crazy cat lady 83

We were on this cruise too. We thoroughly enjoyed it. The ship had a lovely feel to her. We spoke to a number of staff who appeared really jolly and enjoyed being on her. I did feel sorry for the poor room stewards who were struggling to show people to their tables in the MDR in the evening though. At times a few of them looked thoroughly lost! The waiters seemed really on the ball with serving drinks in the evening compared to other cruises we have been on over the years. Like you said, the meal portions were smaller but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing as we were never left hungry. Sindu was amazing as always. We met some lovely passengers and a few not so lovely. Especially on more than a few occasions some were incredibly rude to staff. I can’t wait too book on Azura again. We would love to have stayed on for longer.

They will love it. You are visiting some fantastic ports and will make some lovely memories for them!

@Vampiress88 I’m not sure what Ports you are visiting. My ones were 7 & 9 the last time we visited the Caribbean. P&O do some great excursions which my two loved and will never forget. The submarine in Barbados was one of them. Also the pirates of the Caribbean catamaran in St Vincent which included a treasure hunt with lots of sweets. They also really enjoyed the botanical gardens in Martinique where they saw lots of hummingbirds and sleeping bats under a pagoda. At 7 & 9 they had their own full face snorkels which we brought with us. The snorkeling was good in Barbados, Grenada as well as Grand Turk. You won’t regret going.

That’s really good to know. Thank you. We don’t know what airline we are flying with yet but hopefully it’s Jet 2.

Thank you so much for the reply. I’ll keep logging in to CP and hopefully the flight information will appear very soon. I don’t know who we are flying with yet as even that information isn’t being shown.

We are flying out to Malta on the 6th April from Gatwick. Nothing for us on CP yet. We haven’t flown since 2018 and I remember 14 Weeks before staying up to midnight to get our seats booked to ensure we were sat with our children. Am I remembering correctly that it is £25 pp to reserve your seats? Thank you 😊

We ate around 6-6.30 on this cruise and we didn’t have a problem apart from on formal nights where I think everyone was eating earlier than usual and we had around a 10 minute wait to get in. It was always when we were leaving the MDR the queues were extremely large. The MDRs were a lot busier than we have ever experienced even at 6-6.30 which has always been the quieter time to eat. I am not sure whether this had a knock on affect to the later times? Apart from once we never had a long wait for our courses. We hope you have a lovely. We had a lovely cruise and would book Ventura again in a heart beat.

From what I remember around 3 coaches returned from excursions at the same time too. That was just what I saw when I was in the queue.

We were on this cruise. We saw Jamie a number of times filming. We love Ventura. We had an amazing cruise and did some lovely excursions. The ship itself was in good condition and the food was good as it had ever been. Staff were superb and were happy to chat. Firstly, the queue getting back onboard in Cherbourg was at lunch time. We were in that queue as had just finished visiting the nuclear submarine. Someone had mentioned the air bridge being broken or something along those lines? Sorry I’m not the most technical person 😂 We had breakfast around 8 every morning and we never had an issue getting a table apart from the day of disembarkation. A few times we were moved to the fixed dining room for breakfast and had no problem getting seated. We never had a wait. There was always a huge queue as we were leaving the restaurant for breakfast though. With both breakfast and lunch there was always a lot more eating in the mdr than we had ever seen before. It seemed to always be busy. Dinner at 6.30 on formal nights we had about a 10 minute wait to get seated. Again, at this time it’s normally really quiet on other cruises we have been on. There was again , always an even longer queue when we had finished. I think we were very lucky as I would have been annoyed having to wait over an hour for breakfast. I can’t comment on what the buffet was like as we didn’t use it on this cruise. We have children and are up early to get up and get on and enjoy the day. I do think we were lucky seeing what he experienced.

Unfortunately half term for Hampshire hasn’t officially been confirmed yet 🙈 I managed to find a couple of schools in our county who have said that half term is the 15th until the 22nd of February 2025 so I have gone with that and hoping for the best. If I’m wrong I’ll have to pay the extra to move it.

