Cotswold Eagle

A bit of gratis consulting advice, it looks to me as if you have ‘saved as’ a previous deck to create new ones and have failed to remove all the previous slides when you edit. A much better way to approach this would be to creat a template for your presentations in PowerPoint, to provide a consistent look and content, and use that to create new decks. I’d also take the time to update the design - the inbuilt features and suggestions are not awful for your purposes. And as others have mentioned, spamming various Cruise Critic message boards in the fashion you have done is an inefficient way to distribute this material, not least because any changes you make requires reposting, as above. I don’t know who asked you to do this! Store one shareable copy somewhere as suggested above and provide links to it, and your version control becomes much easier. Oh, and date your content, as this is an area in which things can change rapidly (restaurant recommendations in particular!) I’m sure some people will find these interesting and useful, and I appreciate the effort you have gone to, but as the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a good first impression…. And to reiterate, none of these ports are covered by this particular sub-forum anyway!

Indeed, none of these appear to relate to this board. Out of curiosity, I looked at the one for Valletta, Malta and a significant amount of the information appears to relate to Messina in Sicily, including the map….

Balmoral is open daily during its short summer season. I can see nothing to suggest this will change next year.

Yes, GWR appears to be an outlier in this space, because they have chosen to implement changing an Advance ticket by utilising their refund system! It is important to be very clear when making the claim that you are applying the terms for changing an Advance, by following the instructions, even though it looks very much like a refund.... As Globaliser says you will be net no worse off, although you will have to fork out for the changed ticket and wait for the refund of the Advance tickets. Make sure you buy your new ticket before the scheduled time of the service your Advance was valid for.

In absence of an answer to your question from the OP, I had a look at a likely tour on Viator and it is not available on any Monday next summer, which to me suggests it is simply an issue of the local operator not offering it on Mondays.

It’s not really possible to help you if you won’t provide details of your purchase - e.g. via app or website, which retailer, method of payment). I suggest you contact customer service of whichever retailer you used. Advance (note, not “Advanced”, which I guess is a typo?) tickets should be changeable as per the national terms and conditions.

How did you buy the tickets? Advance tickets are changeable (date/time) up to the time of departure of the original train you booked, so you may need to do this before you fly if your arrival is now later (it’s not clear from your post)? Note, it will be a fee plus fare difference for whatever ticket is now available on the train you want. If you cannot change, it is possible that travel insurance may cover the cost, but airlines will not normally reimburse such consequential losses.

Probably. Give it no further thought this year. Yes. Give it no further thought this year 😀

I applaud the philosophy, particularly after the absolute carnage on the thread when I just tried to raise such awareness, but of course there is now a firm timeline for ETA, and the OP will need one.

The ETA is a travel authorisation for visa-exempt travel. If you need a visa now, you’ll still need one when the ETA applies. As Globaliser notes, many people do require an airside transit visa. And they will still need one after ETA. Many people who do not require an airside transit visa will require an ETA to travel to the U.K. even if they have no intention of entering.

There is free WiFi across Heathrow.

Not necessarily - with a modicum of planning (Advance train tickets) the difference is only about £5. I personally would pay a much larger premium than that to spend an hour or more less on a train over a bus 😀

The Advance fares on the Waterloo-Southampton route start at £14 Standard and £19.80 First. I’m surprised you have never seen them, they are widely available.

A rather important clarification needed here is from where exactly? Have you a hotel booked in London? And if you are implying that you can't handle your luggage, your desire not to spend much money may be a difficult constraint! Hopefully you realise that Southampton is 80 miles from London.

Have you seen this specifically in relation to a cruise ship calling at a first Schengen port after departure from a third country, as in this example? Such an approach would seem to be a breach of Section 3.2 of Annex VI of the Schengen Border Code, which has specific rules relating to cruise ships and states that entry checks should only be carried out on “passengers going ashore”.