Globaliser

Sydney to London can't be done non-stop yet. It'll be a little less than the current durations when those flights do start. But for jet lag purposes, it'll make little difference whether you're on a 21-hour non-stop flight or (as now) a 23-hour one-stop flight.

Personally, I wouldn't be holding out much hope of actually being on a Zodiac for the transfer. I always thought that Seabourn provided classier (if less exciting) tenders. Yes, this is routine at Greenwich. I found some old photos of Silver Cloud at (the former) Tower Bridge Lower, using a similar arrangement and a very attractive London resident as a tender.

Taking tomorrow (2 May), the four fastest Sydney to London itineraries are operated by Singapore Airlines (22:40), Emirates (23:15), Qantas --> British Airways (23:20) and British Airways (23:40).

I think that this point is the closest that you can get by taxi to Greenwich Pier, which is where it sounds like your ship's tenders may be docking. (That's consistent with the Port of London Authority's cruise ship schedule for 2023, which shows only one Seabourn call this year - Seabourn Venture on Friday 12 May 2023 - which is listed as Greenwich Ship Tier.)

Sydney to London, at a guess?

Isn't this one ex-Amsterdam?

It's this one:

Trains are pretty wheelchair-friendly, and train operating companies offer assistance to those who need it (preferably pre-booked to guarantee availability, but this is not essential). So if the passengers in question don't even need wheelchairs, the train should be feasible. But it wouldn't have the door-to-door convenience that a car could offer.

Using an online cruise travel agent's search engine (we're not allowed to name names), searching for British Isles cruises in August and September 2024, and excluding the small ship cruise lines, I quickly got to this list: Carnival, Costa, Cunard, Disney, Holland America, MSC, Norwegian, P&O, and Princess.

You might want to check that it's giving you prices like £17.50 and £13.50. The money in question is the pound; we don't use dollars here. So if you really are seeing dollar signs on the website you're looking at, something is very wrong. You may be being scammed.

But I bet that this time fstuff1 will actually listen. The Southern Railway website doesn't seem to have an easy way of filtering out the non-direct trains. If fstuff1 is going to Gatwick, my guess is that they will have luggage, so direct trains would be preferable. The National Rail website does allow filtering for direct trains only, and it's clearly showing those £13.50 Advance fares from 0913, together with some £9.50 Advance fares from 1413 onwards. (Though we probably need to translate the times for them too.)

I think I can guarantee that your ship will not be at South Hampton. But you've been told this before. You can buy Advance tickets on the train operating company's web page; you're not required to have the app. AIUI, the number of Advance tickets may be limited, so if they've sold out, you may be too late.

A Londoner's approach: que sera, sera. On any day with extensive road closures, expect delays on the roads. But it looks like cc cruiser could take a 2-day delay and still be OK for their cruise. However bad the roads are on 6 May, I doubt that they will be that bad.

Hotel bookings can be very flexible. So one answer is to make two hotel bookings. You could make a booking for two nights and another booking for one night. When you know how many nights you need, cancel the one that doesn't apply. Or you could make a booking for the first night and a booking for the second night. If you discover that you only need one night (which would be the second night), cancel the booking for the first night. To make this work, you would have to forego some of the savings that you might get from pre-paid non-refundable bookings. However, what you've saved on the air fare will probably more than make up for the additional cost of flexible hotel bookings. The second alternative would allow you to make a cheaper pre-paid non-refundable booking for the second night and a flexible booking for the first night only. When you know that the timing of your outbound flight means that you do need two nights, then check whether a cheaper pre-paid non-refundable rate is still available for the first night. If it is, then cancel the flexible booking and rebook at the cheaper rate. Either way, let the hotel know in advance that you're staying for two nights on two separate bookings; most hotels will do what they can to make sure you don't have to move rooms (as it's easier for the hotel too if you don't move).

Depending on how much you are in to contemporary art, having a few days makes Hauser & Wirth Somerset feasible. It would take a couple of hours to get there, either by train or by car. Chichester, Salisbury and Winchester have good cathedral choirs. They host what is now known as the Southern Cathedrals Festival. But if you have "explored" the area's cathedrals already, then maybe you have already exhausted the musical offerings of these cities.

