yorkshirephil

29 minutes ago, zap99 said:

I'm impressed that P&O ships carry bricks...just in case.

Lets hope they don't start building cabin walls with them or my magnetic hooks are gone.

Wet and cold here, not nice. Barnsley for breakfast and a trip to th'ASDA looks like being the highlight of the day.

Today's theme seems to be dentistry, the last time I went he asked me if I wanted helium, "does it hurt less?" I said. "No but it sounds funny when you scream" was his reply.

Then he asked about fillings, "chocolate will be good"

For those folk not going to the dentist enjoy your day.

53 minutes ago, crompton21 said:

As a factual comparison, Aurora is doing a 3 night cruise to Zeebrugge on 21/4/25 and 21/4/26, so that's the same ship to the same destination at the same period of year.

The 2025 cruise is available to book this morning at £558 for an inside early saver, the 2026 cruise available to reserve this morning is £598 for an inside early saver.

I think that makes the launch price more expensive than booking a cruise which is a year away which isn't what people tend to post as being the case.

There will be many reasons to explain the pricing, but as a direct like for like comparison it doesn't tend to reflect what many people believe regarding launch pricing and booking a year out (myself included until noticing this)

I have noticed that if you book select on the 2026 version it is £592 with the early bird discount. 

Spring is in the air here, sunny but quite cool hers, it doesn't seem to be putting the greenfly off, as I have had to spay the roses this morning with some of the new shoots infested. I won't be casting a claaht even though the May flower is aaht. We have family coming for breakfast later so a nice walk with their dog after will be nice, we checked out some of the lanes and fields yesterday and they are drying out well with the wind and sun recently.

Have a nice day all.

11 minutes ago, davecttr said:

Has anyone used these? Any suggestions about which ones to buy?

I got these from Amazon, I like the way that they pivot and they are quite strong (40lb) when compared to others. They are great when using laundry on long cruises as we hang the clothes items we don't put in the dryer from the ceiling under the air vent which dries them quickly. Plus they are strong enough to hang heavy coats from the wall.

2 minutes ago, indiana123 said:

ssshh can I sneak in a little query about  somewhere else. No-one is replying  over there.

 

Someone on here said about their cruise on Ambience.  I have been her but  used the buffet for breakfast and lunch.  My query is, if we use the mdr for breakfast and lunch do we have to sit where they put us or can we ask to share or not share.  thanks

 

On the two cruises we had we had the option to share or not for breakfast and lunch in the mdr. You can request a table by the window if it is available in the area where the servers are working. Is this the info you need?

7 minutes ago, david63 said:

Surely standard rules apply. If you are happy with the price at the time of booking then go ahead and don't look at prices again, otherwise leave it and hope that the price changes (which it almost certainly will - but in which direction?)

 

Other factors come into play such as cabin type, cabin location etc. and these may override getting the best price.

No such thing as standard rules as we all see things differently and have different opinions. I book and then watch the price, this has helped me form my policy going forward and try and gauge the best time to book to suit our needs. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't and I accept that. 

47 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

I meant to add that exact point in my response. OBC is a marketing ploy to make people feel that they are getting a bargain when, in reality, they might not be. Periods of high OBC are usually accompanied by higher cruise prices. Clearly an on board offer of double or treble OBC makes it a better deal than booking at the same time ashore but, as evidenced by the recent example given in my post, it may well still end up being a poor move. People on board our recent cruise were chuffed at getting £1,200 OBC (treble OBC offer) on next years Grand Voyage, only to find that the cruise price dropped £2,000 afterwards, so that ‘offer’ cost them £800!
 

 

It also depends how you look at it; anyone who had booked the same cruise while at home at the same time would have still been £2000 down and without the extra OBC. Swings and roundabouts. For me having OBC to the value of what we usually spend onboard makes it all inclusive, albeit I would prefer to have the lower cruise price without OBC. We have a fairly simple policy, bucket list cruises we book at launch and try to do it while onboard, anything else we wait and take our chances. We also check for offers for repricing booked cruises while onboard.

10 minutes ago, lindyloo22 said:

I have never booked while I have been on board are there any benefits to doing this ie lower deposit, on board spend etc any information appreciated.

