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This was recent Island Princess sailing 26th July. 👍🏻 The wines on offer changed each evening. It meant you could try expensive wines at a more reasonable price. .

In our case we bought wine by the bottle for $36 .. promotion on a lot of wines 40% discount .. coffee $3.50 .. cocktails $8 at the Elite cocktail 2hours but otherwise $10. But .. not all .. not every day. A bottle of wine last two days. Coffee in the buffet was very good 👍🏻. It’s easy to get into the mentality .. we’ve bought it so let’s use it to justify the spend when in reality you just don’t want to drink that much and wouldn’t otherwise. Same with premier dessert ice cream Sundays .. they are so large it’s ridiculous to think you could want two! Wine by the glass is no where near the same quality and can only be ordered by generic .. merlot .. Chardonnay .. etc. cost $10 plus service. Bar prices are inflated to again justify the cost of a package. $19 plus service for champagne .. a glass! Only included with premier. We took half bottles onboard. Room service will deliver an ice bucket and glasses .. wonder if that will now cost $5 too!

Have to agree .. thank goodness Princess still gives us the choice. I’m sure there are many for whom the package equals value for money. Just not us. We enjoy a cocktail .. and have a bottle of wine and a speciality coffee but to spend $160 a day .. every day .. even port days .. is hard to imagine.

Am I correct in thinking if you pick up the phone in the cabin and not order through the medallion app there is no charge.

Thankfully none of the changes will effect us! Perhaps we are unique in not ordering room service and not liking pizza or ridiculous quantities of ice cream. Gym classes don’t interest us either! The breakfast tray ordered by card on the door remains unchanged. We are Elite .. have a mini bar .. 50% off wifi and pay cash gratuities. So would never consider buying a drink package. Our last cruise total bill for drinks and wifi was £500 .. compared with the £1400 for just a plus package (would be more now) .. that’s aprox £1000 towards our next cruise. Soon you will be paying more to add a premier package than the cruise itself! Do Princess think we’ve all gone mad.

It would make sense to store opened bottles for passengers with a fixed table. We often ate at different restaurants and it made finding the bottle more hassle. Taking a bottle of wine back to the cabin of course gives passengers the opportunity to add their own wine to the same bottle to take back to the dining room. There will be a lot less wine purchased and a lot more carried onboard. For us P&O never grasped freedom dining like other lines. Eventually they will train passengers back to two seatings. 😊 or like ourselves only cruise with them when we can get a good deal on a suite. Then you get all the ‘extras’ that are now missing as standard. However even in a suite evening dining was not easy with no dedicated dining room or even a separate area where you had a table allocated. This was something they said might be addressed .. has anyone got recent experience? We have no future cruises booked with P&O .. two with Princess .. that kind of tells its own story!

Hope Freda’s ankle is not giving her too much pain and she heals quickly. How sad for this to happen during your trip. Hope this cruise goes well and the weather improves. Do you know yet if you have made the most travelled lunch again. Surprised by how many from the US are onboard and wondering if that will be the case for our cruise to Norway .. land of the midnight sun. Have you had any problems with wait times for dining. Have seen this ship has no international cafe but can you get speciality coffee and pastries anywhere else. Thanks again .. following along has been very informative.

Enjoying your daily blog. We join the ship at the end of your voyage. Interesting detail in your ports of call. 👍🏻 😊

Are you able to use tenders now for todays stop in Corsica?

Looks nothing like the glass house on recent ships. Our opinions differ ..

Or she had something to eat that caused her to be sick. If we get sick at home we look at what we have eaten in the previous 4/5 hours .. we don’t assume we’ve caught a virus.

Don’t think it’s a bug .. she had severe vomiting but no diarrhoea. She was confined anyway. There had been cases on the previous sailing. We know it’s always a risk factor but does seem to be more prevalent on recent sailings.

Not diagnosed as noro .. no diarrhoea.. just severe vomiting and stomach cramps. Classic food poisoning. She got onboard fit and well.

Photo of ‘glass house’. Looks so dated and tired. Friend onboard had severe gastroenteritis and confined to cabin for first days of cruise. Obviously an ongoing problem. Even with great price deals we won’t be sailing this ship or P&O for the foreseeable future.

We used to go more frequently when they used a bar … the vista lounge on Sky just no atmosphere and few attended. Appetisers were all very nice but last time when we had the drinks package we preferred to order the cocktail of our choice in Crooners not one from the limited discounted menu and then use the app to order freshly made crisps. Delicious still warm and very moreish . They sometimes arrived before the drinks! we haven’t had the drinks package for our next two weeks in the Caribbean as overall we didn’t like the included plonk by the glass. To pay an additional top up was excessive so we will buy our wine by the bottle and know what we are getting. It usually lasts for two evening meals. We will have a free mini bar set up with miniatures, beers and sodas.

We have seen a couple of Caribbean cruise deals that include 3/4 night hotel stay in Barbados. Has anyone booked one with a TA. We wondered how the flights would be managed and who the carrier was. The price seems very good and n one instance cheaper than the advertised fly cruise.

As far as I could tell .. yes. Our son and partner said they didn’t mind so we didn’t try it any other way.

We had our divider folded back between cabins. Just remember the side that gets the divider will then get reduced access through their patio door. Our son didn’t mind but something to consider.

Seems like yet another huge insurance loophole and probably why positive cases are high onboard many ships. No one will declare they are positive unless too ill to travel. Then you would need a GP certificate as would have been the case for any other illness preventing you going on holiday. Covid has got to be put into the same bracket now as flu and treated the same. None of us have been asked previously if we have had our flu jab and never been isolated onboard if we had coughs and colds. If we have felt ill and rested in the cabin we wouldn’t expect a FCC. If we were so ill to needed medical attention in hospital we knew the insurance would cover it. Denied boarding unless you are ill is ridiculous now. P&O like all other cruise lines will have to become like any other hotel or holiday destination and follow gov. guide lines or if they decide to stick with their own set of rules then offer compensation accordingly rather than expect insurance companies to pick up the cost. Their rules … their problem.

Are they still using isolation cabins? I thought I have read they are quarantining passengers in their own cabins and delivering room service. Friends on the current sailing had a surprise test before boarding cost of $10 per person and masks to be worn for the next 6 days transatlantic. Not sure how many cases this picked up before boarding. My guess is they were afraid of a severe outbreak and numbers too high to dock on arrival in Newfoundland.

Thank you for taking the time out to reply. Hope your cruise is going well. 🥂🍾

Heard that currently there is no Grab and Go or afternoon tea in the dining room. There was a lot of obvious cost cutting on Princess last month to the point where it impacted the whole cruise experience. Hoping it’s less obvious on our Britannia sailing. Although staffing seems to be a problem on all the ships.

Thank you .. that’s how I remembered it. Wasn’t sure if Covid had changed things onboard. 👍🏻

Planning on doing this. Our stop in La Spezia falls on a Sunday. Am I right in thinking the ferry doesn’t run to Porto Venere that day. Is it a long walk to bus stop? Taxi seems the easiest option albeit the most expensive. Bus back and a look round La Spezia. Saw very little of it the last time as spent the whole day visiting the Cinque Terre.

Have cruised P&O before but recently Princess where there are no trays in the buffet. Do Britannia have them?