TigerB

Is that free too?😉 #Yorkshire

Another great report, young man!👍 It's handy that your good lady had a 'safe place' for the drugs stash; now you won't have to look out for @mrsgoggins on the quayside in Funchal, or traipse around all the farmácias, hoping that your request doesn't get lost in translation and risk them giving you something for your motions rather than your motion sickness.🤭 I tend to pack a microfibre cloth for the balcony doors and glass; five minutes of my time saves the stress of waiting for the cabin steward to do it. The flag talk sounds like something I would like. Enjoy you day on Madeira.

@Interestedcruisefan, make sure you do try the MDR for lunch on your next cruise. It is indeed a far more relaxed experience than the cattle market that is Horizon. Of the menus posted by our venerable thread host, there are several items that we would choose, even if it's just something light and a dessert. Try it, you won't look back! 😉

You don't have to, but it is recommended for some shows. Pre-cruise you will likely only be able to book for several shows in the Headliners theatre for the first week. You will also be able to book for the Limelight Club through your Cruise Planner. Once onboard, or even before you get onboard if you manage to get onto the ship's WiFi whilst in the terminal, all the shows for the Headliners theatre and the 710 Club will be available to book through the My Holiday app/non-app. It is only these, and the dinner show in the Limelight Club, that you are able to book for. Entertainment at all other venues is not bookable, but you may be advised to get to a particular venue early to secure a seat/table You will find that you will still be able to book for Headliners throughout your cruise, but it is very likely that all sets in the 710 Club apart from the 00:15 one will show as full from the second day. The trouble is that there are a few selfish folk (surprisingly they do exist) that will book for everything they can and not cancel if they know they can no longer attend. With regard to Headliners, if you haven't booked and just turn up, it is more likely than not that you will be allowed entry. You may be asked to wait until just before the show starts to make sure late arriving bookers get in, or you may be allowed straight in if it is clear that the show is undersubscribed; it depends on the host I suppose. You cannot book the wheelchair or ambulant disabled seats, so it is advisable to get there a bit early to secure them. There are at the back of the theatre on both port and starboard if you enter from deck 7, or at the front if you enter from deck 6. With regard to the 710 Club, it is possible to get in without booking but you have to be a bit canny about it. The doors open about half an hour before the set starts, so you need to be lurking in the Amber Lounge before they do. Approach the host and ask to be put on the standby list; then remain nearby. About five or ten minutes before the set starts they will start calling forward those on the standby list, in strict order. If you are one of the first ten on the list there is a high probability that you will get in, and if you are one of the first four you will almost certainly get in.

I missed this one, I don't know why. I have just read it👍 @RebelWithoutAClue, check out the review by @Presto2; another good read and well balanced report.

Dining reservations open up about two weeks before your cruise, on your Cruise Planner. In our experience, booking for the MDRs by that method for both Iona and Arvia has been hit and miss; available on a couple of cruises but not on others. If it is available for your cruise, it will only be for the earlier slots, pre 18:30, which would suit you. Fear not though; given your willingness to share a table, I don't think you will have much of a problem with getting a reservation for 18:30 in any of the four MDRs, by entering the virtual queue on the My Holiday app/non-app, or by speaking with a restaurant host.

I'm glad things are starting to get better for you; hopefully your cabin gets sorted soon. With about 60% of the passengers being priority boarders, it's no wonder the embarkation was such a shambles. Let's hope they learn from it. We sail for the first time on Aurora next year, and we wouldn't have reached the dizzy heights of PC members like you, so would expect a mid-afternoon embarkation time. That's fine with us; at least I won't suffer the stress you encountered. Mind you, given the passenger demographic, and at 61 and 57 years as we will be then, we would be considered teenagers, so would be expected to cope!😉 Now that you've started to treat your liver, have you put the bar staff on notice to keep some ambient Doom Bars aside for you?

