Megabear2

You will have a dedicated check in at the departure airport, normally manned by a P&O rep to check paperwork before you check in. Your plane will only have P&O ship passengers on it. Upon arrival at the airport you leave the plane and go straight to waiting (hopefully!) buses to transfer direct to the port. At arrival in BRIDGETOWN about a 30-40 minute drive you go into the "shed" in a queue to check in on to the ship. All you need for this is your passport and boarding pass. Once you reach the agent at the desk they stamp your boarding pass okay to board and you proceed to security scanning as you would on boarding in UK. Your luggage is transferred from the aircraft to the port for you and is delivered direct to your cabin. It's a very efficient and quick service normally. I assume you have registered your disability needs with P&O and you should also confirm with TUI your requirement for assistance. This will ensure help in Barbados and on boarding the ship. Personally it's the main reason for using P&O over other lines as the bonded luggage as they call it makes life so much easier. Hope that helps.

She runs a dance school. Thinking about it a lot of her productions for 3 to 16 year olds could teach some of the P&O acts I've seen onboard recently a thing or two! Paloma presumably is to appeal to the new demographic - probably should be Lorde or Space Afrika or the wonderfully named LUV NRG Soundsystem tributes from now on. Seriously Eric & Ern were very good as the ghosts of Christmas past ...

Eric & Ern were the ghosts of Christmas past in the Sky Christmas film Christmas Carole - remake based on a modern Scrooge starring Suranne Jones. It was very interesting and I wondered what younger viewers might make of them, then my 28 year old niece informed me Christmas isn't Christmas without Eric & Ern.

If it's a charter you don't actually go through customs so there wouldn't be a need to worry as far as I know. I suggest checking the UK Government website for any restrictions to be sure. https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/barbados/entry-requirements

My family and I were onboard Britannia for the Euros final when England lost to Italy. Despite the disappointment there were no incidents, assumedly due to everyone supporting England. As a very keen follower of one of the clubs with notorious supporters I have two very subtle training shirts with a hardly visible badge on them. Christmas 2021 I wore one to the gym as I'd forgotten my normal top. I was stopped as I entered the gym and told sorry it's not allowed. Fair enough. I also got stopped for wearing a Dagenham & Redbridge tshirt in the gym many years ago on a Cunard ship. So the rules were definitely there, now they are clearly relaxed. Reading Moley's post elsewhere about demographic of the cruisers P&O wants I assume this relaxation if part of that.

NCL now $109 per day. You can get 20% off a bottle of wine if you have it. However they do give it away a lot as well in a package.

And this type of reply is exactly why I didn't originally go into any detail of what I saw happening whilst on my holiday. It was my personal experience, my opinion and aside from saying I thought the behaviour unreasonable chose not to go any further. My raising the topic is because it is such a surprise to read of others on different ships commenting on these types of events which in my experience is something I've never come across on P&O. My reason for raising them was to ascertain if others onboard ships had seen these occurrences arising if at all or more frequently. For all I know the Ventura stories may be complete rubbish but my own rather miserable experience on Britannia showed me that the new clientele do not have the same purpose in cruising as myself and many others and that a lot of them are hellbent on treating the ship as some extension of their Saturday night out and in much the same way as the city centres you describe. There's also the fact that my husband is relatively calm tempered and able to diffuse matters with a joke and a smile. Others may not. P&O security were called on this occasion by their own staff not passengers. Surely under those circumstances it merited a better response than live and let live.

There's one on the CC review site as at yesterday.

Which is why I said these problems were on the Feefo questionnaire/review site provided by P&O and did anyone have first hand knowledge of if they were correct. I don't give a damn about clowns and newspaper fabrications, I do however think its correct to consider following my own experience whether these people may actually be telling the truth. It could be, as I said before, complete rubbish or it could be true. If it's the former presumably P&O will have the reviews removed from Feefo, if it's the latter it's rather concerning, at least to me. Incidentally my Feefo review remains, complete with my sorry story above - it was actually looking to see if that was the case which led me to see these stories.

