majortom10

Small price to pay for superior cruise experience, better staff and better food. Loyalty tier benefits are virtually non existent and don't drink that much to worry about extra cost. Proves one thing though that you are staying loyal to P&O with poorer food and cruise experience just because of loyalty benefits. P&O must love you.

You must have requested no marketing communications from P&O.

Whichever restaurant we are in on a cruise we always leave the toast until the end so even if served hot would be cold by the time we eat it. We had mixed toast in QG and was good size and thick enough compared to the pathetic postage size biscuits served on P&O Arvia imitating toast in September.

I wouldn't pay the price for a balcony cabin on Aurora or Arcadia prefer to cruise with Cunard for similar price.

Never had a problem with toast(mixed) in QG but I don't have a problem with cold toast and butter. Very hard to keep toast warm or cook fresh when you are cooking so many slices and dealing with so many cruiser's. Think some expect the toast to be cooked fresh personally for them.

Wouldn't really know because we didn't use either the Lido or Britannia for meals and was not interested in muffins for breakfast

So how do you explain a large number of people disembarking with suitcases well after 8-30 am. The whole idea of self disembarkation is to leave the ship before the main disembarkation begins and not at any time to suit oneself.

Yes I agree the idea of self disembarkation was for those that one to leave the ship before 7-30am and before normal disembarkation. Unfortunately many think that self disembarkation means that they can leave whatever time they want which creates problems.

We didn't really have our toilet working at all for most of the first five days even to the conclusion of having an engineer out at 1130pm on one evening and was told by concierge to use public toilets.

TBH we are very rarely in our cabin/suite whatever ship we are on.

We were in Q5 aft on deck 4 on 24th Nov-6th Dec and the noise and vibration was that bad we were moved from the suite. We have cruised before aft on QE and other ships and never encountered noise and vibration like that. We also had issues where we couldn't use the toilet and with the smells around the ship there was obviously a problem throughout the ship. The entrance to the theatre on deck 3 was awful every evening.

Yes and when Ventura was announced and launched there were many moaners about the ship, funny how things change.

They were selling 5 bottles of Dead Mans Fingers Rum on Arvia in September. I challenge anyone to get anywhere that price in UK. In my local supermarket it was over £20 a bottle.

The problem is with disembarkation from a P&O cruise is that initially there are no checks by P&O that the correct time are disembarking. But many, including a lot of here, have openly said that they ignore their disembarkation time and get off at a time to suit them and encourage others to do the same. For that reason there is queues on stairs and around disembarkation muster which causes chaos which then carries on into baggage hall.

Grab and Go has disappeared off all ships not just Britannia. Unfortunate result of COVID and also to the misuse of people when in port. Seen people loading bags up with anything they can get their hands on to take with them off the ship. With regards to the rest there is no great loss if you now compare price of cruises especially on Arvia/Iona.

Or a can of peas 😂

Doesn't make any difference on Iona you just request either on entering restaurant you preferential size and also same on virtual queue.

Would be a bonus if all suite guests didn't get any canapes and those in balcony, review and inside were forced to have them every evening.

Nonsense they will choose something they like to drink.

They have. I went to an Ollie Smith talk onboard a P&O cruise some years ago and he said there was a lot of snobbery with regards to wine. He said order what you like it's your money if you don't like white wine nothing wrong with drinking red wine with fish and the same vice versa with red meat. We only drink one white wine which is not usually stocked on P&O so we drink red wine whatever the meal.

So when do you stop 3 times 4 times and main question why?

If you join virtual queue for a restaurant once you are informed your table is ready you then have 15 minutes or the table is released. Understandable as if they didn't do it that way there would be a lot of empty tables and many not being able to join virtual queue. We were on Iona in March joined virtual queue for MDR and by the time we had got the lift and made our way to restaurant we were informed table was ready and had no issues at all.

But why when tipping is included in cruise fare already paid. So in effect tipping your waivers and cabin steward twice.

Makes no difference never tipped cabin steward extra on day one and we have always had our stateroom/suite serviced before return from breakfast. You are kidding yourself thinking you get better service it makes no difference whatsoever.

One thing I must say is we chatted to a lot of the staff in varying departments around the ship and many are moving to QA for her launch.