maz48

6 hours ago, DamianG said:

Thanks for all the replies. We’ve now found an opportunity to sail on back to back cruises on the same ship (Iona) so are shopping around for the best price. 
 

Staying onboard between cruises when most others are disembarking & embarking sounds like a unique thing to do, and we’ve love to hear anyone else’s experiences of this.

 

 

I like that back to back changeover day also, though not so much when it gets to us disembarking and we see others staying onboard🙄! 

We travelled from Wetherby Services 4 times now. The coach always comes from up Newcastle way, can't remember exactly. Usual time of pick up for us is 7am but back at first pick up I think it is 5am. Usually have 1 quick stop and one longer one, but that varies, and sometimes there have been a few other pick ups on the way, but only once in the 4 times we were on the coach. The time we had a few other pick ups we arrived about 2.30/2.45. When no other pick ups, it has been between 1pm and 1.30. Comfort wise okay, other than some of the seats give me a bit of backache. Once at the port it is quite quick to be onboard the ship, and they deal with the baggage from the coach too which is a plus.

On 2/9/2024 at 1:49 PM, Interestedcruisefan said:

As it stands I believe Iona aims cruises at older demographics with its 4 MDRs and Arvia aims cruises at younger demographics with less MDRs and more choice of restaurants etc 

 

As a result Iona cruises are older average age and quieter and calmer cruises

 

Arvia more lively  and younger average age

 

We enjoy both ships

 

My parents wouldn't enjoy either as they want a small ship without children on board that's calm and quite and they can get around easily

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just read your post after I wrote my one above where I was wondering about what makes the 'atmosphere' different between Iona and Arvia I am sure you are correct here. We are older(in our 70's), though have a way to go yet in our cruising hopefully, but we do like a quieter atmosphere for sure, like your parents. As someone said, it is good there are options for all tastes these days. 

On 2/8/2024 at 7:11 PM, jaxw17 said:

Did not like Arvia at all have been told by numerous people that Iona has a lot better atmosphere.

We are just off Iona, our first on P&O, so not been on Arvia obviously, though I have been looking at her for the Med cruises. We chatted to a gentleman onboard who takes up to 5 P&O cruises a year(sigh, good for him) and though he sailed on Arvia, he much prefers Iona for the atmosphere. Seems a few agree with him. I wonder what it actually

is about Arvia that makes some passengers feel that way.

9 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

I once asked for thick toast at breakfast in the QG, and was surprised when our lovely waiter looked less than enthusiastic. That very day we went on the Ship’s Tour, and I discovered just how many flights of stairs the unfortunate waiter had to trek down to get it. I have never asked for it again, though I must say the toast is one of the least good things in QG.

It was a couple sitting close to us who mentioned it. I think quite a few other diners were asking for thick toast by the end of the cruise as word got round. Maybe it should have become a menu staple. Yes, the grills toast is pretty poor.

1 minute ago, majortom10 said:

Wouldn't really know because we didn't use either the Lido or Britannia for meals and was not interested in muffins for breakfast 

I understand, plus all to personal taste. We have been in the Grills  a few times also but we still enjoyed the odd Lido breakfast, toast was better, until I found you could ask for thick bread in the Grills, and it was thick.

Anyway, what I mentioned wasn't on topic so back to that.

1 hour ago, majortom10 said:

We didn't really have our toilet working at all for most of the first five days even to the conclusion of having an engineer out at 1130pm on one evening and was told by concierge to use public toilets.

Oh wow, sorry you had that experience, we were very lucky then. Trotting down to the nearest public toilet one, twice or three times a night, as my husband(and others) would need to do would not be my idea of fun. 

I must add here that we had an amazing cruise, and as we only went to the dining room about 5 or 6 times the noise/vibrations was not a huge issue overall and did not affect our enjoyment.  Off topic and a first world issue though, I was,  shall I say, amused and slightly concerned, by the size and quality of the muffins every day at breakfast time in the Lido buffet. What have they done  to them? The double chocolate ones were about 1 and half inches deep and looked very strange, tiny all round. They removed the whole tray of them and replaced them with a different kind early on during breakfast. The blueberry ones were not much better,  small, with hardly a blueberry in sight and didn't seem fluffy like a muffin should. Either they changed the recipe or bought a less quality muffin mix. However, they were perfect in the Chart Room for morning coffee, just like before, so good. They must make them elsewhere for there. I guess Cunard must be looking after our weight and health😂

18 hours ago, majortom10 said:

We were in Q5 aft on deck 4 on 24th Nov-6th Dec and the noise and vibration was that bad we were moved from the suite. We have cruised before aft on QE and other ships and never encountered noise and vibration like that. We also had issues where we couldn't use the toilet and with the smells around the ship there was obviously a problem throughout the ship. The entrance to the theatre on deck 3 was awful every evening.

Yes, I agree about the toilet flush problem, and some smell issues around the ship We had a couple of times we couldn't flush the toilet, once for over an hour. We were on deck 6 and quite a few passengers were out reporting it to the stewards who said it was being worked on. So grateful to those members of crew! It was our first experience of that problem on our many Cunard cruises but we have had it happen on other cruise lines. So it can be an issue. 

12 hours ago, maggielou362 said:

I am by no means experienced, but these beautiful ships ARE pieces of metal rivetted/welded 

/glued (well, maybe NOT glued) together and they are bobbing along on the open ocean. Surely one would expect some noise?