Thank you for your input and level headed approach. Obviously I am aware incidents occur on ships - can't help but see the videos of mass brawls on some US voyages and it would be very head in the sand to say otherwise. What I will say is I have hardly ever seen an incident or trouble on a P&O ship apart from a very nasty incident on Azura in her maiden season. Yes, I have seen people inebriated and the occasional handbags at dawn husband and wife argument but certainly nothing like I personally saw on Britannia this year or that I read about yesterday. As I said in my report from Britannia there was a very marked change in a large number of the clientele onboard compared with other cruises on her - please remember I'm a working class oik from Essex who's in no way elitist and knows where her roots are! For avoidance of doubt I'm also a football supporter and for my sins have held a season ticket at Chelsea since I was 16 (not much to be said about that one at the moment but heh I've had worse) so have "enjoyed" the very worst possible excess of football related troubles and violence through the 70', 80's and beyond. My Christmas cruise was peppered with large groups of clearly partisan football supporters some of who on one occasion thought it fine to gather on a the balcony three doors down from my room to chant loudly at the NCL ship next to us "Who are you, who are" for 20 minutes leading to bemused Americans and others gathering on deck to watch in astonishment. As requested by Tring this is what occurred to me personally. My biggest problem as I said elsewhere was on Boxing Day. Brodies had been showing Premier League football most of the day culminating in the Aston Villa/Liverpool game. It was a port day and many had been ashore sampling(!) the local rum. Passing by the bar on the way to a late lunch in the Glass House it was clearly very busy in Brodies. We thought it was strange to see football shirts on some people as we had previously been advised they were banned but having seen en masse Barcelona and Argentina shirts during the world cup final we were not so surprised. That evening the Headliners and Pulse were performing a special event poolside. As we had eaten lunch we decided to eat at the buffet and get a good seat poolside to enjoy this event, which was indeed excellent. Halfway through a very drunken bunch of ladies took the table next to us, one having just been sick as she walked along poolside and one missing her seat and falling to the floor. They proceeded to scream and shout amongst themselves, just high spirits we thought. However about ten minutes later a bunch of men appeared, around 6 of them, who were gathering at the bar loudly shouting with obscenities clearly being heard by all around. Next thing the elder of them started accosting people around him cuddling complete strangers and insisting on fist bumps because apparently they'd "f...ing" won. The rest then rushed over to the women knocking those around them out of the way. My husband was at the bar and another bunch arrived again very loud, swearing and shouting and demanding very rudely from staff. Next thing I knew the older man was standing in front of our table grabbing at me and demanding drunkenly into my face to know where I came from and did I know his team had won. Despite this I tried to be polite and asked where he was from and had he been enjoying himself. At this point he lunged into me saying you're having a laugh aren't you listen to me or are you too good to speak to me. I was a bit taken aback as I was at that stage alone and sadly he was very agitated. Thankfully my husband arrived back and diffused the situation by joking with the man. At this stage there was a commotion over by the bar as security arrived, obviously called due to the antics. Words were exchanged and those sitting near the table next to me moved to be near their friends. At that point my husband said to me this is going to be all off in a moment and I think it would be wise to move on. Several other people were clearly thinking the same and were hurriedly gathering possessions. As our cabin was forward we started to head that way. We had made it halfway when the waiter who'd been serving us all caught up with us and said he would find new tables for us all away from what he termed the "commotion". We accepted this offer, most of the others especially those with children did not and said they were leaving. Having been seated we watched from a distance as the partying drunks took over completely the bar area at the Horizon food court end and how no other guest would sit at the empty tables. Many of them could hardly stand and the man next to us turned to me and said I hope they fall in. I must confess I was shocked when my husband spoke to the security man and was told P&O were not responsible for individuals' behaviour and we should live and let live. I had been quite frightened by my experience and chose at this point to head back. Ironically it started to rain as we were leaving and a safety announcement stated the party would stop and move to The Live Lounge. Not drastic compared with some reports but totally and utterly unacceptable and certainly nothing I'd wish to see or be involved with again on a ship.

