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Well there are simple answers there - - Charge extra for a 'premium' embarkation time - Get people onto the ship as fast as possible so you can sell them drinks in the bars But compare any airport security process to the port security process. The port security process is 'serial' with one passenger at time putting items on the X-ray baggage belt and making their way through the metal detector arch. Whereas at almost every airport the process is now 'parallel' with four, five or six people loading onto the X-ray baggage belt at the same time, and then two belt loads of people making their way through a single arch. But with the low cost airlines, people are bringing as much hand-luggage on-board as people do on embarkation, but the streamlined airport processes can cope with the volume and get people through fast.

I would have thought that the two primary requirements of every cruise line would be - 1. Ensure that all security protocols are met; and 2. Make the embarkation process for their customers as pleasant as possible. And if a small number of cruise companies have protocols that get in the way of the second of those, then the question needs to be asked why that is, and does it need to be that way, because for the other companies it is now adversely impacting their customer's experience. My feeling is that an awful lot of things are done in a particular way, not because that is the best way to do them, but because they have always been done that way and nobody has evaluated whether that is still the best way. And if it is, then that's fine, but if it isn't then it isn't.

Most airports have redesigned their security points over the last five years or so, keeping to the same footprint but enabling a larger and faster passenger flow - that would be a good starting point. And unless those cruise lines who have a more traditional check-in process are in the majority (or pay an awful lot for the privilege) then someone should be giving them a deadline to make the change so other cruise line customers are not unnecessarily inconvenienced.

Not a hard issue to fix if they actually wanted to, but the $64k question is whether they want to, and so far the indication is they don't.

That would appear to be the case, as this was the guidance back in 2016 - What to wear on a P&O; Cruises holiday - P&O; Cruises (archive.org) Black Tie nights Black Tie nights are all about getting dressed up in your finery. For ladies, cocktail dresses and ball gowns are perfect. For men, dinner jackets or tuxedos are most common, but a dark lounge or business suit and tie are fine, too. You can also wear formal national dress and military uniform on these nights. Whereas the guidance now is - What to wear on a P&O Cruises holiday - P&O Cruises (pocruises.com) Formal evenings Celebration Nights give you the option to put your most fashionable foot forward. Elegance is the order of the evening… a chance to wow everyone with a favourite cocktail dress, tuxedo, ball gown, DJ, or a suit, jacket and tie. You may also wear formal national dress or military uniform. A subtle but important change, and one I suspect has been needed for two reasons. Firstly there will be many more men these days who simply don't own a suit, as that is not what is worn even in offices these days. Secondly, with the rise in the wearing of 'comedy' Dinner Jackets it would be pretty hard to say that someone wearing a smart blazer and tie was not acceptable when those wearing the 'comedy' jackets are. That might have been the case in the past as the low cost airlines did try to force passengers to only bring a single bag onboard. However these days, even if there is a one bag hand-luggage limit, most airports insist that any airlines using them allow passengers to take a separate bag onboard with their duty free purchases. I seem to recall Spain even passed a law requiring it.

Well that's particularly stupid of P&O. I suppose the option is to do this - Life on board | P&O Cruises (pocruises.com) If you do not register a payment card during online check-in, you will not be able to complete the online check-in process. Instead, you will need to check-in and register a payment card when you arrive at the terminal. The check-in team at the terminal will ask you for your credit or debit payment card. Perhaps if all families with children did this then someone in P&O might poke their IT team to fix the issue. Then if the card can be removed, then the alternative is to register a payment card and print the boarding cards, then email P&O withdrawing that card from your children's use. And if P&O are too inefficient to process that instruction given by email, well that's now their problem. No it isn't. With phones and tablets, both Apple and Android allow the parent to sent up restrictions on spending by children (and many more restrictions, such as needing to approve downloads, setting time limits, etc.). When setting up a new phone or tablet these days that is one of the first questions you are asked - is this phone or tablet for you or is it for a child. The problem is that parents don't take advantage of those restrictions on the phones or tablets they give their children, or they do set them up but they are not careful enough with the password, or they simply give the child their phone or tablet to play with, forgetting that it doesn't have any restrictions on it. Whereas with P&O they are insisting that a 7 year old child has full access to a credit card with no restrictions offered. A generous person might say that P&O doing this is simply incompetent, a less generous person might say that P&O is being dishonest because they want the child to run up costs on ice creams, sweets, drinks, etc. without the parent's knowledge until it is too late to object.

