tom_uk

I hope it works out for you. I suspect the hardest part will be the flying - once you get onboard you can relax and take it easy

The point about this is that Canon UK will not honour the Canon warranty on a Canon camera that was supplied into HK by them - they monitor the serial numbers. Only kit supplied into the UK (or possible the EU) qualifies for warranty work by Canon UK. So you are absolutely reliant on the warranty from the on-line retailer for any repair work, who may have to send it back to HK for any work that might be needed.

I have always bought from a real bricks & mortar camera shop. I'm lucky in that I have a seriously good one - an independent store - just a few miles away from me which has reasonably good prices and knowledgeable staff. For me, there's a definite benefit in having that shop in existence, so I buy my stuff from them. Maybe sometimes that means it costs me a bit more than the absolute minimum, but over the long term I think it's worth it. To be able to go into a shop, have them recognise you and know what you're using because you bought it from them, and being prepared to put themselves out if there's a problem - that's fantastic.

1. We are sailing on Oceana in December and have just received our cruise info booklet in the post. We had booked room A503 but have noticed on the back of the luggage labels that is says we are in room b409. Have we been upgraded without being told?

Lots of people have commented on this question....

2. When do we find out what time to get to the cruise terminal/embark?

You don't need to pay any attention to the boarding times. You can turn up at Southampton any time from about 11 o'clock onwards. You haven't said which cruise you're on, but looking at the Southampton VTS website it looks as if Oceana will be using berth 46 - the Ocean Terminal - for all three of her calls at Southampton in December, and that's good. IMHO, the Ocean Terminal is the best of them, if only because there's plenty of seating space before check in.

So you turn up whenever you like. Checkin starts at noon (most likely). There'll be a priority system to control checkins - when you arrive you'll be given a small card with a letter on it, and checkin is done by letter order. There'll be a person standing in the middle of the hall who will occasionally call out "We invite passengers holding boarding cards with the letter [some letter] to checkin now", and all the passengers holding cards with that letter will go forward and join the (fairly short) queue.

Or alternatively, you could choose to take it easy, leave home later, and arrive at the terminal later. There are some advantages to this - cabins aren't usually available until 2pm, so if you do embark around noon you just end up wandering the ship with your carry-on bags in your hand. There's then an awful temptation to hit the bars (after all, you're on holiday!) which means that when 2pm arrives and you stagger to your cabin, a) your bags seem to have got harder to manage, and b) when you're trying to have that initial conversation with your cabin steward, you can't quite seem to get your words out right. Whereas if you embark later (after 2 o'clock, say) you'll avoid the bunfight in the buffet, and can move sedately straight to your cabin.

Final point - you do know that you hand most of your bags - the big heavy ones - to the porters when you arrive outside the terminal? The next time you'll see them will be outside your cabin door, later.

Here are two of mine.

First, P&O's Ventura moored at Ajaccio, in 2013:

and one from Santorini, in 2009. This was taken on a walk to Imerovigli from Fira, while on a cruise on Solstice.

There are a couple of images here.

(Pictures copyright Andrew Sassoli-Walker)

I was talking about the actual balconies as they are in the hull balconies at the front of the ship where our E35 cabin is situated. I know the balconies are slightly bigger than the standard balconies.

 

Since I posted I have been offered a cabin with a glass balcony to the aft of the same deck. Have accepted with my TA and am awaiting confirmation of the change.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

OK, then I think I can be even more helpful. The picture below shows an E-deck balcony, and was taken specifically to show the extent to which the balconies on that deck extend outwards further than those on the decks above.

Are you asking about the balconies, or strictly about the actual cabins?

I don't know about these balconies, but I believe the cabins are normal Vista balcony cabins, and as such are quite generously-sized. We enjoyed our cruise on Arcadia very much.

Thank you Tom UK most helpful to know that what deck do you embark on then as this is my first cruise.

