pete14

We are just a bit further round the coast from Prestatyn although home tomorrow for a few days.

I don’t know whether there is any truth to the tale that in the early days of P&O, there was an accountant on board to check that there were only a limited amount of vegetables served to the crew and guests. Hence the birth of the term ‘beancounters’.

Just a word of advice. If you find yourself sitting on the wing, make sure there is somebody on the other side for balance. 🥴

I spoke too soon. Now it has clouded over and is raining☹️

No storm here in North Wales. Sunshine and fluffy clouds. Warm enough to sit outside reading my book and drinking tea. I wish storms were always this nice. It did tip it down with rain during the night though.

It is about 8 years since I went to Egypt on a cruise but visas were dealt with onboard without any input from individual passengers. I have flown there a few times, again many years ago and visas were available on arrival at the airport from an official with a suitcase who I think was genuine.

I read a lot of ‘Scandi crime fiction’. My favourite is still Henning Mankell who not only wrote the Wallander books and also others, many rooted in Africa, that are really good.

They normally seem to be a ‘jenga style’ pile of six soggy lumps of potato. Although our last cruise was 2019, my memory of Marco’s ‘three times fried hand cut chips’ in Epicurean, is exactly that. I have also suffered them in other places. Give me well fried frozen machine cut chips any day.

I agree but think I would have gone for the Steak and Kidney pie with suet pastry, with or without green beans.

Discussion on this topic is covered in many threads recently. One such is ‘Goodbye P&O’ on the first page of the thread list. I suggest you look at some of these rather than repeating the discussions on this new thread. Just don’t believe everything you read (on both sides) because there are contradictions between peoples’ perceptions.

We are on the same cruise next year and we’re wondering the same thing. As we are in a suite, I was hoping that as a last resort, the butler may be able to exert some influence on making bookings onboard for us.

We paid £15 for the winter months last year. It appeared as though we were one of the very few on the estate of 400 houses to do so. The driver has a list of those who have paid and only visits those houses to see whether anything is left out. Often there is nothing to collect.

Interested to read your reports. We are on Azura for the return trip from Tenerife to Malta in Spring 2024.

And collection of the brown (garden waste) bin in the winter for £15.

I presume it is a charge levied by the airline that P&O collect for them as part of the charter agreement. I do agree that it doesn’t look good though but I cannot imagine P&O benefit from it. It does allow those who want to make a choice, possibly people who don’t like flying, to give themselves the certainty that they are sitting where they would prefer to be rather than allocations being random, as they are for those who choose not to book their seats.

Did nobody tell you that those are the ejector seats for if the driver wants some inflight entertainment?😱 Is your cat in 4b? Glad you got what you wanted though. 😊

I don’t doubt that in your case, a saver fare may have been better. I was only pointing out that your assertion that you received no benefit was a little wide of the mark because of the OBC.

Your earlier post stated you received no benefit from booking select fare but you received OBC which paid for some of your 30 specialist dining meals. I realise that your OBC perhaps did not match the price difference between select and saver but it should surely be considered to be a benefit of booking select which you would not have received if you had booked a saver fare.

I guess that as you say you received no benefit from booking Select, you didn’t receive any onboard credit to close the gap between the relative costs of select and saver to a degree? If you did, maybe it covered some of your select dining which for 30 nights must have set you back a bit. Presumably, being Aurora, that was Sindhu, Glasshouse and / or Beach House.

We have pre booked several times. You pre book a cabin grade and when booking opens, they guarantee you a cabin in that grade. If you prefer a different one, you can contact them and they will move you to where you want to be. It has worked very well.

Have a great cruise but please be kind to her so she will be ready to accept us next month without any issues.

Thanks Harry. There does appear to be some logic but in places it seems to be contradictory.

I have posted about this a week or so ago. I think the advertising is misleading although the small print is quite clear. As I turned 65 a couple of years ago, thereby needing to wait until I am 70, I wonder what the rationale behind the seemingly illogical criteria is.

Also handy for the St Jeronimos Monastery which is an amazing building for those who like ornate churches.

Sorry, I meant Verisure alarms, not Staysure