Was it because he wasn’t wearing a tie, as P&O’s dress code says you only need a jacket and tie, not a suit. https://www.pocruises.com/what-to-wear Formal evenings Celebration Nights give you the option to put your most fashionable foot forward. Elegance is the order of the evening… a chance to wow everyone with a favourite cocktail dress, tuxedo, ball gown, DJ, or a suit, jacket and tie. You may also wear formal national dress or military uniform. Again, whatever style preference, simply join in the mood and chic of the evening.

https://goo.gl/maps/eWTWUwof9r3K933Q6 And again, *the* short stay car park. Are you certain there is no other car park nearby that could be mistaken for *the* short stay car park? Are you absolutely sure, after all the signs for short stay parking at the entrance to thr Ocean Terminal dock road point you away from the terminal and along Town Quay towards the river - https://goo.gl/maps/fuwcqVtSg5GhRPBg9 A member of staff that is too dim to simply explain where the car park you believe is trivially easy to find and instead tells the customer to ‘go away. They wouldn’t have needed either the rude and incompetent staff member or an inflexible chatbot if they had simply put some proper directions and a map on their website.

Hmm, “ought to” is a recipe for disaster and the CPS key collection kiosk (which I doubt receives much mail) does have a postcode. But you are continuing to ignore the issue. Even if there isn’t a postcode there was no need for the company to be rude and unprofessional by failing to provide alternative directions. As before for the umpteenth time, why didn’t they provide a grid location, a map, a photo, frankly anything at all that would ensure their customers did end up at the right place.

Perhaps you could provide a description of the precise location for it and then I might be able to - you know, perhaps a grid reference, a 'what three words' reference, or even a plain old straightforward map with an arrow. Without those, then how would I know if I was referring to the same short stay car park as you were.

And I would very much suggest that a car park has a post code - as before, all the car parks that I have booked online have had postcodes, and for example Ocean Terminal has a different postcode (SO14 3QN) to the CPS office at Ocean Terminal (SO14 3QP) and so it is pretty likely that a designated car park at that location would have a post code. But irrespective of that, your suggestion that they follow the signs to *the* short stay car park is rather presumptive - are you absolutely certain there is a single short stay car park near Ocean Terminal and it is not possible that there is more than one short stay car park? And are you really suggesting that someone sets off and hopes that a member of staff points them to the correct car park. No chance of that ever going wrong... As before, any company with decent customer service would have a postcode for the location of the car park on their website, and if by chance the car park didn't have a postcode then they would have an alternative to let people know where it was, such as a grid location, a 'what three words' location, or even a plain old simple map with an arrow pointing to it. But did this company have any of those, nope they did not. And when asked they got abusive about it. That is not good customer service, and certainly not the sort of customer service that you want from someone driving off in your car to hopefully store securely for a couple of weeks.

A serious, although I am sure controversial, question for my fly cruise in December - what is the minimum needed to get into the MDR on a formal night as I am disinclined to take my DJ and all the accoutrements. The wording from P&O is - Celebration Nights give you the option to put your most fashionable foot forward. Elegance is the order of the evening… a chance to wow everyone with a favourite cocktail dress, tuxedo, ball gown, DJ, or a suit, jacket and tie. You may also wear formal national dress or military uniform. Again, whatever style preference, simply join in the mood and chic of the evening. Now my reading of that is "jacket and tie" (and obviously trousers!) is that a "jacket and tie" is separate from a suit, and it doesn't matter what sort of 'jacket' just something reasonably smart with a tie. And yes, yes, decline of society, should have booked something else, etc. but really my question is - will I get to eat in the MDR.

No AndyLovesCruises was not being difficult. Every single parking company I have booked with in the last few years has given a postcode and address, and often these days a grid location and a 'what three words' location, as the last thing any decent company wants is for their customer to have any difficulty locating them on a day when they might be rushing. If you were being generous the parking company's response was unprofessional, and if you were not then insulting and incompetent. But then this is a company that appears to have a lax attitude to the law.