That's good to hear, however I wasn't having a dig at cruise ships just referring to shipping in general. For instance my BIL works quite high up in Hapag Lloyd and he gave me some very interesting information on how they experimented and slowed their vessel by 5 knots and it saved them around 50% on fuel costs with the added bonus of reducing black carbon, carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. As most of us know black carbon (soot) is the bain of marine wildlife so anything that cuts this even by a small amount is a bonus. Apparently HL having found they were also saving money are continuing to work on this issue with some vigour. I did wonder whether the recent survey I received from Cunard on how I'd feel about 8 day transatlantic crossings which would be slower may be indicative of this sort of thinking in the cruise industry.

I want to emphasise my second paragraph in which I say the reviews may be total rubbish as I'm in no way suggesting this is a P&O specific problem. My concerns are that Feefo reviews are responses from passengers asked to comment by P&O unlike for instance here and generally they get removed if false. You are of course right about exaggeration and for my own experience I would say it was uncomfortable and difficult and the response of security did not offer much comfort. I'm more interested in what the process should be in the event of something nasty happening. Certainly this last cruise I saw a marked increase in the number the worse for wear due to alcohol and I wondered what the rules on continuing to serve those clearly worse the wear for it are.

I have been reading this evening the latest Feefo reviews for P&O, a large number of which seem to refer to the 35 night Ventura Christmas cruise. Alarmingly there are several mentions of a stabbing, a missing guest at 5.00am and a person held for possibly grooming children. There's also a solo lady traveller who claims she was stalked by someone in the cabin opposite. Clearly these reports may be total rubbish - hopefully someone here may be able to throw some light on these things - but I personally am beginning to worry that we are reading more often of violence onboard. I have explained elsewhere the problems experienced on Britannia by me personally with drunken football fans and the 2.00am call for assistance due to a "guest incident" on Deck 14, and have today read in the Arvia maiden the situation with the guests in the room above the reviewer smashing up furniture and fighting amongst themselves before an arrest had to be made. If the Feefo comments are true it would appear that at least three of the Christmas cruises had a problem with unruly and seemingly violent passengers. Whilst P&O are obviously not responsible for individuals' personal behaviour they surely are responsible for the safety of passengers by observing possible sources of trouble and nipping them in the bud. The problems we encountered and witnessed were clearly fuelled by alcohol and partisan football support. That being the case are there any rules regarding refusal of alcohol service in the same way as ashore to those who have clearly had too much to drink? In our incident security did appear when asked but the people causing the nuisance were merely told to tone it down and allowed to carry on drinking. The 20 or so people who were being intimidated by this crowd were quietly told there were more sears at the other end of the pool deck if we'd like to move. Reading of the Arvia arrest and now these reviews on Feefo I must confess to being a little worried my incident is not unique. As someone who travels alone a lot I can normally spot potential problems well in advance and avoid them. I had believed that being the case staff onboard would also be taught to be aware. Am I expecting too much? In over 50 cruises I've only ever seen one previous incident and now this evening I read of possibly 4 or 5 in one go.

Choose marine safe sun cream and shampoo too, check the labels for the marine safe symbol - I wasn't aware the UK now has one although I had seen one in Florida a few years back. On Curaçao in December the marine biologist was despairing at people questioning the request to not ladle on their suncream to swim with the wild turtles. https://www.hw.ac.uk/news/articles/2022/ocean-safe-shampoo-goes-into-development-in.htm

I take my own reusable shower caps bought very cheaply in T K Maax and then when it's time for it to meet its maker so to speak I can ensure its disposed of safely and properly. Unfortunately ships of all types are the worst polluters amongst transport and another reason that sadly our old favourites will go to make way for the likes of Iona and Arvia using cleaner fuels. It's a shame we can't do conversions! I'm old enough to remember the natural gas switchover and the hordes of British Gas engineers in their vans converting all our gas appliances. Wouldn't that be a sight ... hundreds of men and women tracking down the world's polluting ships armed with tools for the LPG switchover! I wonder when we will be moving to solar power on some ships, I'm sure someone is probably working on it as I write.