Welcome to the boards Melanie 👋🏻 Firstly, have you read the reviews on this site? There are a lot of favourable ones, and several very unfavourable ones. You need to read quite a few to get a good grasp, with salt at the ready. In my opinion, some folk like to moan for the sake of moaning. You will also need to search the P&O boards for live or post-cruise reports; some contributors (and I'm guilty of this) will post reports but not get around to adapting them to an actual review in the designated location for them. @Selbourne is just one contributor that always provides balanced reporting of life onboard. His live reporting from a cruise on Britannia in 2023 can be found here... His 'post-mortem' after returning can be found here... I've never heard Britannia being compared to Benidorm or Butlins; I'm aware of folk comparing Arvia or Iona to those two destinations, but not Britannia. We have sailed on her twice; as a couple on a Caribbean cruise in 2018 to celebrate my 50th birthday, and with our children and their partners on a Baltic cruise in 2022 to celebrate my retirement. We had a great time on both cruises. More recently we have sailed on Arvia and Iona, which for my wife offer more advanced accessible features, but we would definitely cruise again on Britannia, subject to the right itinerary. When we last sailed on her they weren't using the (not always popular) My Holiday app/non-app, so getting into dining locations was a breeze. Like with other ships, the introduction of My Holiday as the preferred method of booking dining reservations and theatre shows has not been without problems on Britannia. We're not really into the 'in-house' theatre shows, so gave them a wide berth. There was plenty of other things available to entertain us. We found the house band Pulse on Britannia to be the best of all the other versions. Our kids and their partners loved the silent disco. We found the food (buffet excluded) to go be of good enough quality for us. Our eldest daughter had sailed on one of the Marella ships the year before; she said there were more GF options in the buffet on that ship, but the options and quality of food for her in the MDRs was better on Britannia. There's plenty of time before your cruise, so you should be able to glean a wealth of information on here. Enjoy your planning. 🙂

To the best of my recollection from our only visit to the Limelight Club, on Britannia, the menu was limited; one each of meat, fish, and vegetarian. My daughter had to have a special GF meal prepared. You won't get any discount for not having the meal, it comes as a package. I don't even know if they would allow you entry after the meal service has finished.

Ooh! I likes a bit of tuna I does! Trouble is, when it's been on in the MDR on our recent cruises, we've dined elsewhere. Usually in Olive Grove, where I will have the tuna steak.😉

We've had several different excuses over the last sixteen months, on Britannia, Arvia, and Iona, as to why they don't do it tableside on those ships.🙄 @mrsgoggins, hopefully you'll have your Crêpes Suzette prepared tableside, just as @Selbourne did on Ventura last autumn.🤞

Careful, you're supposed to take them orally!🤭

Thanks for the second installment👍🏻 Hopefully, once you start your six days across the Atlantic it will settle down a bit. We couldn't believe how warm and calm it was for us, sailing south on Arvia last January. Ah! Cabot Cove. We were in Maine about ten years ago and visited one of the places that inspired the writing. I could have sworn we saw Jessica on her bike! When you're in Funchal on Sunday and you see a fella looking green around the gills, pushing a lady in a wheelchair, also looking green around the gills, in a desperate search for a farmácia, you know who that will be. I'm sure they would snap your hand off for any spare Stugeron!🤭

Great first post, and many thanks for the food porn.👍🏻 It looks like first night menus are just about identical across the whole fleet. That red snapper looks small, or are your old man's hands massive? I reckon I would be asking for two of those.😋🤭 Our lass has Guadalupe on her list of places to visit, so a review of the Caribbean Midsomer tour would be welcome (for her). If we had all the money in the world there are two places I would not want to live: Midsomer and Saint Marie!😂 I look forward to your next installment.🙂

What an absolute shambles with the boarding, despite with the blue badge no doubt being visible on the dashboard and your good lady being in a wheelchair, that it would be obvious that you required assistance at both the vehicle drop off and at the terminal. As predicted, they accepted the general certificate, and you wasted £30. That's about fifteen Doom Bars you could have had! Something for the email that will no doubt be directed to P&O Towers in March. Interesting about the bed given they are 60cm high on the newer ships. We're on Aurora next year so I will note that. Glad you liked The Privateers; they are really good and I've been hoping for their inclusion on one of our future cruises. I hope the creaking gets sorted and you have some more positives to report back on.

