Apial

The Harbour Club is where I would go. The food is to die for and the view must be the best of any restaurant in Malta. Its not cheap, well at least in the evening.it gets excellent reviews, here .

On ‎1‎/‎25‎/‎2019 at 6:43 PM, daiB said:

La Rochelle?

Yes, La Rochelle. Got shouted at for putting my arms too high whilst being frisked. The scruffy  security guy didn't even look official. "Lower you arms! This is not a hold up!", "You have a problem?!" Glad I wasn't North African or I probably would have got cuffed. No manners.

3 minutes ago, daiB said:

He interesting thing is that they did not do a check on the way in to France the Passport check was to get back on the ship. Including the queue about 10 to 15 minutes. Far less than the queue for the shuttle to get back to the port. There problem is the distance the shuttles have to go plus dealing with the traffic in an old town.

 

However I do like La Rochelle as a port.

Another problem is that at mid-tide the gangplanks have to be moved regularly as they become too steep. This is due to the big tidal range in La Rochelle. Ballast tanks are used to tip the ship up or down each side as needed, but eventually the deck level has to be changed. Then nobody can get on or off, and the queue can exceed the length of the ship.

13 minutes ago, miniyorkie said:

Apial - thank you for the confirmation and the previous post regarding La Rochelle. I was seriously considering booking a cruise with this port  in the itinerary but  now re-thinking as perhaps not the best choice when there are other options available. Thank you for the advice.

Hi,

one of the crew said it was always the same when they arrived in La Rochelle. Big disorganised immigration queues with full passport checks. 

To counter balance though, the Hennessy distillery trip did make up for it a bit!

16 hours ago, majortom10 said:

I am not a scaremongerer and certainly a half glass full guy but having just returned from Austria, an EU country, and having to wait over half an hour to get through passport control at Manchester airport into my own country with a British passport and knowing what the government say and like I said previously who believes a word what they say I shall wait with baited breath on my Mediterranean cruise in May if there is a no deal and see what happens.

 You are lucky it was only 30 minutes. Try waiting 90 minutes and then having to drive 3 hours at 2am to get home. The posters put up by UK Border Force look like they borrowed them off the film set from  Orwell's "1984". They certainly do not welcome tourists to the UK. Its no surprise to hear that EU visitors to the UK fell last year despite the £ being at about its lowest ever.

La Rochelle should be avoided, I agree. Immigration officers  there must be the rudest on the planet. US immigration doesn't even get close.

9 hours ago, kerryincork said:

I just read, that at an airport  it takes 25 seconds for the EU to  to check a  UK passport. After 29th March, a no-deal scenario will increase this by 90 seconds per passenger . So getting off the ship will take 1.5 minutes times 4000 passengers long er (100 hours).

 

I think your maths is a little off. For the 100 hours to apply you would have to only have 1 passport control officer on duty, then everyone is wanting to get off the ship at the same time , everyone has a British passport and all passengers are adults.

 

This i think is an overly pedantic view.

 

In St. Petersburg where they definetly do inspect everyone's passport, I queued for about an hour most other passengers report the same. But in the afternoon when most people have disembarked its only a few minutes.

 

I think worse case scenario it will be like St. Petersburg, if you have tour you will end up queueing for an hour. If I don't have a tour I might not get off the ship till 11. Big crowds are gone I would anticipate maybe a 15 min wait.

 

Which is not too bad. Not as easy as it is now but not the absolute nightmare as some imaginings.

 

Besides we can't do anything about it but wait and see. Either it will be a big fuss about nothing or it won't.

 

The first month after brexit will be a right mess as no one will know what to do. But it will sort itself out eventually.

Hi,

There is nothing wrong in the maths though. 100 hours is the extra man hours it takes to check 4000 airport passengers passports'.

At least the message is getting through but some people still have their heads stuck in the sand about this. Nobody likes bad news, I know. But I do have personal experience of Indian ports where the delay was so long that passengers simply did not get off the ship or their visit was curtailed by 4 hours of passport checking and also 1 hour of checking the night before landing. If you are only in port for 8 hours that it is a significant loss of visit time.

Your example in St Petersburg is probably a good example of the extra delay time to be expected in a country that is well prepared to handle large numbers of tourists at the ports, ie 1 hour to check arrival , plus presumably more queues for departure.  How about a Greek island for example? Poor resources, lack of man power, already over-whelmed with cruise ships? Who knows what might happen?

And there is also the political will of the EU country involved to consider. Portugal is sending out warm messages that it will assist UK passengers as best it can after Brexit, even offering reciprocal Health Care and bespoke UK arrival lines at airports. Some countries who do not rely so much on tourism might not be so obliging and simply will not bother.

Well I'm booked. The die is cast. I will be on one of the first week cruises into the post-Brexit era. I have no intention of standing in a queue for an hour every day, life is too short. Could it be why P&O are asking survey questions about new cruise itineraries' overnight stays in ports? That would reduce the impact of extended immigration scrutiny and could be the way forward in a post-Brexit era.

