to watch a video in our cabin but to comply with Martime Safety laws we had to physically walk to our muster area and be checked through that by the Saga staff. So yes - just a walk through but still a pain in the proverbial at midnight after such a chaotic embarkation experience

OP back here again. We are based in the East Midlands just south of Nottingham. Our original pick-up time was scheduled for 10.30 for the planned Dover departure. However the SoD was caught up in a problm in Cadiz and the departure from there was delayed by 17hrs. This led to the embarkation port being shifted to Portsmouth and we had a call from Saga moving our pick-up time back to 1.40pm. Driver also called to confirm that time and he arrived bang on 1.40pm. Journey down was uneventful and we got to the Park & Ride close to the Portsmouth terminal to have our Covid testing done. Within 15mins we were released to go to the dock area Thereafter things descended into chaos. Access to the terminal is quite restricted with only one 2 lane exit from a roundabout at the entrance to the terminal. We were caught up in a queue consisting of taxis dropping off new passengers, taxis trying to access the port to pick up disembarking passengers and also customers trying to get to the Brittany Ferries ship that was waiting to depart. We eventually got into the terminal building at around 5.30pm but did not get to board until 10.30pm. We were lucky to have all our luggage at our cabin when we boarded but many were left without luggage until 2am or later. Then we had to attend a muster drill at midnight - some who had already gone to bed had to get dressed again for this drill. Not Saga's finest hour but the ensuing cruise was very enjoyable and we will be back some time in the future

The question that is perplexing me is - How are these on board Covid cases detected if there is no regular testing once on board. 1. Are people on board only detected as positive if they become so unwell that they have to involve the medical department? 2. Are staff members approaching those with coughs or other symptoms and asking them to take a test? 3. Are the more altruistic passengers who develop cough or other symptoms, self-diagnosing and requesting a test to confirm a positive diagnosis? I only ask as OH and I have recently returned from a Saga cruise where there were quite a few cases of passengers being isolated due to a Covid diagnosis. However we never got a real handle on how those people were identified. Additionally there were also quite a few passengers who were coughing and sneezing around the ship and who were apparently suffering from "allergies" or some other affliction. In the absence of routine testing it would seem that cruise companies are relying on the honesty of passengers to self-report if they think they are Covid positive. This situation is always goin to lead to disease spread from those who won't own up to being affected or insist that they have some other ailment.

Many thanks for the confirmation. That gives us an additional option as Randox have a walk-in test facility at East Midlands Airport which is only 20 minutes away. They offer a 60min turnaround time on the lateral flow test so we could book a couple of tests for the morning of the 29th and hopefully have the results before we leave for our overnight stop. With my belt-and-braces personna I might also order a couple of their unsupervised home test kits and set up the Randox App before we leave just in case there are any delays/glitches with the walk-in result. Overall cost is minimal when set against a denied boarding scenario due to lack of correct test data

Good to hear the positive responses about Randox. Jut one further question. How rigorous are P&O about the 24hr pre departure test window. I'm assuming that our sail away will probably be around 5pm on 30th August and they will start boarding around noon to 1pm on that day. We plan to travel down to Newbury for an overnight stop on 29th and I was planning to do the lateral flow test before we left home on the morning of the 29th. (much prefer to have the security of our home WiFi than have to rely on our overnight hotel having a reliable connection.) If I do this are P&O likely to disqualify the test as it is outside the 24hr window of boarding or departure. Would it be better to take the test later, say mid-afternoon, then leave for Newbury.

Just booked a 7 night cruise on Arcadia departing 30th August and have received confirmation from P&O that a negative lateral flow result is required taken within 24hrs of departure. Just looking for recommendations from others who have gone down this route recently on the best way to proceed. A complicating factor is that the day before we cruise is a bank holiday (29th August) and I'm not sure whether any walk-in or drive through tests centres will be open on that day. Also if we order an at-home self test which is verified by uploading a pic of the test cartridge - are these ratified automatically or does someone have to physically view your result to issue the appropriate certificate. It might be feasible to do the test on the morning of departure but we are staying overnight at a hotel and would be relying on hotel wifi and a quick result turn round time. Any advice gratefully accepted. PS P&O recommend the Eastleigh FC drive through test centre but I've just checked and it does not seem to be offering any test slots on the 29th or 30th August

Will be interested to hear the reason for the schedule change and also how the rest of the cruise is going to pan out. Could be that for whatever reason they are planning to do the itinerary in a partial reverse direction. Maybe they'll do the circumnavigation of Iceland after Orkney then head for Alesund and/or Stavanger. Having checked various port schedules, it appear that my supposition is correct. Arcadia is now due in Akureyri on 11th, Isofjordur on 12th and Rekjavik on 13th. Not unusual as we were on a recent Saga cruise where they reversed the schudule of the ports due to the Spirit of Discovery being late and having to dock at Portsmouth rather than Dover. It meant doing Iceland first with Orkney as the final rather than the first stop.

No, if you are lucky and get ahead of the game there is a relatively new docking harbour at Hatston, about 2 miles out of Kirkwall town center. According to the cruise schedule for Hatston, Arcadia is due there tomorrow. Only space for one cruise ship, so if your cruise company misses out then it would be a tender operation. BTW, Kirkwall Town Council provide a very effective shuttle service between the Hatston harbour and the town centre using bendy buses.

According to Cruise mapper Arcadia is now heading in a northwesterly direction towards Orkney. May just be a course change to mitigate the effects of the gales if that is what is forecast. Hopefully she will get back on course when the weather improves. We are contemplating a short Western Med cruise on her at the end of August to use up the FCC we were given following the cancellation of our 1st May Baltic cruise. Fingers crossed things will settle down.

We've just returned from our 1st Saga cruise on SoD. We used a TA to make the booking and as a result, all communication with Saga must be made via your TA. You are not able to set up a MySaga account ahead of your cruise but we did receive advance notification of the various excursions available with detailed descriptions of what was involved. We ended up making our excursion bookings through the TA, although I believe we could have contacted Saga direct for this part of the process. I think in future if we decide on a Saga cruise, we will probably book directly. On our cruise, we did sign up for the Advanced Notification facility where you can pay a fee to get early access to new seasons itineraries before they are released to the general public.

Yes - I was more than happy with the change of embarkation port having seen the chaos around the Dover ferry terminal over the past few weeks. I know the cruise terminal is separate but I'm sure there will still be some impact on passengers trying to get to the cruise terminal. We did a couple of Viking cruises last year that used the Portsmouth cruise terminal. It was a breeze to access and boarding was quick and efficient. Only downside is that we are docking back in Dover on our return on 3rd July.