Wishing you and Lady S a very enjoyable, safe and trouble free cruise. As always, I will look forward to your reports. I would like to make an appeal though ....more food pics please! I know there a few on here that love them. @mrsgoggins, also wishing you a very enjoyable, safe and trouble free cruise. As you also have t'internet, can we expect some live reporting from you? If so, don't forget the food porn! It would be interesting to see the differences or similarities in the menus from both ships.

We've done it just once, in September 2022 on Britannia, and that was just because there were eight of us and we wanted to do something different as a group, and the act, Four Poofs And A Piano, appealed to us. We enjoyed the act but the food was just so-so. Many of the z-listers they have on do not appeal to us whatsoever. I understand Ray Quinn puts on a decent show though. @Presto2, if you haven't done it before and you want to see what the appeal is, go ahead and book it. You only live once! At least, if you book ahead and benefit from the 20% discount and your Peninsula discount, you won't feel so bad if you discover it's not for you.

Yes, I did mean a microfibre cloth; blooming predictive text.🫣 That's CoCo, who reigns supreme in our household; we live to serve her! 😍

As terrierjohn writes, your cabin steward will supply you with wire coat hangers. We prefer to take the plastic ones you can't get from Ikea. Squash - our lass gets the teeny concentrated concentrated bottles where you just need a few drops; they have them near the checkouts in Lidl. If we are in a balcony cabin, I usually take a microphone cloth to clean the balcony doors and glass. I know you can ask your cabin steward to do it, but I always feel that they have so much on; it only takes five minutes anyway.

Some folk say they have had problems trying to get body lotion and hair conditioner; in the four cruises we have been on this year on both Iona and Arvia, we have always been supplied both when we have asked our cabin steward for them.

Same with Covid; after working from home for sixteen months, I found all my suits had shrunk in the wardrobe.🙄

Have you checked this morning? Ours for February has appeared overnight.

@JeanieC,Aston, hopefully you will get the PC discount too. However, when I recently booked a gift package with the Black Friday discount of 20% I wasn't able to apply the PC discount too.

Ooh, you have piqued my interest. We are there in January, and as it will be our lass's 60th birthday cruise, I may very well push the boat out for her. It will beat fish and chips in the Quays!😉