20 hours ago, daiB said:

You clearly have no idea about cruising, this comment from P&O,.

 

What about going on shore?

 

You may need to show your passport (with at least six months left until it expires) to go ashore. 

 

This is the situation now what happens now. 

 

You are taking aim at the wrong problem about Berxit. Of which there are many. On occasions we have had to show our passports both getting off and getting back on the ship. It caused little hold up.

My last trip to France required a full passport check getting back on the ship, plus I got searched too. They were going OTT. The queue to get back on the gang plank ran the entire length of the ship for 2 hours before it cleared. I remember saying to myself I'm not going to come back here again.

I just read, that at an airport  it takes 25 seconds for the EU to  to check a  UK passport. After 29th March, a no-deal scenario will increase this by 90 seconds per passenger . So getting off the ship will take 1.5 minutes times 4000 passengers longer  (100 hours). To that you have to add the time it will take getting passengers back on board. How will the ports cope if this happens?

The extra time is due to having to apply 4 more checks: passport expiry date, database confirmation of the validity of the passport, purpose of stay, and visitors ability to support themselves. Perhaps some of these extra checks will be removed for cruise ships?

Well at least you will now get a stamp in your passport.😏

6 minutes ago, elmsliebev said:

isn't there a difference between "taking your passport ashore" and "showing your passport to go ashore"? The latter implies queuing up to get through whereas the former is carrying it in case you are asked to show it while you are out and about. I thought that was more the issue - having to show your passport to go ashore, like in the US. Hopefully if that happens for cruises in the EU, it will just be the first port of call in the Schengen bloc, and that will be deemed sufficient. 

You are correct.

Last year my trip and lots of other passengers trips too, were spoilt when we tried to go ashore in India. The whole badly manged process took up an hour of queuing the night before landing so that we could show our passport to  Indian Immigration Officers on board our ship.

The next morning we had to wait another 4 hours before we were given our passports back and allowed to get off, but not before 3 more officials had another triple check. We also had to pay for a Visa to add to insult that had already been issued 3months earlier.

Many passengers decided not to get off at all. I know some passengers missed their connecting flights to visit the Taj Mahal.

The trouble with the Schengen system is that each country makes up its own rules about whether to re-check passengers arriving by ship. In fact RCI threatened to boycott one Danish port as it required a full passport check for when the ship was actually leaving the Schengen zone which was pretty pointless.

So the answer to your question is nobody knows. You could be asked to formally present your Passport for scrutiny at every Port, to embark AND disembark, or perhaps just have to wave the passport cover and show your ships card.

After all, when you get off a flight from the EU you are greeted by a huge queue at UK Border control, and despite having machine readable passport machines it still can take over an hour to get through, and that's for UK passort holders!

16 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

Yes, but not yet.  Will take ages to get that sorted.

Yes 29th March 2019.

In case you are planning to drive a car, or even a quad bike, you will need an International Driving Permit. There will be at least 3 different types depending on which country you wish to drive in as they follow different Conventions.

UK Driving licences will no longer be valid unless accompanied by the IDP.

Look on the bright side. We do not have Currency Controls like the good old days. £50 maximum could be taken on holiday as spending money, and it had to be recorded in your passport too.

I do hope that passport checker is NOT used by the check in clerks at Southampton. It will take forever. Issue date, dob, and expiry date are needed to check. Hopefully any Schengen country will do for the country box. I also hope something quicker is going to be available in each port of call.

Latest Advice 

This is also reported here and here too.

The checking tool says a 10 year  passport travelling to the Netherlands for example, would still be valid with less than 9 months left.

Why the difference? Some passport holders renewed their passports early and had an extra 9 months carried over on to the new passport, giving them a 10yr 9month passport.

The rules now say that only  a 10 year maximum passport validity is allowed. The extra 9 months are wiped off the validity. The passport has to have at least 6 months left on it, so adding the two together it means you would need 15 months left to the expiry date for the passport to be able to cross into the Schengen zone.

Don't just rely on 6 months.

On ‎1‎/‎17‎/‎2019 at 3:03 PM, jeanlyon said:

I will not be losing any sleep over it.  They will soon put something together as both sides will want frictionless entry and exit.

 Don't sleep too soundly. You and a lot of others need to check your passport  when you wake up.

The new FCO travel advice said: 'If the UK leaves the European Union with no deal, the passport validity rules for travel to most countries in Europe will change from 29 March 2019.

'Some passports with up to 15 months validity remaining may not be valid for travel.

'Before booking travel, you should check that your passport will meet these new rules and find out whether you need to renew it.'

What you say is true, but this may not necessarily remain true. At the moment you are an EU citizen, but if there is a no deal Brexit you won't be anymore and the goal posts move.