Sorry but not the faintest idea. But what I can tell you is that on each of the occasions I have used CPS the car has moved a few hundred yards and there it has remained for the fortnight until I returned.

Yes, just take the printed copies with you and then at Malta when you take them to the coach you can attach them to the bags there as the P&O staff their will have staplers to secure them.

To quote from the HE website - "We act as a booking agent for the companies that provide or operate the travel products we sell on our website. Your contract for the provision of these travel products will be with the applicable provider of them, and they have their own terms and conditions." And so as agents you might hope that they vet the companies they act as agents for, but then again an awful lot of agents don't. Unless they have a tracker installed in their car then they won't know where it has been taken, and if it was dumped on a street corner but the OP was luck and it was returned with no damage then is that a good review? Perhaps not. But I would expect the company to comply with the law and have *a* physical address shown on their website, even if it is simply the office they operate from. Every time I have used CPS the tracker I have in my car has shown it has moved the few hundred yards to the parking space where I collected it a fortnight later, and it didn't move anywhere else in the interim.

CPS is fine. Video taken of the car and each time I have used them the car has moved about 100 meters into the compound next door. However a company offering a meet and greet service where you have no idea where the car is going to be kept, and they avoid providing an address to contact them as the law requires - not for me.

Could be worse. Many of these non-official meet and greet companies just dump the cars on a random residential street. For ‘meet and greet’ companies, I will only use an official port or airport operator where there is video of the car taken on drop-off and the car isn’t going to leave the port or airport. And even then I am turning on the ‘valet mode’ my car has that will track its location, miles driven, and even records the maximum speed the car has been driven.

Except that The Company, Limited Liability Partnership and Business (Names and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2015 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/17/regulation/25/made require all those details to be included on a company's website, as do the Electronic Commerce (EC Directive) Regulations 2002 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2002/2013/regulation/6/made That a company has chosen to break two laws by choosing not to include the address they are operating from would not make me inclined to trust them with my car.

The website appears to list no physical address to contact them - not a cat in hell's chance I would use them.

There are 15 CCS chargers at Watford Gap southbound services, with 10 available to charge at the current time - Electric Highway (gridserve.com) (plus a whole bunch of slower chargers).

You assume *all* the EVs will need charging - well mine doesn't when I drive down there as I did a couple of weeks ago, and I don't live anywhere near Southampton. The range on many of the newer EVs is well over 300 miles. Then can they cope with those that want that service - well for my December fly cruise out of Gatwick the official airport parking will charge it for you ready to return for a reasonable fee, and if Gatwick can do it then I am sure it is not beyond the capability of CPS to do that. And then these days there are EV chargers everywhere - just take a look at the next motorway services you pull into, and you will see ranks and ranks of them waiting to be used.

I was on the same cruise, and this is the first time ever out of many cruises that I have missed a port. Either I am lucky or I choose cruises where weather isn't an issue. My insurance is also with Aviva but it is a free policy that comes with the HSBC Premier current account. There are no fees but there is either a minimum income requirement or a minimum amount of investments you need to hold with them. Yes, I looked at the Nationwide Flexplus account but the cost to add existing medical conditions was exorbitant. Whereas the HSBC account has a long and wide ranging list of medical conditions that are accepted with no additional fee. Same with my Aviva policy - but as it covers any non-recoverable costs for missed ports and I have managed to avoid any missed ports other than this one, then I can live with that. I was disappointed because I have been watching the Danish TV drama 'Seaside Hotel' (streaming on the Channel 4 catch up service All4) that is set just along the coast and where the guests go when they want to go to the 'big town for the nightlife' and wanted to see it!

Not seen P&O, or any of the other Carnival brands, do it. On the many occasions when I have done fly and stays with other Carnival brands (mainly Costa) then it has been packaged together by the TA as a special offer. I have seen P&O occasionally advertise cruises that you would need to fly to but without the flights, and then the 'cruise only' price is usually similar to those including flights so you would be crazy to buy one.

Is P&O ever going to use those ships anywhere that tendering would be involved?