Rex008

3 minutes ago, david63 said:

The point is that with OBC it is your money - not something that the cruise line give you (apart from a few exceptions). The "net" cost of the cruise is the same for both of you - just that you have to spend more to get your money back.

I realise that, just seems rather perverse that loyalty is ignored for OBC. I'd rather have lower fare and less OBC when I'm getting loyalty discount, but didn't get that choice (obviously if I'd know price reduction was coming, I would have waited). Just feel that it's a mean thing for them to do, it should be easily fixable to apply discount to OBC spend, and it would keep loyal customers happier (and loyal!).
It annoyed me enough to fire off an email to them when I realised loyalty discount wasn't applied. It is stated in T&Cs but the mypocruises account viewer makes it far from obvious, you have to dig.

As a quick aside on something else mentioned, our OBC situation is interesting. They booked a week after us, the cruise price had gone down by exactly £300 but with exactly £300 less OBC. So we've got nearly £600 OBC and they have £300. P&O don't discount OBC spend by the tier discount, which I've whinged at them about with "tough" basically being the answer.

However, the point about buying drinks on one card is valid - once we do run down both OBCs (which will probably take the majority of the cruise at our drinks spend rate) it would make more sense to buy any further stuff on our card and get them to pay us back later. We do it all the time when we go out together on dry land so no trust issues there.

10 hours ago, Ardennais said:

Regarding pre-booking shore excursions for more than one cabin, I had to book one cabin, checkout and pay and then repeat the process straight away for the other cabin. The discount was applied according to loyalty level. On our last cruise with our grown up children, the eldest was a lower tier than the other two and it appeared automatically. I would imagine that the same thing would happen if I were to book any excursions onboard. 

Thanks. Seems very clear my cunning plan is not going to work! Oh well. Thanks for all the responses anyway.

12 minutes ago, david63 said:

As far as I am aware the linking of bookings does not apply to excursions which is why they say that travelling companions should arrive together at the excursion meeting point.

 

As for booking excursions for your friends then again as far as I am aware discount is applied at passenger level - not by who makes the booking.

Ok, thank you. Makes sense, if a bit of a pity :).

Me and DW are fairly experienced cruisers (13th coming up), but for our next Fjords cruise in May a couple of new-to-cruising close friends have booked on the same cruise. We're not going to live in each other's pockets but are likely to join together for dinner and some excursions. I was wondering if I link our bookings whether we can book shore excursions for all of us? I've googled and can't find an answer. We get 7.5% discount for Atlantic tier, so if we could book theirs with the discount it helps them out a bit.

Given we're not going to be together all the time, are the any disadvantages to linking bookings? I know OBC is still separate, so that's not a problem. We're both on freedom dining so if we did want to dine separately that's not a problem either. Can't really see any other possible downsides but might be missing something. We've both booked through the same TA, so linking should just be one phone call as I understand it.

2 hours ago, JJWW said:

Hi, can you confirm if seating at the bars was allowed? thanks

Some bar tables closed for distancing. Same in theatre and 270. Never had a problem finding a seat with reduced numbers. If you're talking about seating at bar itself, not entirely sure, we always sat at tables. There were definitely seats at the bars, can't actually remember seeing anyone sitting at one tbh. With crew:passenger ratio so high, there was never any wait for drinks though!

According to the Q&A, they're currently allowed 70% capacity, but our sailing was only about 25%, hence the Windjammer not open for dinner. And yes, think the technical issues were really that.

Really enjoyed the WWRY show, very impressive. Spectra I was not so fussed by. But the other performers were great, we watched Grafitti Classics twice, they were really good. And the pianist from one of the bars put on a impromptu theatre show on day 6, with a loop machine, which was also very very good.

Thought Joff was a very good CD - nicely English understated sense of humour :).

Me and DW just got back from 12-19th sailing, and really enjoyed it. 1100 passengers including about 20 kids. Very quiet, but not a ghost town. No waiting for lifts, even with max 4 capacity! Shows were very good, glad we got in the first WWRY as they cancelled after that ("technical reasons") and they shifted Spectra about in the schedule, although did end up putting on 3. Ports were nice, did ship bus tours from Greenock and Kirkwall, which were ok. Belfast we booked ourselves into Titanic museum early and got a local taxi waiting at the rank outside (well hidden!). Driver was nice and said he also did tours himself, so when we got out of museum (which was superb) we phoned him up and then he drove us round Belfast for 3 hours, which was an eye-opener. £40/hr, which we thought was a bargain.

Staff were great as always. Food was good. Windjammer closed for dinner which didn't really bother us, we're perfectly happy with MDR.

12 minutes ago, cublet said:

Hello,

 

The eDoc is now available for the 19th September 2021 sailing from Southampton.

 

However, in what is yet another triumph for the IT department, the pages are blank apart from a picture of a ship on the front cover and the page showing the luggage tag.

 

Regards,

 

Cublet

My doc for the sailing on the 12th was emailed through a week ago and was fine - 15 full pages, luggage tags near the end. Saying that, there's very little in there that hasn't already been sent in one of the multiple emails we've had since booking.

9 minutes ago, CruisingCats5 said:

The buffet is open for breakfast and lunch only. The staff told us that once the ship is at 70% capacity they will be able to bring more staff back and reopen the windjammer in the evening. We do love the buffet but we were more than happy with the food and service in the main dining on this cruise!

Thanks. I can live with that, we almost always use MDR in the evenings anyway, but couldn't live without a buffet breakfast 🙂

We've been looking at the 7 night out of Southampton on Sep 12. Still not booked yet, seems there's a fair few balcony cabins still available although I'm pretty resigned to the fact I should have booked when the £80 discount was on a couple of weeks ago. I saw some comments earlier that the buffet wasn't open, is that still true or did I miss something?

Me, DW and sons 15 and 14 will be on this cruise. Not the first one for us, but first for kids. 6th cruise, but first time on Britannia, second time P&O (Channel Islands mini cruise last year on Azura). The Florence/Pisa excursion is the only one we've booked (the coach only one). All the other ports we're currently planning to DIY, but we're a bit behind on planning, so that may change.

I too was looking for a roll call, but it looks like this thread is now it :).

I'm just hoping the kids enjoy it, so they won't whinge about doing more in future. DS1 is Mr Introvert, happiest with his head in a screen. DS2 is a bit better, hoping he'll actually socialise in the teenage club, but we'll see!

Three weeks to go, can't wait!

All such great photos!

 

Rex, did you use a tripod to get that long exposure of the wake?

Thanks.

Yes, tripod, most definitely. Took a reasonably decent one with me - was not flying, so luggage space not a problem. Only ever actually used it on the balcony in the end - probably wouldn't take one if luggage was an issue.

I actually got exposures from 5s up to 20s, but thought the 8s one looked best. But the water was so calm even the 20s showed no blurring of the horizon.

Jewel of the Seas (Radiance Class) 1100 - JS aft-port corner, deck 10. Absolutely loved it.

And one of my favourite photos ever - long exposure taken well after sunset on almost perfectly flat sea - you can see the standing waves and diffraction patterns caused by the ship, which is fascinating to a geek like me :)

Took me a while to find this thread - needs resurrecting, IMHO!

Anyway, just got back from the Baltic on Jewel of the Seas. One I'm quite proud of, because it's quite different - long exposure of the wake on a very calm Baltic about 1hr after sunset:

Also a "picture postcard" photo out the back: