JMMKUK

1 hour ago, Host Sharon said:

The terminal is not fine for me. When you book assistance at Southampton you are met with a wheelchair. At Portsmouth you have to walk miles to check in, then through security, then onto a bus before anyone offers assistance. 

Sorry, I meant the actual terminal building which has plenty of facilities, although there was rather a lot of walking through it. I thought I saw wheelchairs being used in it.

2 hours ago, Host Sharon said:

 Later I enjoyed a Singapore Sling while listening to the Lirica Piano Quartet before joining other solos for a dinner of a prawn starter, Kevin Woodford chicken dish and cinnamon pudding. Tonight and tomorrow there is a special Agatha Christie play in the theatre. Everyone has been allocated a ticket for one night or the other, so no one misses out.

PS: now I know that other lines water their cocktails down! 

Is Kevin one of the guest speakers? He & his wife are lovely if you get the chance to chat to them. Believe he was on the problem cruise so it's good if he's back on board.

5 hours ago, cowandbucket said:

Portsmouth now has a modern cruise terminal with all amenities perfectly suitable for small ships.  I was there a week ago and it’s far easier to get there for 90% of the population. Tilbury and Dover are fine for those south of London. Most of us never want to go near London and the M25! Heathrow etc… it’s a nightmare.

The terminal is fine. It's the shuttle bus & all it entails that I don't like.

Hope you are having a fabulous time. Just looked at the CM route & the lines of your ship's travel look crazy & don't make sense. Hopefully the map's blip.

Going back to Saga's home ports I wish they would use Tilbury more often. We had a great experience from it on SoA's inaugral cruise. Dover is too busy with ferries. Southampton favours Cunard, P&O & huge ships from other lines. Portsmouth is just a PITA with its drop off & shuttle bus.

Saga have the no tips policy. We always give cash to our butler & steward. Last cruise our bench seat Grill pals gave cash envelopes to their grill staff. You may need cash to do that. It isn't required. We didn't because we were served by different people in different parts of the grill.

We would love them to get a smaller ship.

Just checked the door to door for UK it is 50 miles. We were OK for Tower Bridge in 2017, there was a 50 mile route.Sorry, but they are drawing in on a promise they have no intention of keeping because of the small print.

We were told they planned to & I am surprised that it hasn't happened by now. Maybe they have nowhere to accomodate them if the single cabins fill up first. Sapphire had some interesting single cabins for entertainers. When we were in a Royal Suite the pianist was in a tiny inside cabin opposite us.

5 minutes ago, Tothesunset said:

5 weeks from now we will be boarding the Wind. It's going to be very hard to approach that voyage with our normal excitement in view of the opinions expressed in this thread (and elsewhere). 

 

Of course, some aspects of the experience will have changed since our last trip on her in 2019; that's normal, things change. What we don't expect is change for the worse. And what we certainly don't expect is overt penny-pinching, upselling, mediocre food, diffident staff or gauche fellow passengers (although there's always a few...).

 

Hoping to be pleasantly surprised. 

Really enjoyed the sudoku race & the afternoon quiz when we sailed on her. Met some great people through the quiz. That was in 2017 so before her refurb.

Hope you have a fabulous time.

SS have been repeated calling us this week to discuss our future cruises. They don't get through because we have a caller filter & as yet I haven't put their number in. Just wondering if they are getting fewer repeat bookings & are going on an all out sales campaign.

After reading this thread I'm not sure I want to talk to our cruise advisor.

6 hours ago, Alcairns said:

A word of warning on the travel service - you may be picked up at all hours of the day. We were picked up at 2:30 am for an 11:00 train from St Pancras. By the time we got to the vessel we were shattered and spent the first two days recovering. If we had to do it again we would have made our own way to London. 

You can request Saga to pick you up the day before & you pay for your overnight hotel.

We have Saga health insurance & had a letter recently saying they are partnering with BUPA for that.

Loosely based on that I can't imagine them partnering with P&O or NCL.I did wonder if the NCL rumour started because of this NCL Connect partnership announced last week.

Our first Saga cruise was on Rose in June 2003 to the Baltic Capitals. What a great cruise it was! The Baltic was flat calm & the sun shone everywhere except Finland & Russia. We were the youngest couple on board.

The only fly in the ointment was St Petersburg. We were treated very badly by security in the Hermitage & teens threw bricks at the ship as we left through the canal.

We shared a car with a Spanish resident although she probably still had a UK passport. We picked her up from her son's house so she got the free transport from there.

The car was running late & he couldn't get through to her as he didn't have a UK number or mobile for her. He had her Spanish mobile.

The online booking is very limited, I always end up calling them with the cruise details down to the online price on a screen for reference.

54 minutes ago, arlowood said:

P&O does operate a sort of pre-registration system whereby you are notified ahead of a new brochure launch and are given dates when you can access the booking system depending on your loyalty club status. So your loyalty status can be a benefit in accessing new launches, but I don't believe they have the rolling discount system that Saga uses.

They do use an agent that offers fabulous deals though. When Saga used the same agent the only perk for booking though said agent was the agent's loyalty points. I made the mistake of booking with them before the pandemic & the cruise was cancelled. Caused me problems with the rebooking & using the lovely 25% Saga had allocated for the cancellation. Saga sorted it out for me but they had to keep agent 'in the loop' because they had taken the original booking.

Well done. That means no 35% for us off that cruise.

24 minutes ago, janecambridge said:

Glad you got what you want everyone. We pre registered on 21st March so getting close! 
We want  an aft suite and only a couple are good enough for us. Have to be careful of smoking (deck 11), under the decks. It was very unpleasant inhaling smoke whilst having lunch out the back on a warm day on deck 12 . 

Been there twice. First time on Adventure's inaugral cruise they moved smoking to Deck 11 & got us. Second time we booked and hoped they'd moved it again but they hadn't. Only reallu a problem when not moving or when Captain Kim decides to reverse down the side of the Isle of Man.

We've only had a driver call once, the day before. She was checking directions for our house. Sensible because satnavs take you to a neighbours'.

I've noticed the swell more on the new ships than on Sapphire & Pearl 2. We put it down to the deeper hull of the old ships.

One very bad night Sapphire was followed from Southamton by a P&O ship. I was watching on marine traffic & the P&O ship seemed to be strugging to keep up with us.  In fact she didn't & we got well ahead.

Looks like she's arriving in Portsmouth early & missed a port again. Biscay was running over 7 so I guess this time they successfully out ran it.

Just had an email about pre-registering for 2025!

Southampton treated Saga as the underdog. We had to use Sapphire's crane to unload cases when the Queens were in port. It was chaotic, so I wasn't surprised they moved to Portsmouth to be top dog.

On 2/17/2024 at 9:36 AM, Windsurfboy said:

The flaff was for the butler not me, every time he replaced a bottle  I had to sign a form, one copy for him one for stores.

We've never had to do that. New bottles magically appear when the butler realises we are getting low.

We get a cognac that isn't available even to buy in the bars. We also got premium lager that wasn't available elsewhere last time.

There's PG available. As a Brit Gold Saganaut who always does suites should I think about booking?  Only 2 days left of the offer.

Hot tub will be hot. Pool will probably be available & heated. Enjoy!

When on the way to sunnier climes it is usually open. It doesn't empty itself as well as the ones on the old ships did when the sea was rough, it tries to sometimes.