I had intended to post a final précis of the cruise, but have been away for a while. I've finally done It, so here it is... THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY.... CPS This was the first time we had used them and, having read some mixed reviews, I wasn’t expecting it to be perfect. Details of our arrival are in post #4; perhaps if we had arrived later it may have been busier, but just about fifteen minutes from joining the queue, to waving goodbye to our luggage and making our way to the terminal, was very good. The collection after the cruise was just as easy; there was no queue at the office and I could see our car parked close by in the disabled area. After loading, we were on our way within fifteen minutes of leaving the terminal. A check of the dash-cam the next day revealed our car had remained on the terminal throughout our cruise, just 200 metres from the pick-up location. We are booked again with CPS for February; if the experience is just as good, we will use them again if on a select fare. EMBARKATION & DISEMBARKATION See post #4 and #20. Both were spot on! We could have been even quicker away on the last day if we had used the other airbridge, but there you go. CABIN We knew what to expect with the layout of the cabin having stayed in an identical one on Arvia, confident that it would suit the needs of our lass and her wheelchair; see post #4 for photos and descriptions. Having previously always wanting to stay in a balcony cabin, thinking that would be the only cabin type that would be suitable for us, this is the third cruise with P&O this year, all on the two biggest ships, where we have had an inside cabin, staying in two of them for the full cruise. I will say this to wheelchair users: subject to the bed being in a queen configuration, and your chair being no wider than about 64cm, you should get on fine with the partially accessible inside cabins on Iona or Arvia; don’t be put off by an advisor or TA suggesting that it would not be suitable. You would save money too! With the exception of the initial problem with the hanging rail and my reappraisal of the suitability of the fridge, as referred to in post #4, the only other quirk of this cabin was the location. We had previously stayed in 15322, the cabin next door, on Arvia and it was really quiet. This time we spent a little more time in the cabin during the day and, with a service area being one side of it, and the food preparation area of Taste 360 being above and slightly mid-ship of it, there was some occasional noise pollution. During the night though, it was quiet. LIFTS We have previously experienced problems with lift etiquette, but not to the extent that @Selbourne and his good lady did on their August cruise. On this cruise though we hardly had any problems; I suppose it does help that our cabin was nearest to the forward lifts. There were only two occasions, and those involved the mid-ship lifts, where I had to ‘have words’ with folk (both adults) for being ignorant of the needs of disabled or vulnerable passengers. As has been mentioned by others, it is children that appear to have more awareness of those in more need. On one occasion the door of the lift farthest from us opened, and a young lad aged about 12yrs ran to it and held the door open for us. The thing is, he wasn’t even using the lifts; he was walking alone up the stairwell and must have seen the lift doors open and, thinking that we wouldn’t get to it in time, went out of his way to assist us. An absolute credit to his parents. RESTAURANTS AND FOOD Choosing to eat in Opal on those evenings when we weren’t dining elsewhere was a wise choice. Apart from one evening where we were sat on a bank of two-seaters, and the first formal night, when our section was full, the service was very good, and we were either sat on a proper two-seater or on a four-seater, for our own use. That wouldn’t have been the case though if our lass could access more of the restaurant in her chair; an advantage of being a wheelchair user in a smaller restaurant. The food in the MDRs on this cruise was a bit hit and miss though; more hit than miss, and the second formal evening meal (see post #18) was excellent, but when it was a miss it was massively so. This cruise has done nothing to make the Horizon any more appealing. It is still, in my opinion, a cattle market full of folk who have no concept of proper hygiene and how that may affect others – see post #14. STAFF It has been mentioned by others that staff on Iona appear to look tired and overworked, and service is a bit slower as a result. Yes, we did notice that some staff appeared to be a little jaded, and in a few locations they were a little thin on the ground but, apart from the experience described in post #12, all interactions we had with staff were absolutely fine. There were some, our cabin steward included, that went the extra mile to make sure we had a great cruise experience. Having worked in hospitality previously, albeit many years ago, I can appreciate how hard some work to try and meet the expectations of the customers, and how appreciative they can be of positive feedback. A simple ‘thank you’ and civility from the customer can go a long way. Unfortunately, we witnessed two ugly incidents where the treatment of staff by customers fell far below our expectations. One is described in post #17. The other happened in the same restaurant a few days earlier. A man near to us was clearly unhappy with the portion size he was given, but instead of speaking discreetly with his waiter, as I would do, and asking if he could have a little more fish or whatever, he appeared to want the rest of the section to know of his displeasure. He beckoned over the waiter, who was serving another table, and demanded, “TAKE THIS AWAY NOW AND GET ME A NEW ONE; THAT WOULDN’T FEED A SMALL CHILD”. The embarrassed waiter received no please or thank you, but did all he could to appease this one ‘entitled’ individual. MY HOLIDAY APP (NON-APP) For us, this worked fine, and we didn’t experience any problems with it ....apart from the out of date bar prices, as referred to in post #7, #11, and #12. Perhaps, booking all our meal times as soon as we could, and not relying on the virtual queue, influenced our positive experience; I was aware that it had crashed a couple of times and overheard folk attending the Opal podium stating they had been ‘kicked out of the virtual queue’. The My Holiday app (non-app) is far from perfect, and gets a lot of stick on these boards. Whilst in conversation with a Head Waiter, who shall remain nameless, about something else, I turned the conversation on to making reservations through My Holiday. Their response: “Sir, Madam, in my opinion the app is crap”. Their advice was, if anyone had problems booking a table, to speak with them or any of their colleagues.