Grandma Cruising

Oh dear! I assume you went back to them - be interested to hear the final outcome.

The 10 years issue is a bit of an issue as the yellow fever vaccination is now considered to be for life, but S. Africa doesn’t seem to have caught up with that. As we’re doing it the other way round we’ll be going from one yellow fever area (The Gambia) to another (Senegal), so if we want to go ashore in Senegal we need a yellow fever vaccination.

No visas needed for UK citizens.

You can see a selection of cabins, but not all. You have to go through a mock booking. If you sign into your account, then all you have to add is the second passengers name. Once you get to the cabin section, click on the paper and pencil icon against cabins and it shows a selection of cabins.You can choose list view or de k view too.

Good idea to post this on the roll call too.

You can upgrade from premium to ultimate, you just pay the difference between them.

It’s exactly the same as many flights. If I book a non flexible flight today for 6 months time I have to pay in full. If in 5 months the price goes down (probably because there are plenty of seats available) I can’t then get a price reduction - it’s called market pricing.

That’s great, very easy to navigate. Thanks again.

Absolutely, well done!

I saved nearly £2000 on a cruise (about 25%) even taking into account my lost deposit - not unusual and certainly not unique to Azamara

No, this is common practice in the UK. For example if you book a non-flexible flight and then it’s price changes, you can’t just swap to it if the T’s & Cs say not. You signed up to the terms and conditions. I have cancelled and lost a deposit in the past, then immediately rebooked, getting the same cabin, when it’s been worth my while to do so.

I doubt if the medical centre on the ship will have done any testing as I don’t think they have the facilities. Likely that they will have quarantined those affected, given them a diet and told them they couldn’t leave their cabins until they had had no symptoms for 24 hours. That was what happened to my husband when he had a stomach upset onboard. The diet was strictly enforced - when he rang room service he could only order plain chicken, consommé soup, plain white rice, jelly etc

I always research the towns carefully & try to find something specific I want to see or do - not always possible, but often there’s a fort, a museum, a land train, a beach etc.

Sorry, that should be Agios Nikolaos!

Avios Nikolaos - very easy to walk around on your own. There’s a lovely little land train that leaves from just past where the ship docks. You can book tickets ahead of time or take your chance when you get there https://www.littletraintours.gr/agnikolaos-train-tours

Thanks for posting, Ithikan, that’s most reassuring.

I think any offer I might get could be before Phil’s as our cruise is 20 Feb and I think his is March. If I get an offer I’ll post here how much information I get before having to accept/decline the offer.

I agree, it’s very unclear whether they’ll give you the cabin number assigned before you ‘complete the payment’.

You can bring as much alcohol on board as No want. You pay a corkage fee if you want it served in a public room, but nothing if you drink it in your cabin. Can’t point you to where it says in the website.

TAs don’t pay the same price for the cruise as we do, so some TAs (more so in the US) discount their prices or provide a lot of refundable OBC by sacrificing some of their commission, hoping this will increase their sales.

Firstly, you only need to make reservations for the speciality restaurants. The main dining room (Discoveries) is open table. You just turn up and can usually go in quickly. If you have to wait the entrance is in Discoveries bar so you can sit down & they’ll call you when there’s a table. Nowadays the reservation desk for the speciality restaurant on embarkation day seems to be in one of those restaurants, on Deck 10 aft, or sometimes just inside Windows buffet - ask at Guest Relations. It’s usually open to book as soon as people are allowed onboard

We’ve done it in Egypt so we could do a decent length tour to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, along with a lot of other passengers.

Note that Oceania has 4 ships that are the same age & size as all Azamara ships - they are the other 4 of the 8 ‘R’ (Renaissance) class ships built at about the same time. These are Regatta, Insignia, Sirena and Nautical. There other ships are bigger.

Still there for me, including (under available) the section you tick if you want to use OBC. I’m on an IPad using Safari

I missed that bit, seems very strange tho’ that you have to fill in all your credit card details when you make the bid!