Gettingwarmer

2 hours ago, Ginb56 said:

We’re thoroughly enjoying this Scandinavian cruise on Britannia too. Very lucky with the weather - haven’t needed brollies or raincoats yet! Coming back with a suntan from the Baltic…

Visby is just beautiful and lovely to walk round at your leisure, so many charming eateries and shops too. Just be warned, it’s quite hilly and cobbled, plus a good mile each way to walk from port. Shuttles were only for passengers registered with mobility issues and going back and forth fairly empty. Overheard a lot of justified grumbles from people who found the walk too long, in addition to all the walking round the old city, and why couldn’t the shuttles have been better used. 
Graffiti Classics in the theatre last night was absolutely terrific - don’t miss them if on your cruise. A mix of hilarity, terrific classical music but tongue in cheek and super audience participation - a well deserved standing ovation!  
Also recommend joining the passenger choir on longer cruises, run by the Headliner vocalists - open to anyone, no singing experience needed, practices held on sea days, great fun - we’re doing our performance on the last sea day in the atrium and it’ll sound amazing! 

On our Princess cruise to the Baltic there were two local shuttles to Visby. We took the one to the top gate and zig zagged down through the town and then caught the one that left from the seashore back to the ship. The walk did indeed look very long. 

2 hours ago, FamilyCruiserUK said:

 

One thing i did notice, steps into the pools all vertical on P&O, didnt see any assisted crane at all.

47 minutes ago, Mike Senior said:

 

Swimming pools

The following ships have a pool hoist available. They all feature a chair hoist and have a weight limit 136kg.

Britannia	Riviera pool the Serenity pool (both in the shallow end)
Azura	Aqua Pool (deep end)
Arcadia	Neptune Pool (shallow end)
Aurora	Crystal Pool (shallow end)
Iona	Every guest pool / Whirlpool
Arvia	Every guest pool / Whirlpool
Ventura	Laguna Pool (shallow end)

I believe you have to ask and book times on the ships. On Iona we saw crew bring the hoist and set it up in the setting. It was later taken down. 

25 minutes ago, teeceew said:

So , is this a way for P&O to get even more money out of the cruising public by charging a supplement on top of the cabin price for midships  . After all there is no difference in service

for the same cabin on the same deck .

It has always been this way. They have just altered the way to see the cabins online which shows it in a different way. All cruise lines charge extra for the cabins in the more popular parts of the ship. 

We felt entirely the opposite to this 

1. Really good. 
2. Good value. Lovely food. 
3. Never ate there for lunch. Breakfast omelettes were good.

4. Really good. Lobster dish was the best. 
5. Same food as MDR but in less good environment. Waited a long time for our wine. 

15 minutes ago, Windsurfboy said:

The CAA quotes £200 per night as a reasonable maximum, so that's not a 2 star dump. 

Per room or all meals travel etc

13 minutes ago, david63 said:

That is totally untrue as there is no long term parking at any cruise terminal at Southampton - all long term parking is off site.

The cars may be moved but CPS parking is within the port area. 

10 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

Personally I disliked that a very large number of the "sunbeds" were in fact reclining chairs rather than sunbeds.  The number of actual "real" sunbeds around the two small family pools were very limited in number.  

 

I got the impression the relaxer chairs as I called them were to encourage people to not use them all day.

I quite liked having upright chairs to sit on, something lacking on P&O's other ships. Maybe too many on Iona/Arvia but not enough on the others.

4 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

I find it frustrating with P&O that in order to check whether there are any accessible cabins available you have to phone them or ask the TA to check, whereas with Cunard (which uses the same IT system) you can check this yourself. What is the situation with Princess? Thanks. 

On the front page under requesting a cabin for 2 there is a box asking if you want an accessible cabin. Does this not work?

@Cloudyrain Thanks for your review and photos. 

51 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

As regards the toilets, I have always assumed that the design is intended to make you close the lid because the vacuum flush works more efficiently that way.

Exactly. All ships toilets are designed in this way.

5 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

Tables for 2 - We have to have a table for 2 and, like you, dislike those that are ‘pretend’ tables for two with just inches between them. The Saga setup sounds worse than P&O, which is not what I’d expect given the price premium.

I was surprised at this as well. 

7 hours ago, room with a view said:

Thanks ...still hoping someone will answer the question about any problems with the lifeboats just below deck 9 - any movement noise when the ship is moving at night ...we like to leave the balcony door open ,

1 hour ago, majortom10 said:

Whilst lifeboats are fixed you don't get noise from loose items banging and chains. I certainly wouldn't book a cabin with restricted view due to lifeboats because there will be a certain amount of noise.