As yorvik says, it'll (almost certainly) be deck 5, the lowest deck of the atrium. The atrium itself stretches over three decks - 5, 6 & 7, with 5 being the bottom and seven the top. There are four lifts just off the atrium that go up to a high deck (16?) plus there are two more, glass-sided, lifts facing the atrium itself. However, all of these lifts are often very busy at embarkation time. There's also a couple of curved staircases that run from the bottom of the atrium on deck 5 up to deck 7. Walk up them and you can get a good view of the whole atrium. At deck 7 you'll be on a major deck with bars (Blue bar in the atrium itself, The Glass House going forward, and [another lounge/bar that I can never remember the name of] immediately aft of the atrium, the theatre at the front, Sindhu (a premium restaurant) and yet another bar/lounge at the rear. There's a wide corridor running the length of the ship on deck 7, which in part of its length runs alongside the atrium on that deck.

If this all sounds confusing, there are deck maps dotted about the walls in this whole area, complete with handy 'You are here' symbols.

Where is the buffet situated on Azura for lunch on Embarkation day please :)

As PurpleMoonlight said, it's on deck 15. If you want to go straight up there when you embark - and most people do - you may find that the lifts in the Atrium (which is where'll embark) are very busy. What we do is walk up the atrium stairs to deck 7 (the deck at the top of the Atrium), turn right and walk past Sindhu, and carry on past where the photo gallery is, to the aft lifts. There seem to be far fewer people waiting for lifts there, and when you get to deck 15 you're right by the buffet.

As others have said, the ones that should be open from noon probably will be open - that would include Brodies, The Glass House, maybe one or two of the deck bars. Not sure about The Blue Bar at that time. However, you may find that the bar staff are busier than usual stocking the bar - new supplies will have been delivered during the morning, and while most will be going into store rooms, some items will be being delivered from there to the bars, especially if the ship was running low before the delivery.

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I have always had a balcony but the Celebrity balconies are bigger (to be fair I didn't go out of my way to source the best balconies on P&O

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Just in case the OP doesn't know about them, balconies on C deck on both Ventura and Azura are double the size of those on Riviera, A and B decks and bigger than standard balconies on Celebrity ships. The really good thing, of course, is that the cabins with these balconies on C deck are standard balcony cabins, and hence at the same price of the balcony cabins on other decks.

Yes, these balconies are 50% overlooked, but we reckon they're well worth it - space to stretch out!

Hello Miss Milliment. Glad you enjoyed your Celebrity Eclipse cruise.

As for the comparison - well, you'll hear all sorts of comments, in all directions. We've done both and both have their pluses and minuses. Have a look at my blog for reviews of cruises on Ventura (four in total) and Celebrity Solstice, among others.

Yes, Oceania calls Southampton "London", but they do the same for Dover. Le Havre is "Paris". That isn't unusual. You often need to be aware that just because the itinerary says London or Paris (just two examples), the port isn't very close.

 

Mura

As do other lines, of course.

From a UK perspective, this has always seemed very odd. Southampton is far enough from London to have its own existence and indeed its own hinterland - it's definitely not a dormitory of London. London used to have its own passenger liner port at Tilbury, which although 25 miles downstream was administered by the Port of London Authority, and was at least located in the Thames. I think Tilbury is still in operation as a passenger port, but I don't think it can handle very large ships and I also don't think the environment is at all attractive - it's very much a commercial goods port. The principal ports for the UK are Southampton, Dover and Felixstowe. Southampton majors on the "3 Cs": cars, cruises, and containers; Dover is predominantly a ferry port; while Felixstowe is the UK's largest container port.

We tend to see places like these as serving the UK, not specifically London.

Even the standard Azura/Ventura balcony is twice the depth of Brittania side balconies

I haven't been able to find the exact size. I know that standard balconies on Azura/Ventura are just under 5ft deep; C-deck balconies are just about twice that; and D/E-deck balconies are between the two, say 6'-something. (1.45m; 2.95m; 2m, in metric measurements.)

Looking at the pictures I don't think the Royal Princess balconies are deeper than 3', so perhaps 2/3 of the depth of the standard balconies on Azura/Ventura. Not good.

I can possibly imagine doing a cruise to the fjords in a balcony cabin on Britannia, where the balcony is mainly going to be used as somewhere to stand while gazing in wonder. My assumption is that most times there won't be much sunbathing on a fjords cruise. (I know it is possible, bu it's not semi-guaranteed in the way it is on a Med cruise.)