The EU currently propose to introduce a travel document called an ETIAS, deal or no deal,that will cost 7 Euro for 3 years , however its not currently available until late 2020. If there is a no deal Brexit, then hopefully our UK passports will be accepted, and if there is a deal then our passports will be accepted so long as the UK government allows unrestricted movement of EU citizens during the 2 year interim period. I don't think anyone knows for certain what will happen at the end of March if there is a no deal. In theory you might need a Visa......

David Dingle, Chairman of Carnival Uk had this to say ," If people are going to have extended immigration inspections, particularly when their cruise comes back to port, it means that they’re going to take much longer to get off the ship and go home. This means we can’t turn the ship around as quickly as we normally would. 

Our port stays would get longer and that gets very expensive. Equally we can’t have our passengers in every European port taking hours to get ashore off the ship.

‘For example, every Monday, our German brand AIDA arrives in Southampton, bringing more than 3,000 German passengers, all very keen to get ashore as soon as possible and do tours to London, Bath, the New Forest and so on.

‘We cannot have a situation where it’s taking hours and hours for them to get ashore. That would be completely unacceptable and unnecessary, so we absolutely have to get that resolved.’

I have less than 13 weeks until my cruise leaves, and it is as clear as mud what will happen. I shall certainly be travelling to Southampton the day before the cruise leaves too. I would hate to be stuck in a massive tailback of port traffic.

On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2018 at 11:02 AM, Presto2 said:

In March 2018 we booked a cruise on Celebrity for August 2019 and all of the excursions were available to review and book even though the ship was still only 30% complete. We like to have time to look at them and do some research and then share the cost out a bit. This suits us and it all adds to the excitement 🙂

 

We booked Azura with P&O for April 2019 last December 2017 and the excursions are still not out yet. I am pretty sure that they know what they are.

Any idea why it seems to take them so long to get them on line ?

They can't blame Brexit on this one as we are going to Norway ---- 🙂

 

(Before anyone wants to tell me, yes I know we can organise some ourselves but we like a mixture)

 Well Norway is a part of the Schengen Zone so technically in the event of a no-deal Brexit, UK passport holders would become third country nationals. So any rules that currently apply to third country National entering or leaving Norway would then apply to UK Passport holders. Brexit is a fair reason.

Should Norway decide to implement full Passport checks at the ports, shore trips leaving times would negatively be impacted as might return times. As P&O do not have a crystal ball, it will be interesting to see if they will be willing at this stage to advertise shore trips promising any particular timings.

On P&O's website it says that shore trips will ordinarily be advertised 12 weeks prior to departure.

 The Brexit Promise makes no promises about being able to actually spend any length of time in the ports of call. 

Running excursions requires the accurate planning, and timetabling of transport. If at this stage there is not an immigration protocol in place, how can you possibly offer a  timetable and guarantee passengers that they will be able to go on these trips as advertised if you don't know how long it will take to clear immigration?

Just what will the immigration policy be when we arrive in an EU port in April ? Disembarking 2000 passengers all at once can easily overwhelm a couple of immigration officers if they have to make full passport checks. I presume that we are not initially going to have a visa that could have been pre-checked and issued before arrival. 

My last trip to India was spoilt by the lengthy delays caused by the immigration process. Many cruisers said it was too much hassle and didn't get off the ship. I know India is not part of the EU, but it is a good example of what can happen if the infrastructure is not in place and the pen pushers take over.

I have travelled on Britannia in F731, a starboard corner suite, and it was partially affected by the soot on some days. In port it was rarely a problem. The noise from other decks was very low. The music from the live lounge was never an issue, but then we are late owls anyway.

We enjoyed the aft suite so much we have booked another aft suite, A727, for a future cruise and also the adjoining aft balcony cabin. Hopefully we might be able to join the two balconies together.

momzcruzing.....WOW, thanks! That's great news. I've been checking with various sources, on this issue, and get a variety of answers. ( Which is N O T reassuring ). I'll be on QM2 in 2 weeks for 14 days, NY > Southampton > NY and plan to get their

'answers' for the situation.

The BEST thing SANTA could bring me, this year..... is the news from CUNARD that India is being skipped.

Sorry that you won’t be getting your wishes.

Cochin is a fixed stop that QM2 has to call at. I know because I am disembarking and flying home from Kochi Int Airport. We will be getting an eVisa as we will have plenty of time to queue at immigration.

We just got an email from our cruise agent pretty much saying that eTourist Visas were causing a hold up and big delay for passengers going ashore in Cochin for our trip on QM2 next April.

However we have decided to cut short our cruise from Hong Kong to Dubai and disembark in Cochin due to work commitments. This means we will stay an extra night in India before flying home the following morning.

We really don't care if there is a delay disembarking because we will not really miss a lot. The full Visa will not only cost an extra £100 or so for two of us but it will also require a 250 mile round trip to a consulate and waste us a whole day doing so.

So do we go for an eTourist Visa or not?