FionaMG

I don't like sending food back either but sometime you just have to. If you don't, not only will they never learn but they will also not take on board the fact that you were dissatisfied. On a couple of occasions on another line, I've had a medium-rare steak come out still mooing on the plate. Sent them back and received acceptable ones in their place.

👍👍👍☺️

Perfect. Thanks, JB. ☺️

Wow, thanks very much for this @Canuker and @Globaliser. This is really helpful. So, changing at Barnham is perfectly legal with regard to the conditions of the (advance) ticket, since we're still travelling on the specified trains and there's nothing on any of the paperwork that says we have to change at Havant, correct?

Absolutely! 😂

@Canuker, thanks for this. We're on the 10.30 train from Southampton.

I'm booked on the Southampton>Gatwick route on Sunday 8th September. Thanks to the information early in this thread I knew to look for a train with a change at Havant/Barnham. I got it for the princely sum of £7 per person! 😁 I used the National Rail journey planner to book and it did actually show me this option without having to do the via/avoid thing, so I don't know if they've maybe updated something on the site. Just to clarify, if you don't mind, my booking does say change at Havant. Am I correct in thinking that is also a case of jump off first train and wait on same platform for the next one? Or is it actually better to do the change at Barnham?

I would head straight to Fort Lauderdale, spend the night there and show them what you can while you're there. All other considerations aside, accommodation will probably be cheaper and it means you can get to the ship in 10-15 minutes the next morning rather than having an hour's drive from Miami. For the way home, check out your cruise line's offerings of post-cruise excursions with airport drop-off. These are very convenient when you have 5 pm-ish flights. Your luggage is taken care of because it stays in the bus the whole time and your transport from the ship to the airport is also included so that's something else you don't have to worry about. Typically, excursions offered would be along the lines of a Miami city tour with 2-3 stops at iconic places such as South Beach, Little Havana or Bayside; or, as an alternative, there will almost certainly also be one that goes to the Everglades and includes an airboat ride. Either of these would allow to make the absolute most of your available time before your flight. I hope this helps and you have an amazing time. ☺️

I 100% agree with this. Our last cruise and an upcoming one were both booked on the understanding that friends would be coming with us and in both cases they backed out. So, from now on we will be working on the assumption that it's going to be just us. Then if anyone else wants to join us, fine, the more the merrier, but at least we will have booked what we want rather than what an indecisive friend thought they wanted.

Or an angry one. 😡

Sounds amazing! Hope you have a fantastic time. We are doing fine too, thanks, with a couple of cruises lined up, although we have a few more years to go till we can do longer ones like you. Can't wait! Safe travels to you too. ☺️

Thanks for tagging me @bonsai3s. I hope you're doing well. ☺️ @Tina80 here is the link to my review: https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2850791-odyssey-to-the-greek-isles-7-to-16-may-2022/

Oh bummer! 😭 Yes, that is exactly the one I was talking about. It seems like forever ago now.

There was one but there was an accident that took it out of play. I think they kind of dropped an Oasis class ship. If I remember right, @twangster reported it. Maybe they're fixing it or building a new one to replace it?

Ryanair flights are essentially buses with wings. As long as your expectations are right they are actually fine and usually very reliable. You just have to be sure to read all the small print and understand what you're buying. Be aware that the first price you see will never be the price you pay unless you are travelling only with a small underseat bag. Generally, you will pay more for your bags than for yourself. Also, if you don't pay to pick your seats they will split your party up. They claim this is because of random seat allocation but that's rubbish. They could ensure parties travelling together aren't seated all over the aircraft if they wanted to; the other low cost carriers do.

It's not a scam. It happens very rarely and means they're overbooked for whatever reason (e.g. sold too many gty bookings, a technical issue taking some cabins out of inventory unexpectedly) and are trying to avoid involuntarily bumping people by offering an incentive to guests who do have the flexibility to shift to a different sailing and be well compensated for it.

Yes, that is an option to consider, thanks. On the same flight back in February we got through immigration really fast because the airport is pretty dead by that time but on that occasion we were staying in Miami anyway so it wasn't an issue.

When I flew out of Miami in February, there were quite a few places pre-security but they were in departures, near where folks were checking in for their flights, which makes sense because that's where you'd potentially have time to kill. The only thing is, I was there early afternoon so I don’t know if they'd be open that early.

How did you get on in the ports? I remember you posted some questions about them pre-cruise.

Our international flight from Portugal arrives in Miami at 9.40 pm. Does anyone know if it is likely to be difficult to get an Uber or Lyft to take us to Fort Lauderdale at that time? We would like to avoid forking out $$$ for a car service if we can.

We were there on a port stop on Harmony of the Seas and it was only about the 4th cruise after the start-up. When we disembarked there were no taxis at all and we thought we were going to have to give up on our plan. But luckily after about a 45-minute wait we were able to get a taxi and catch the train. By that time they were back to running several trains a day. And we still did have to wear masks on the train.

Maybe not totally boozeville given it's a longer cruise but Brits on holiday know how to have a good time so I would expect there to be plenty of action. Our 12-nighter completely missed the half term holiday. I do remember seeing families with younger kids but not hordes and certainly can't remember any issues. Getting a sun lounger by the pool on a sea day is likely to be difficult though and even on some of our port days it was clear that a lot of folks had no intention of getting off the ship and were all set up to spend the entire day by the pool. This makes sense given the demographic; the Canary Islands are popular with Brits and other Europeans as a destination for land holidays so potentially many of your fellow passengers will already have been there on numerous occasions. A bit like frequent Florida cruisers and the Caribbean islands. I don't know what ports you're visiting but I actually did a live report of our trip. In case it might be helpful here's the link. I listed our ports in the very first sentence.

Suggest you check out the British Isles forum. I am fairly sure you'll find the answer to your question there. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/148-british-isleswestern-europe/

Thanks for sharing @alserrod. 😊 We did the Soller train back in September 2021 just after the post-covid restart. It was a great day and we hope to do it again at some point.

I would expect the vast majority to be Brits. We sailed on a similar 12-night cruise on Royal Caribbean's Anthem of the Seas in late September/early October and the passenger demographic was 96% Brits! Also, English schools have a week off round about the date of your sailing so conceivably some families will take their kids out of school for the other week, although I believe the education authorities are cracking down on this. I would not necessarily expect it to be a much more mature crowd though, given that Brits and Europeans in general have generous PTO allowances and often take two-week trips as their main annual holiday. You'll potentially see lots of childless younger couples or families with preschoolers taking advantage of a cheap price to get some autumn sunshine. I think it's very unlikely to be Snoozeville-at-Sea.