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In June they charged £5 return pp on the shuttle busses at Marseilles and Ibiza. In Ibiza you were hardly on and you were off again.

Yip, all you can do is reduce the risk, and not allowing people who are definitely positive to board does that. Everything else is out of Marella's hands.

1/ OK, I'll put it another way. In June when I was on the cruise they were saying that roughly 1 in 30 of the general population of the UK had it. If you apply that to a ship that holds 1,800 passengers that would mean that roughly 60 passengers tested positive the day before they were due to cruise. Even if it was half of that it's a lot of people who weren't able to board. 2/ I disagree, it doesn't render 1 useless, it just means that there are still risks associated with travelling. Those 30 passengers who weren't allowed to fly also makes that risk slightly less. 3/ See point 2. At the end of the day testing is cheap and easy and will identify passengers who are definitely positive so as long as cases are high in the general population it still makes sense. The only way to completely keep cruise ships free of covid it to tie them up in ports and shut the doors. Since we have been allowed to travel again we've had 2 land holidays and a cruise, we are going to Lanzarote next month too. Of those holidays we came home with covid on one of them, not the cruise I haten to add. But we knew the risks before we went and accepted them. Testing cruise passengers the day before they board reduces that risk cheaply and easily. So I'm happy with that. It's not an argument BTW, it's a discussion. 🙂

On a personal level I have no problem doing the test, I'd do one anyway. I'd rather know if I'm positive beforehand and be able to move my cruise date than turn up and fall ill on board with all the palaver that would involve. From the cruise line's perspective it prevents anyone who is definitley positive from boarding the ship, which is a good thing for everyone involved, including the positive person. Yes, you could get it in the airport, from a fellow plane passenger, from anyone you are in contact with on your journey to the airport. But if we want to have holidays, including cruises, these are unavoidable risks. From Tui's perspective they are not going to apply this to land based passengers while their competitors don't, simply for commercial reasons. And they will not fly cruise only planes for the same reason. So, I think we're stuck with it for now but the tests are easy to do and fairly inexpensive. So won't stop me booking a cruise.

We didn't have to wear masks in Italy in June, either on the ship, on the excursion coach, in the winery, in the cafe, nowhere, and didn't see anyone wearing one.

Can't beat the dedication of the Marella cabin stewards.

Don't know about D2 but on discovery all the junior suites have them plus all the aft Deluxe balcony cabins. I would imagine that D2 is the same but don't know for certain.

You can fill any empty bottles from your carafe. Filling empty bottles directly from the water station isn't allowed.

If you upgrade to the Premium drinks package you get a 1.5l bottle delivered to your cabin every night when they do turn down and leave the cruise news. There are also free water stations to fill your carafe if you need fresh cool water. Or you can get 500ml bottles at the bars for 80p, these are not included in your Premium drinks package.

No Yes Not sure No

Bummer, Jim. We came home from Corralejo with it in March. We did tests over there, all clear so we put it down to a heavy cold. Tested positive the day after we came home. We did recover quickly, hope you're the same.

Depends what restaurant you are in. The speciality restaurants need to be booked so you will have a set dining time. The MDRs is turn up and if there's a table free you're in, if not they give you a buzzer so you can go get a drink while you wait for it to buzz. The Buffet is the buffet.

The cabins on Discovery have both US sockets at 110v and European Sockets at 220v, I believe this is th esame on all Marella ships. They also had a standard USB socket and a USB Type C fast charge socket.

If it's a Tui flight you booke das part of your cruise they will wait. We were over an hour late departing Palma a couple of weeks ago because of delayed flights.

BTW, ask away, I'm just back and it's fesh in my mind, this time next week I'll have forgotten the name of the ship. 🙂