david63

I would guess that on those two ships there is a greater percentage of "experienced" cruisers who are aware of the problems whereas on the bigger ships there will probably be a large percentage of "new" cruisers who are no aware of these problems.

Yes Debatable. If you are planning more Carnival brand cruises then I would keep them as you will be able to claim more OBC and the shares will go up as they are quite low at the moment due to some unease about Carnival's financial restructuring.

Only when the porters are available - unless you want to just leave your luggage lying around the terminal in the hope that nobody takes

What annoys me about many of the films taken onboard cruise ships is that those doing the filming don't have a clue about making a film. They get their phones out, turn them on and then wave the phone around so that by the time your brain has worked out what is being shown it has moved on to something else. Many of these films are just a waste of time if you are trying to garner any useful information.

P&O at Southampton have been enforcing arrival times most of this year so if you do arrive early there is a possibility that you will have to wait in a queue outside - for how long is an unanswerable question. The one exception to having to wait is if you are in a suite. You can drop your luggage off from around 10:30 depending on what is happening on the day and then come back later and check-in.

Although you could argue that "free of charge" is, from their perspective, covering you.

Is it possibly something to do with the itinerary or possibly the number and timings of the ports?

Unfortunately some appear to be hard of hearing so just congregate at the gangway just in case they can get off sooner!

In my experience as long as the excursion has not departed then you can cancel for approved medical reasons and get a full refund. The issue here maybe that there was nobody available at the excursions desk in the period between getting approval from the medical centre prior to the excursion departing

I have a similar distance to travel and an hour either way makes little to no difference. In fact there is an argument that if driving then missing the rush hour/school runs can be quicker.

If it is that much of a challenge they why can other cruise lines (including other Carnival brands) do it without the drama that P&O create?

Giving an accurate time to leave London will not necessarily have any impact on the time you arrive in Southampton. Depends on how early and the mood of the staff on duty that day. Southampton has tightened up on arrival times and you may be told to wait in a queue outside (irrespective of the weather)

I thought that if it was a requirement to have a shuttle within the port then it was a free shuttle and usually provided by the port

The self disembarking/timed disembarking problem could easily be solved by having two exit points - this is done when the ship is in port. The self disembarking exit would go straight to customs bypassing the baggage hall, which would have the added benefit of delaying queue jumpers, whilst the timed disembarkation would be as normal. The two could then quite easily operate side by side. I do think though that at some point in the future self disembarkation will be stopped and all luggage will go into the baggage hall and anyone trying to disembark with cases will have to wait until the end. The reason why I think that this could happen is that more passengers appear to be wanting to self disembark with the result that the ship becomes gridlocked with passengers and cases everywhere. To be honest I have never understood the need to rush to get off the ship at the earliest opportunity rather than in a calm orderly manner.

Probably will not matter because if "push comes to shove" (as it would) then it will be so chaotic that everyone will be running round like headless chicken. It was bad enough when there was the "organised" muster drills.