I didn’t realise the price altered depending on demand. That’s good to know for the future. We assumed it would be £349 pp extra which they were charging for half term next year. We paid £249 pp extra for our Caribbean 2017 cruise.

We booked early to get on the February half term Caribbean cruise. Lucky we did as all the 4 berth inside cabins are now sold out. We tried to book premium economy but they are now £500 per person so that ruled us out ☹️ that’s jumped up a lot since we last flew premium in 2017.

If you are lucky like we were a few weeks ago on Britannia they were showing some of the Wallace & Gromit films in the cinema and the main characters made a special appearance! They also provided us with special cardboard cutout hats of Shaun the sheep 😁

Hello, on our recent Britannia cruise at the end of July there were a couple of theatre shows available to book before we boarded. When we boarded a lot more shows/singers appeared on the app. We booked a couple of these. When we queued up to enter the theatre we were asked for our cabin number before taking our seats. Im not sure if this happened every night or just for the ones they thought may get busy.

We are also on this cruise. I hope you have had a really enjoyable cruise. We will be sad to get off Sunday. Agree what you say about top deck. We have generally avoided it and were shocked the first morning at 9.15 to take the children swimming to find 75% of the sun beds taken with towels and the whole pool deck area practically empty. We have been cruising 10 years in the school holidays and never experienced that. We have found everything else as good as ever. Staff have been amazing. We are back on Britannia next August and counting down already 😊

On our local south coast radio station the other day, it was reported that P&O bookings are up and are the busiest since before COVID. They claimed this was due to the disruptions at airports and people were looking to cruises instead.

To us it’s worth it. I worked closely with the general public all through the pandemic. With this and having school age children I am likely to get COVID a second time at some point. If I do get it onboard at least I won’t have to cook dinners and still run a home like last time 😂😂😂 Us as a family have missed out on so much and so many memories to make with the children. I am so very much looking forward to our cruise on Britannia next week and I’ll just have to be careful and keep fingers crossed 🤞

October 2022 would be even more lovelier 😂 My parents caught Covid from the initial Arcadia cruise which was 14 nights and they started showing symptoms the day after they got home. It’s one of those things. They still love their cruises and we are looking forward to joining them next weekend on Britannia 🤞😁

We are on the Britannia on the 24th July and we only got notified yesterday of who is in the limelight club for our cruise. It’s normally 2 weeks before I believe.

Our schools were the same. My 12 year old only had covid once and we assumed it was Omicron. We knew others who got it twice and seemed to be different variants as it was when each strain was rife. We also noticed in this area how it started off hitting the senior school first and then wiping them out, then the juniors and then hit the infants. Infecting parents and other family members on the way! Luckily none were particularly poorly. My 12 year old has had both of her jabs and my 10 year old has had his but we had to arrange it all through the NHS website and travel quite away. There was nothing close by.

Very true. We have had it and I don’t know many who haven’t had it. I’ve never been worried about catching it. I worked closely with the public throughout when everyone else was at home in lockdown. I’m more worried about suddenly having to isolate when your away, either on a cruise or in a hotel. As long as there is no testing AT ALL then I’m more than happy to travel.

One of my friends has just come back from a holiday in Portugal. I can’t remember who she flew with but there was no vaccination proof needed or a covid test. Another is flying to Majorca this week and again, no COVID test needed. Now that would concern me. Sitting next to someone for 3-4 hours and them having it. No thank you!

We were considering using the kids club for our forthcoming cruise on Britannia. I did speak to P&O during the week with regards other matters and they confirmed that the rules are still in place that if another child in their group setting tests positive my kids may have to isolate. I don’t want to risk that. To be honest we didn’t use the kids club on Iona last year and they didn’t miss it. I think they were just so happy to be on a ship again to worry.

In yesterdays news they advised the new wave has started and the NHS are extremely worried. In todays news they have completely back tracked and there’s nothing to be concerned about 🤣

It’s difficult to say isn’t at the moment. The way P&O are dragging their feet with things like the kids club I wouldn’t be 100% sure everything will be back to normal by then ☹️ Father Christmas I’m certain will still make an appearance and they’ll do the panto.