Of course, but there is noise and NOISE. We only noticed the bad noise/vibrations  in the back of Britannia lower dining room. 

22 hours ago, BigMac1953 said:

We disembarked on 6 December. No problems whatsoever for our 12 days, except too short.

We were on that cruise and the noise and some juddering at the back of the dining room some evenings was pretty bad. There was lots of talk about it. It was very similar last year at the same time as we always ate in that part of the dining room, and I know they had to do some work in dry dock, was it a pod?  I had expected it to be much improved this year, but it was only a little better. Some passengers said to us that they believed it was never the same since they added the rooms etc. on the back, causing all the noise(not just the wake or other normal noise) I have no idea as we had never eaten in that part of the dining room before last year and this.

5 minutes ago, john watson said:

If it were me travelling, I should check with reception to see if there is a special coaches group.  If there is not self disembarkation would be prudent  .

 

Regards John

I would have thought there would be special coach groups, but it sounds like it is a bit of a free for all disembarking and trying to collect bags. If we were younger we would do self disembarkation. Might have to cut down drastically on bag weight🤣

How does disembarkation work for those on coach transfers? It will be our first time with P&O, and having used coaches before with other cruise lines we get a time to be on the coach as they want to be on their way on time, which has been 9am on our precious cruises.

1 hour ago, Dinglebert said:

I phoned this morning at exactly 8.30.  Now have a 15 minute wait.

 

which has turned into 30 so far..

It is so annoying. I hope you have already got through, or will do very soon. These companies need to take on more call centre folk. I guess they just don't care enough about their customers.

1 hour ago, Dinglebert said:

I have emailed them twice well over a week ago with a simple question.  No response at all.

Try messaging on their Facebook page. Had a pretty quick reply that way.

19 hours ago, Pushpit said:

That's an interesting job, almost a parody one "Christmas Decorations Installer on Luxury Cruise Ships".

We chatted to one  of the ladies decorating. She loved it. Just a seasonal job I think she said. They had their company's(I presume) name on their tops so no missing them around the ship. Personally I get far too stressed decorating our 1 Christmas tree so would need a do nothing cruise to get over this job🤣

We were on QV last November, disembarking on 24th November. The decorating team from the USA were onboard and spent the whole cruise putting up the trees and decorations. It was interesting to watch them. On disembarkation day they were flying to the Caribbean to begin on QM2. It could be any which way though this year of course. QV looked fantastic, they do a great job.

Those of us on a thread for our next Tuesday cruise on QV have all just had our boarding times changed to later. No reason given. A fellow cruiser had theirs changed from 1pm to 3.45!   We are arriving by coach(for the first time) so arriving later anyway and expected to just arrive, check in and board straight away, but it seems the terminal might still be full.

I am trying to print our tickets for our cruise in a few weeks, but all I get is 'unable to validate try again later.' Tried mine and my husbands login info but no luck.

Okay, just managed via a different browser, though the first newer Cunard page login sent me back to the old login page where I had to input cruise details again, but got there, and we are ready to go!

I am trying to access our next cruise booking to print out boarding tickets, but it comes up unable to validate. Tried a few times, double checked information a few times, but no way in.

Ha anyone else had this issue?

Can they be used in Starbucks on the ships that have a Starbucks?

Thank you for your review. We are going on Navigator in just 10 days on our first ever RCI cruise so I am a little nervous. We have cruised quite a few times with other cruise lines, so used to cruising, just enjoy trying new lines. Though I don't really enjoy finding my way around a new ship. Good to know things were so good.

Thank you for taking the time to do your live blog. Very helpful for me as we are on this ship on our first ever RCI cruise in 5 weeks. I realised I needed to do a little research and was so glad to see your thread.

Thank you all. I thought it would be fine but wanted to be sure as we certainly wouldn't be taking enough dollars to cover the account:eek:

Hi.

First time RCI cruiser here, though have cruised many times. Are we able to change or add a credit card at terminal check in? I always do the online check in, but it is my husband's second card we use for onboard accounts due to $ rates. It hasn't been a problem before to add that card at online check-in under his name, on other lines, but here it had to be a card in my name, due to me by then being the lead name as I was doing the online check-in. There was no way to change unless I guess, starting all over again through his account:rolleyes:. So we ticked 'cash' presuming we could add his card when we are checking in at the terminal. I presume we will be able to? Or do we have to re-do the online check-in under his name? Thank you.

We saw the Pullmantur Horizon in Tenerife when we were there on QE in December. We were only a few days after you were there. I looked it up when we were home and found such amazing prices and so began researching. There really isn't much info. out there so I was really glad to see your review and found it very helpful. I was worrying about language issues, but you have sorted that for me. I have a couple of questions if you can answer please.

What time was the emergency drill on the first day? I couldn't find it on the daily newspapers. Once a few years ago when we were in Gran Canaria on a cruise stop and had a late departure, there was another ship in that was embarking passengers that day, and as we left at about 10.15pm, their passengers were standing outside doing their emergency drill:o

Coffees. Do they have speciality coffees and if so can you remember costs of cappuccinos? We don't drink much alcohol so coffee is what we enjoy.

Special diets. You might not have any idea about this, but do you know if they are catered for over much?

Thank you very much. It sounded like you enjoyed your cruises.