There can be various offers, lower deposit, extra OBC and discounts. If there are cruises you are considering make a note of prices as some offers are no better than what a TA at home can give or the general P&O sites. 

9 minutes ago, Purdey16 said:

We get a car because I’m a bit of a fidget and like to go to El Cotillo for lunch and Betancuria which was the original capital of the city , fantastic scary drive out to it though with some lovely views and the Ajuy caves with the rough waves , lots of different small private beaches to investigate too .

How did you find Caybeach Cala ? I’m trying to get different prices for next year and we haven’t stayed in town at all 

We liked Caybeach, the apartments were clean and tidy with the cleaner coming round 5 days a week and regular bed changes. We had an apartment that was set back from the road and had sun all day. There is a restaurant for those who don't do self catering with a snack bar and a lovely large pool.

They have entertainment in the evenings we did see a good saxophonist one evening but tended not to go very often, preferring to go for a walk in the evenings and stop off for a drink or sit on the prom watching the world go by. We found the Jet2 package for this stay was almost the same price as booking the stay and flights separate.

8 minutes ago, Purdey16 said:

Yes I am here , it’s a bit difficult to say where for a long term let , depending on if you hire a car here we don’t stay directly in town , this is caleta de fuste we stay in 10 minutes from airport, but have stayed up the hill here that can be cheaper renting but you need a car , then towards town a bit on the golf course which is a better area but ££ , there is lots of self catering in town and on sea front which we haven’t tried yet but researching at the moment for 3 weeks next April/ may .

Personaly we prefer caleta de fuste than Corralejo and Morro Jable which are at both ends of the island.

3 weeks has been the longest we have been out here but that also includes staying in family home and hotels , I think maybe yorkshirephil will have better idea for a long stay because I think he stayed for 6 weeks not long back .

W e normally book through booking.com 

self catering areas are:

Broncemar Beach suites

Caybeach Caleta 

Castillo Playa 

All these are self catering bungalows in town .

We prefer Caleta de Fuste too @brian1. Corralejo is fine for a visit and has a nice front but is too city like for us. Morro Jable is pretty but a bit remote and a bit more traditional. Caleta has everything we want. We stayed at Caybeach Cala for six weeks and were contemplating adding a few more weeks but Mrs YP damaged a tendon and trapped some nerves so we headed home. 

We went with Jet2 on a package. We didn't bother with a car as we have found that you either use the car because you feel you should or it sits at the roadside. The buses are pretty good and cheap, taxi's OK. 

A dull windy start here with rain forecast (of course rain is forecast) We have decided we are staying home today after a busy week. 

We seem to have a sheep theme going today so here is my two penneth.

How do shepherds tell their sheep apart? 

They have baa codes.

The chuckle brothers ewest to own a massive sheep

It was a two metre ewe.

I like the Stones song "Hey you get off of my cloud"

The Scottish version is better; "Hey McCloud get off of mt ewe"

26 minutes ago, kalos said:

 

Never missed his shows .

 

Avril ask yourself ,how many times over the years have you said this to Frank ? 🤔

 

https://youtu.be/pgavN7M-vrM?si=McGvq7CXvAYhnlzv    🙃

 

I always thought the saying "mend fire" strange but "purra bit o sleck on" fine. All these old sayings mainly lost in the modern world.

We went to visit friends yesterday and ended up going to Fleetwood as there is a quilting shop there that the girls wanted to visit plus a good fish wholesaler. I have to say I wouldn't rush back, although it was nice to see the trams running through the town.

Dry dull day here after a sunny crisp start, we were forecast a frost but the sun had burned it off by the time we were up and about.

I have been reading about Warwick Davis and sadly the passing of his wife. Warwick is one of my favourite actors and always comes across as a smiley and genuinely nice bloke with a cutting wit. RIP Samantha Davis.

1 hour ago, sandancer said:

Yes. It’s been applied to our Dec cruise on Iona. Applied on the app yesterday, confirmed this morning and a new invoice from P&O arrived this afternoon. Impressive. 

We got ours applied for the December cruise, hopefully soon they will update the Dec 31st 2024 till 2025 end and we can apply for the January cruise.