As I read it, scottbee's post seemed to be addressing exactly the same thing that I've just posted about above: the significant increase in price if trying to add Athens-Rome in to the same itinerary as the inter-continental flights. The answer is to leave the Athens-Rome flight out of the search. I think that everyone (including the OP) already understood that Athens-Rome would then be bought separately. I doubt that any of us thinks that walking or swimming that part of the trip is a feasible option.

If you don't need a private car all the way, then it sounds like the public transport option would work too: taxi to Southampton Central station, train to London Waterloo, taxi to the JW Marriott Grosvenor House. It would be rather less pricey. This is true, but I don't understand why it's such a big deal for anyone who can handle their own luggage. There is almost no step up into the train, and many thousands of people take suitcases on these trains every day even though there's no dedicated luggage storage. It's no worse than taking the Tube with suitcases, which is also done by many thousands of people every day. You just improvise, and everyone else improvises around you.

I haven't researched this exhaustively for your situation, but the likely reason is the rules for different possible fares, along these lines. If you price USA-Athens//Athens-Rome//Rome-USA in a single itinerary, a price will be returned that is fared in one of the following ways: 1. 50% of USA-Athens-USA with no stopover needed (fare A) plus 50% of USA-Athens-USA with a stopover in Rome (fare B). Fare A must be combinable with fare B. If you're lucky, fare A could be the same as fare B - in other words, the rules of the cheapest fare allow the stopover. However, sometimes the cheapest fare does not allow stopovers, so fare B is more expensive than fare A and the combined price goes up. Also, sometimes the cheapest fare cannot combine with fare B, so a more expensive fare must be used for both fare A and fare B. 2. 50% of USA-Athens-USA with no stopover needed (fare C) plus 50% of USA-Rome-USA (fare D) plus 100% of Athens-Rome (fare E). Fare C, fare D and fare E must all be combinable with each other. In this situation, you don't need fare D to allow a stopover. However, it may be that the cheapest fares cannot combine with fare E (especially if fare E is a different airline's fare), so more expensive fares must be used for both fare C and fare D. If you price USA-Athens//Rome-USA alone, then the price is 50% of USA-Athens-USA with no stopover needed (fare C) plus 50% of USA-Rome-USA with no stopover needed (fare D). The only real restriction here is that fare C and fare D must be combinable with each other, but because it isn't difficult to find a single airline (or airline group) that offers both USA-Athens-USA and USA-Rome-USA fares, this tends not to be a problem. That is why open-jaw pricing for itineraries like USA-Athens//Rome-USA can work so well. And in your particular situation, it really doesn't matter that Athens-Rome is on a separate ticket.

The header photo on that website page seems to show the current cruise terminal. If that's right, then I imagine that any such "coexisting" would only occur if the venue was accidentally double-booked.

That's one of the best descriptions of those abominations that I have ever seen.

This seems very unlikely. Once you strip out the low-fare airlines (Ryanair, easyJet and the like), there are very few scheduled passenger flights at Stansted and even fewer that might even arguably be usefully used by passengers starting in the US. I wonder whether the agent was either just reading from a script, or dredging up some hazy personal knowledge about the names of some London airports. London City has far more possible flights than Stansted.

Is this the "Park Plaza London Waterloo" at 6 Hercules Road SE1 7DP? If so, I agree that you need a cab. You don't have any other realistic option. Personally, I wouldn't leave any later than 8.00 am. It's not that the road journey will take long, but I would be allowing some margin for either not being able to find a cab, or a pre-booked car not turning up on time.

No, the OP's cruise was always going to be Athens-Athens. The options for flying were: USA-Athens-Rome-USA on one ticket, which was proving to be too expensive. USA-Rome-USA with a separate Rome-Athens-Rome nested inside. USA-Athens//Rome-USA on one ticket, with an additional Athens-Rome on a separate ticket. There is no "separate ticket" problem with an additional Athens-Rome ticket, because the OP has the cruise interposed between the USA-Athens and Athens-Rome flights, and a multi-day stop in Rome interposed between the Athens-Rome and Rome-USA flights.

Even if you select only Virgin Atlantic, you will see that every destination listed is at T3.

Unsurprisingly, the airport's website can help: Which terminal? Find out the terminal your airline uses at Heathrow.