But I don't think I would want to do a cruise with serious sun on that size balcony.

Terry

If you are over 6 feet then its probably best if you do. If you have joint problems it would probably be better. If you are not any of these think what you would do with £300pp

I think that's the key point. I would never bother, but I'm a not-too-fat 5'8", my wife is 5'5" (and ditto, I'd better say) and neither of us is long-legged. As a result we both fit comfortably into a standard economy seat so we'd rather spend the extra money on board the ship. But I can well see that someone significantly taller than me would find 8 hours in an economy seat very uncomfortable, so for them it might well be worth it.

I was looking at the current fares for our Christmas cruise on Arcadia today. The early saver fare is somewhat higher than the amount we paid, and of course the Select fare is higher still. Of course, this could all change when 'late saver' fares appear.

We booked this cruisejust about a year ago as a Vantage Fare. In November last year, when Vantage Fares were replaced by Select Fares, we received an email from P&O saying this:

"Turning to your booking with us in December. As mentioned above, we are reducing the Select Price on a number of departures and your cruise is one that has been reduced. We will continue to fulfill our Price Promise to you and because the Select Price has been reduced, we will be applying a complimentary on board spend to your booking, the amount of which is shown below.

Complimentary on board spend £140.00"

So this cruise is one for which the Select fare initially dipped below what we'd paid, but must since have increased to a higher level than initially.

I'm not quite as positive about the Glass House decor and furnishings as others are. I found some of the seats uncomfortable, and if you were eating you had to be able to find a standard-height table - eating from a low-height table wasn't that comfortable. (Perfectly fine if you were just drinking, however.) On one occasion we picked a table where I was immediately under an a/c blower and I got quite cold.

That said, it wasn't horrible, we were able to find places that we were happy with, and the wine and food were great. We ate several times in there in the summer, and went there just for a drink several more times. That and The Planet Bar became our usual haunts.

We were on Azura this summer and had our first experience of the plated service, and at the time I felt the absence of silver service rather keenly. However, on reflection this may have been because conversation did not flow especially well on our table, so we had lots of time to look at other things. Having blogged about this and said that this was a downgrade in service, I later rethought the issue and decided that I was being over-critical. As I said in a subsequent blog post, there have been times in the past when we were on a 'good' table - lots of conversation and laughter - we would be so busy talking that we barely noticed the food arriving at all, let alone the way in which it did so.

And I do accept the advantages of plated service - it does arrive hot.

I am sure i read somewhere the ban has been lifted, after complaints from business owners in Venice fearing loss of income.

It was lifted in the spring after a court appeal, which resulted in a decision that it should be reviewed. In the last week or so it has been re-applied, so the ban will now definitely be imposed from just before the end of this year. I think all the lines had already taken it into account when making their plans for 2015 e.g. P&O's replacement of Ventura (over the limit) with Oceana (inside the limit).

I've been covering this topic in some depth in my blog. Here's my own most recent post on this topic, which announced the reimposition of the ban. Here is another post by a reader who commented on my earlier post: I took her well- argued comment and turned into a full post (with her agreement).

There's a big long entry on this page from my blog about balconies on Azura and Ventura. Point 3 in the page covers the stern balconies.

Err - absolutely right. What a mistake to make! - I saw Aurura and read Azura. My apologies.....

Have a look here for a long discussion regarding the size and openness aspects of the different decks' balconies on Azura and Ventura.

I did a blog post about these packages about 18 months ago. I came down fairly hard against them. On reflection perhaps I overstated the case, but only by a bit. Here's a link.

I think the key thing to remember is that the lines aren't doing customers a favour - it must be to their benefit. That's worth thinking about.

(Costs and limit amounts correct as of 18 months ago.)

They told us on the train someone had been on the line. We were in the second carriage back and heard thuds underneath. Very grim when we found out why.

Sat for almost an hour while ambulance and firemen were there. Then they rolled slowly up to the next platform where another train was waiting for us.

Strange experience.

Oh dear, not so good. Sorry to bring back bad memories, but thanks for the info.