Ecology wise the shower caps are the worst of all. Turtles, sea mammals and large fish mistake them for jellyfish and die horrendous deaths as a result. I appreciate you're not going to throw them in the sea deliberately but according to cetacean experts it's far more common than we realise.

23kgs or 28kgs on premium economy

They are greatly improved time wise so hopefully not too difficult.

This is extremely worrying. We had an incident on Britannia on deck, clearly not as bad as you describe, where security attended and actually suggested other guests in the area might prefer to move. No action was taken against the miscreants. Whilst pleased your offender was apprehended and arrested I'm rather alarmed that security appear to be playing softly softly on this front. I'm sorry you had such a miserable experience on this occasion and hope Arvia delivers something better for you on your next trip.

Yes on the newer ships and Britannia there is no access without paying. On Britannia at Christmas it was sold in 2 hour blocks.

Looking at your plans and also those of Iona from 2020, 2021 I'd say the original was a misprint. Ships are normally built with both sides identical (Edge class Celebrity ships being an exception) and that is not the case on your originally plan. Iona, a near identical ship, has never shown that extension so I guess it's probably an error.

I'd suggest he's putting out spin because over the past few years P&O have gotten off very lightly in the press compared with other companies in the travel industry. Despite long delays in pandemic refunds etc his customer base has been pretty loyal and in fair despite a couple of faux pars on insurance issues etc apart from financially they've come out more or less unscathed. Until the started to revert to near normality in September last year if you read back through this forum and other social media channels most people have been very kind to them, understanding and even I say forgiving. Now here he is with a PR disaster, his brand new shining star obviously not fit for purpose the day it sailed. He has to be seen to reassure the passengers imminently departing on her so by putting out his spin he hopes (probably with fingers crossed behind his back) that the measures taken during the maiden will go some way to easing the situation. For instance ensuring the lifts are all functioning properly and maybe having put a high end IT person actually onboard the ship. Relatively simple steps now that problems are known. He could also have ensured the little things like proper telephone directories have been provided, guidance on where the USB ports can be found etc. If these are addressed it helps people keep perspective. As I said previously, the real test will be the reviews of those onboard now and how, hopefully, things have or have not improved. I'm hopeful that those sailing now are having a far superior experience and we will put the fiasco down to a one off lack of readiness.

Exactly that reason for fly cruises into Barbados and of course clearing Government security and passport inspection on the way out. Actually I'm quite surprised not to read of an equivalent form for the Antigua fly cruises unless of course it's normal rather than bonded entry.

Those of us who have cruised recently, all on different ships at different times, have either had good, average or bad experiences in our opinion and therein lies the rub, it's our cruise, our experience and our thoughts. To those cruising through the course of the next year I would say don’t be alarmed or panic or fortune tell about what your cruise will bring. We are all different. Arvia's problems will be resolved of that there is no doubt. As to whether Iona and Arvia are for each of us individually only we can decide and other people's comments should not persuade or influence the choice to cruise on them. To those booked to sail on their old favourites later this year I would suggest they will still be your old friends. It has already been said elsewhere by Moley that there will be changes in some aspects of customer service as P&O have listened to the feedback. Time will tell if that does happen of course but there's no point in worrying about it yet. Yes, I'm one of the people cancelling an Arvia cruise but it's not because Arvia has done anything wrong, simply that we've made the decision after my being man handled by the drunken football fan that perhaps we'll try something else because it's Christmas and by nature will be extremely busy. No more than that, simply my OH making a decision on feeling secure. It's not stopping me personally sailing on P&O and I will continue to do so if an itinerary and price looks right for me, I'll just be going alone.

In my opinion the posts were perfectly valid in the context they were made so I'll leave it at that. If the posts are removed you will be able to say I told you so but sadly you are just proving my point that posters on CC are so busy contradicting each other and point scoring that even if P&O did choose to look at CC to see how customers felt it wouldn't be worth their while.