3 minutes ago, bee-ess said:

I managed to book some yesterday on CP but that now shows 'Coming Soon". Haven't had an email to say they will be honoured so hope the bookings are OK - should be as I have paid for them

Lots of people have had the email so I don't think P&O would want to reverse that decision now, especially as they would have to return monies paid. It does make me wonder why people were told that bookings would be cancelled by customer services unless it was a consideration. Enjoy your meals.

6 hours ago, HappyGiraffe said:

Normally it's only one or two sailings per day opening up dining bookings, but yesterday it seemed as though every cruise that's more than 14 days away but less than 120 suddenly opened dining bookings at the same time i.e. nearly 4 months worth of cruises released in one go!

 

Staggering the increase by e.g. moving to opening dining bookings 30 days ahead now and then 45 days from next week and so on would mean they only released a couple of weeks worth of cruises at a time to reduce overloading the booking system, while still giving everyone the same access as other people on their cruise.

 

Time will tell if they quietly switch to that approach or if it was just a glitch!

Switching to that approach would probably be a smart financial move as they would have a considerable amount of peoples money in the bank in advance. However maybe not so good for people who want to use OBC when they get aboard but find the speciality restaurants full. As they say "You can't please all the people all the time"

7 hours ago, roomba920 said:

I got an email from P&O stating that would honor any bookings people were able to make, even if their cruise is more than 14 days away.

We got that too. It doesn't affect us but there was much ado on facecloth with people threatening to cancel cruises as they couldn't get booked but other people on their cruise groups had. I can understand that they are not happy but threatening to cancel the cruise seemed a bit dramatic, especially when it was pointed out that there was no guarantee that they would have got booked anyway.

1 minute ago, Angel57 said:

I managed to book the Limelight for June on Iona. It remains to be seen if it gets cancelled but I understand from elsewhere that P&O are honouring those that managed to book. 🤞

The P&O email does say that bookings will be honoured. This seems to be the fairest way to deal with it as it was the P&O system fault that allowed it. I would imagine that the phones have been red hot which has probably pushed them to send the email. I did see a couple of posts on facecloth where people had reported that they were told that bookings made beyond the 14/15 day window would be cancelled, which probably caused the phones to get even hotter.

1 minute ago, Traderboy said:

We started our cruising with 4 P&O cruises .

We have never returned for 2 main reasons:

1. we came to dislike the ‘solely-British’ vibe 

2. the ‘always included’  trend seemed to pass P&O by.

 

We have recently seen the new 2026 P&O  cruise programme. There are some nice European itineraries with what seem to be quite attractive prices.

 

Can anyone please update us with the current P& 0 experience.

Is it possible to pay about £40 a night for a drinks package, WiFi included and tips paid?

 

Another issue is whether our Princess loyalty package of Elite is transferable on to P&O?

I expect not, though our initial 4 P&O  cruises did count towards our Princess loyalty level.
 

 

The P&O experience is fine in my opinion, still very British vibe, but sometimes that can apply to other cruise lines that sail out of Southampton. It is usually more than £40 a night for the drinks package although if they have an offer (10-20% discount) with any loyalty deductions you would get close. Wi-fi is not included. P&O cruises have tips built into the cost of the cruise.

The Princess loyalty level is not transferred to P&O, it used to be.

As you say there are some European cruises with good prices, however depending on how popular they are the price may go up, or on the other hand there may be good discounts if the cruise isn't selling well.

1 minute ago, alpha whiskey said:

I was offered to book yesterday, but was busy, so took a look today and it's reverted to 'coming soon'

That's for Iona in June

Anyone else having problems today?

Still lots of problems reported on some of the P&O facecloth groups. Some people seem to be booking OK well in advance and others getting the usual "coming soon" message.

It is similar for people trying to book online, working for some not for others. 

2 minutes ago, zap99 said:

When we booked Anthem yesterday, I put in our Crown and Anchor details. RC loyalty scheme. The price came up, which was a fair bit lower than I anticipated. Looking at the breakdown it included about 10%  " Seniors discount "...flipping liberty..hang on it was best part of £400. Many of the items like excursions had 30% seniors discount. We'll swallow our pride.