On Azura the lifeboats are underneath Deck D and do not restrict the view out or down to the sea.

1 hour ago, room with a view said:

Thanks ...still hoping someone will answer the question about any problems with the lifeboats just below deck 9 - any movement noise when the ship is moving at night ...we like to leave the balcony door open ,

No noise from lifeboats. But if you’re worried keep the door closed and that way you won’t disrupt everyone else’s air conditioning. 

13 minutes ago, david63 said:

Not wanting to perpetuate the lift saga but could some of the problem on Iona be due to the number of decks? Britannia, for example, has 12 lift accessible decks whilst Iona has 16 and whilst the lift/passenger ratio is the same on Iona there is a greater usage especially going up.

Good point. People are not able to travel up the extra amount of stairs on this compared to others. 

12 minutes ago, jeanlyon said:

I have asked this before and never got an answer.  What is it about atriums that seems to bother people.  How much time do you spend in an atrium?  We don't spend any time, so it would hardly matter if it had a wow factor or not.

 

Quick shocking about the lift situation Selbourne and glad you said something.  Absolutey right.

I think you cruise on Arcadia and Aurora. Arcadia doesn’t really have an atrium and Aurora’s is really small just surrounding the staircase. 

13 minutes ago, JG&Lcruisingnewbies said:

I brought them while on the ship, the sea day before Bergen (we’ve got internet on the ship). We wanted to check out the weather before we decided to buy. It was meant to be drizzle & grey but good enough for a view. It was much better than that.

 

I think you could buy online on the day outside the building if you have mobile data & it’s either included or you are happy to pay for it

 

incidentally we were getting 5G the majority of the time!! 

 

please double check you can buy on the day though

Thanks for the info. I was wondering about seeing what the weather was like before buying. Seems like the day before is the way to go. 

37 minutes ago, JG&Lcruisingnewbies said:

Tip: buy your tickets online. There was a long queue snaking around outside. We had our QR codes, went via a separate line and was on the train in 5 minutes. 

Thanks for all your great photos. Did you buy your tickets online on the day or before you left on the cruise?

Thanks for a great report. Agree with you about the hard sofas. We too were on the hump with the larger balconies but found the room narrower than other ships but as least the deluxe balconies are longer and give you “turn around” space. The atrium is noisy and like an airport lounge but you do get terrific views of the ocean. 
Your daughters should try the Quays for breakfast, lovely made to order omelettes. Have a good cruise. 

1 hour ago, Megabear2 said:

 

Once onboard there were tables set up on the first day after sailing, it was announced in Horizon and those interested could go along and reserve.  There was never the panic that occurs nowadays.

 

The lowering of quality and standards in the MDR's has created a situation where many won't even contemplate using them.  Iona and Arvia have changed things enormously which hasn't helped either.

Indeed they found it hard to get people to book speciality restaurants and there were tables offering enticements to get you to book on the first days. 
 

Due to worries about getting tables in MDR we booked all speciality restaurants on our last cruise on Iona. 

Roast pork, crackling, roast potatoes and stuffing in the Ninja. Vegetables in the microwave. 

Thank you @SarahHben for a very informative review. We have two future cruises on Ventura and your report has given me lots good vibes. I just wish that they had better tvs with information. 

6 hours ago, david63 said:

 

I know for a fact that CPS move the cars out of the port area when using Ocean Terminal - I have watched them doing it.

36 minutes ago, terrierjohn said:

There's none so blind as those who will not see, David.

I imagine one of the places they use as a long term parking area is near Mayflower, there is a massive parking area adjacent to where the CPS pick up point for Mayflower is located.

“Out of the port area” 

Maybe out of one port area to another whilst being moved but not out of the port area for for storage

5 minutes ago, david63 said:

In this particular case - no, the ship was returning to the same terminal 14 days later.

 

I was doing a b2b and on changeover day I was sat on the balcony where I had a perfect view of what was happening

If you didn’t see the cars from the lane go into the car park you have no idea about the cars that were situated there. 

Just now, david63 said:

That is not what I said. I said that I have seen CPS move cars out of the terminal.

So they are moving the cars because the ship is returning to a different terminal. 

4 hours ago, david63 said:

Where cars are stored may vary by cruise terminal taking into account where the ship is expected to return to.

 

I know for a fact that CPS move the cars out of the port area when using Ocean Terminal - I have watched them doing it.

So you saw cruisers get out of their cars and then the CPS people drive that car immediately out of the Ocean Terminal lane and drive off into the distance?