shoreham01

I suggest that everyone keeps an eye on it as on our last cruise in July they managed to erase everyone who had registered for the Meet and Mingle party. If I remember correctly we had to register three times in the end as the same thing kept happening.

The hand sanitizer they use on the ship makes my hands sore and also makes my nails brittle. I use Response Beta which I order on-line from a UK company. Marvelous stuff, no more sore hands and it says it protects against norovirus. I just carry it around with me and then when they offer me their sanitizer I just say that I have my own and spray my hands infront of them. No problem.

October is the time we usually get very strong winds in UK. Usually from mid October onwards. This year was no exception, hurricane force winds a couple of weeks ago, so bad that the ships did not sail out of Southampton for a couple of days.

Having said that, this is England you are asking about. It could be mild and sunny. We just never know.

Trialawyer, I have one more question. I heard there was a library on the Ship. Could you comment on it? Is it big? And what kind of books can you get there? Thank you in advance for any information!

I think I may be able to answer this question for you. On the Eclipse there is a library, but from what I have read about it in the past, it is not well stocked. You would be better to bring a Kindle or Ipad with your choice of books. There is one huge problem with the library. It is situated overlooking the atrium where there is loud music playing some of the time. This makes it impossible to sit and relax there whilst reading a book.

We are not readers so it did not worry us although other people were commenting on it.

We did notice whilst we were waiting to disembark that people had left books around the ship. Possibly these find their way into the library.

I think the main problem is with the Soltice ships, we travelled on the Eclipse and although we loved the experience and have booked to go again the one thing that we found dreadful was infact the noise levels.

For anyone who has not travelled on the Eclipse the atrium area is open all the way up the ship and so any music also travels all the way up the ship. The library is situated above the atrium so of course it is noisy there too.

Whoever designed the ship designed a very attractive cruise ship, however, they did not take into consideration how noise travels. If you sit in the cafe Bacio the music from the Martini bar can be clearly heard and when the band played it was impossible to talk to anyone there. If you are trying to sort something out at guest relations again you have the same problem. How can you hear or make yourself heard when there is loud music playing, regardless of what it is.

Even the casino is open to the shopping mall so as you walk along the noise of the slots constantly ringing can be heard.

It really is a very badly designed although quite lovely ship.

We did find some quiet areas, but did feel that we should not really have to 'find' quiet areas. Michaels Bar was very depressing and mostly empty. The other bar next to it, sorry the name escapes me, is a dark and dingy area too.

The loud techno music is also played in the Molecular Bar so the open area around there is subjected to speech killing sound too.

And there lies the problem, the open areas. If the bars were situated in rooms rather than open areas there would be no problem at all. You would just avoid them if you did not like it. Unfortunately, you cannot avoid it on the Eclipse.

All in all we do like the Eclipse but will see how we feel after our next cruise on her before we book another one.

Oh no, we don't mind a bit of noise, but we don't like to have to shout to be heard. I thought they had toned down the volume, at least the complaints have been 'quiet' for the past few weeks up to today.

Bet the music was not so loud when Mr Bayley was doing the rounds.

We were considering our 2014 Celebrity cruise, but I think we will hold fire until we return from our July one.

We went to the North Cape visitor centre with Princess. It was very very foggy, cold and windy up there. Having said that, it was terrific fun especially trying to find the globe sculpture. We had to walk along with our hands on the railings to find it. The ground is extremely uneven up there, so wear good trainers. A poor man fell over and had to have paramedic assistance, he was not on our tour.

Even with the dreadful weather we enjoyed it so much, just a very different haunting experience. They have a very good gift shop up there too. There are even some things you can actually afford to buy!

Yes we could have seen the wonderful scenery, but we could see that on all the postcards and photos. We would never have experienced what we did with good weather.

We had strange letters before our OBC and were told it was the initials of the person who agreed to it.

I don't get nervous about flying, I just get anxious for all the messing around before the flight. I just take one aspirin about an hour before we travel anywhere and that seems to do the trick. I don't like car journeys either and take an aspirin before long car journeys too. They seem to calm me right down.

Thank goodness for that, I am one of the MUTS haters. Not so bad under the stars but ghastly under the sun.

Thanks for that positive review. We are going on the Grand in a couple of weeks time and were a little worried about some of the experiences people had on the TA. You are the second person to say that their room steward was not up to the usual Princess standard. Wonder if it was the same one. Other people have also said that their balcony was filthy. Not too good considering how Princess usually look after their customers.

So did I.

I am sorry to tell you that when we were on the Grand in September we did not notice any live band playing round the pool. Every time we tried to sit around the main pool area they were playing really loud films or concerts on the MUTS screen. Ghastly experience which forced us to move to other areas of the ship. They played the films etc so loud that you could not even hear your own choice of music from your MP3 player. We sailed on a Princess ship years ago and really enjoyed the live calipso music round the pool area. We are back on the Grand in June but will not go near the pool area if they are still showing films during the day. People talk about chair hogs but I can assure you there were plenty of empty chairs around the pool when we walked passed there. Most people we spoke to hated the loud intrusive noise of it all and moved to other pool areas or other areas of the ship.