Absolutely, we have to put up with the bad hip or back, the where did I leave my car key moment so why not embrace the benefits, I got my pizza at Iceland today, 10% senior discount. I saved £1.80, shame about the £2.00 for parking though, a 10% discount on that and I would have broke even.

16 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

 

On our last few P&O cruises we have been struck by the number of passengers talking very positively about Ambassador Cruises and comparing them very favourably to P&O. We haven’t looked at them seriously as they have very few accessible balcony cabins (I think that some are just suites) and I find their pricing structure to be off putting (everything seems to offers rather than straightforward transparent pricing). 

We have taken several cruises with Ambassador and loved them all. I would compare them favourably with P&O smaller adult only ships as they have a lot of similarities, plus they do have some interesting itineraries and hopefully will add to that if/when they get another ship. The Ambassador entertainment is excellent and their speakers have been very good and varied. The ships are older and have the older ship issues as do Aurora and Arcadia which is why I would only compare Ambassador with them. They do have some strange pricing structures sometimes but we are used to that as they follow the model of CMV who we used many times. 

56 minutes ago, twotravellersLondon said:

 

 

Very much agree that FOCL is attracting a more senior demographic from parts of the country that other cruise-lines seldom reach and had that "Fred" has recently been trying to encourage folk new to cruising to take the plunge. Certainly the company is bussing groups from the South-east up to Newcastle to join cruises.

 

The problem is that FOCL have already lost passengers and potential passengers to SAGA and with SAGA's nationwide car service coming on stream next year that may well dent the take-up of FOCL cruises.

 

The average age of UK cruisers is about 56 and the average of FOCL cruisers is about 67... virtually the same as SAGA. So FOCL seems to be falling into the nich category of appealing to canny boomers who don't want to buy into the all inclusive SAGA type package... complete with balconies etc. 

 

So that really does beg the question about where FOCL will find enough passengers to fill the upper deck and balcony cabins which are priced at about the same cost as SAGA but don't have the advantage on the included extras. 

 

There's a very  long video of Peter Deer available where he discusses that rational of acquiring the two old HAL ships as offering the opportunity for FOCL to offer these upper and balcony cabins at a premium... 20% markup was mentioned... the real question for us is why pay a SAGA price to cruise on an old ship where the food, entertainment and lots of other things are just not as good as SAGA.

 

Just comparing FOCL with P&O... we certainly know people who've migrated from P&O to FOCL and are very happy with their choice... because they feel that, although a bit more costly, FOCL's offer is a bit better. But with the help of an abacus, the back of an old envelope that looks as if the average profit per passenger per day is less that £10... that probably means that many people are cruising with Fred at less than cost price.

 

Perhaps... FOCL should ditch the idea of running a virtual ship within a ship without providing those who are paying so much more that the basis "from fare" and aim whole heartedly for the more senior and mature P&O market of special interest cruisers and offer more unusual itinerary’s to attract them.

Whatever Fred are doing they seem to be making it work at the moment as they are keeping their prices high with not much in the way of offers. When we cruised with them their costs were on par with P&O and they had the better itineraries for us.

We were usually the youngest on board but that didn't bother us, plus we could get some practice in for when we get old😉. Notice the smiley wink for anybody that may feel offended on our behalf. I would pay the higher price for a bucket list itinerary but not for the routine cruises that we have done before.

11 minutes ago, kevboy said:

Hello. My cruise personaliser is saying that the Epicurean can be booked 120 days before the cruise. Is this correct? I was always under the impression that 3 weeks prior was the case

many thanks, kev

I think you may need to wait until P&O have sorted their web site to get the full story. The 120 days was being bandied about all over facecloth yesterday but some people who had phoned P&O because they couldn't book the restaurants were being told that this was an error caused by the site faults and it was actually still 14/15 days and that those that has booked well in advance would be cancelled?. 

7 hours ago, daiB said:

That will fill up very quickly as it is so different. We would go but it is 2/3 weeks to early for us.

I think this will sell out quickly, it is ideal for us retiree's who would prefer not to fly, it is well priced too for Aurora to say it is over two years out. I will keep an eye on this but don't expect and late availability.