Megabear2

If there's a tour taking in Pisa with the river cruise to the park where you can see the deer it's very nice, but I did that with Celebrity. You can see the racehorses train there as well. If you feel that the journey to Florence and Pisa might be too long have you considered maybe the Cinque Terre which is extraordinarily beautiful and easy to do from La Spezia?

I spent all day yesterday comparing my Arvia booking for 14 nights departing 22/12. My 2nd grade balcony is priced at £7100 with £480 OBC. PE flights and seat allocation to sit together will add at least another £1000 and then my OBS. Although there are no equivalent 14 nights cruises I have found comparable 11, 12 and 13 night cruises with Celebrity, Oceania and Princess. The first I break about even on, the second extra spend of around £600 and Princess I have money. .if you take a late booking with P&O you seem to do okay, however booking in advance other better cruise lines seem to be a far better deal. P&O are now in my opinion only for a quick break rather than planning something special.

I've just reread your menus and showed them to my husband. He confirms we had the same as you on 3rd, 5th, 11th and part of the celebration menu on 12th (minus shrimp starter and baked Alaska). The rest are, as I thought, totally unrecognisable to us!

Very good point on the time on the bus. Florence, even going direct, is 2 hours from La Spezia cruise port - it is over 160km away. Pisa is, if I recall correctly about 85km so half the distance and time.

I assumed the all three restaurants had the same menus but perhaps not. Your offerings on formal nights are much better. We actually only had one extended menu apart from Christmas day. I see you had all the old traditional meals and things like duck and crab, I saw none of that. In fact so bad was the choice for me on one occasion our waiter got me a portion of pasta in tomato sauce! I am quite shocked at the difference to the point I've just been completing my Feefo review and have mentioned the comparison between your cruise menus and ours. I will be very interested in your Arvia experience. I am booked on Iona in March mainly to use up my remaining FCC and fully expected to be living on fish and chips and Glass House food! Maybe there's some hope after all.

Fascinating! I've just read your menus with great interest. I note you had lobster, baked Alaska, beef Wellington etc, all of which were sadly missing on our Christmas cruise. In fact your menus apart from the Christmas Turkey and one or two others are far superior to what we were offered. As you most likely saw elsewhere the poor choice of food on my just completed cruise is one of the reasons I have just cancelled my Arvia Christmas cruise in 2023. I do not have the menus from our cruise unfortunately but can see your offering was far superior, in fact I'd have been extremely happy with it.

Florence is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Must sees are the Ponte Vecchio, Uffizi Gallery, Cathedral of Santa Maria and David (the last of these will have a massive queue so if you go on the do it yourself tour book a skip the line entry with a time to suit you before you travel - for my part visiting David is my main reason for going to Florence so this is essential!). Florence offers good shopping and wonderful specialities in food, however it is crowded and there are lots of students. It is truly a stunning place. Pisa is a small university town. The Field of Miracles where the tower is actually is a small area with the Leaning Tower, the Duomo, the Baptistry, and the Monumental Cemetery in it. Apart from this there are some shops facing towards it. Climbing the Tower is possible but it is usually not included in ship excursions and the queues are long. Most excursions there are short and include around an hour or so to photograph the Field and the buildings. Hope that helps. Be aware coaches are not allowed into the enclosed walls and park outside. You are then transferred on a small land train to inside the walls. If it is a choice of a full day in Florence or a stop in both personally I would choose Florence every time but understand if you've never visited Italy that you may be drawn by the idea of the leaning Tower. A couple of pictures of the buildings in the Field taken in June this year. We took an afternoon trip which took in a visit there followed by a cruise along the river.

No, you are correct. We have 1 night FLL before departure, 11 night cruise and then 4 nights in FLL. We chose Beyond rather than Silhouette which is cheaper, this is because of my love affair with Edge class ships which started in June. Sorry about confusion. We did think about a normal IB and taking the trip after as well but haven't seen my friends since October 2019 and anxious to do that. I very nearly booked to fly FLL to New York and sail home on QM2 - a bargain in an inside - but the OH was concerned about giant snowstorms so I settled for the four days in Jupiter with my friends instead. I notice this morning the fare has increased from yesterday so we are lucky. I had this in June this year but Celebrity honoured the lower fare with an upgraded package.

I've gone! Booked Celebrity Beyond from Fort Lauderdale departing 22 December for 12 nights and added on 4 nights there to visit our friends. Aqua class cabin with drinks, Wi-Fi etc and $400 OBC for £3260pp and free flights from Heathrow. Access to thermal suite included as well. Also refundable deposit until October this year was £300. Arvia 22 December for 14 nights was to cost £7100 total, no drinks/Wi-Fi etc. Sad to go but the disappointing cruise just gone convinced us it was worth a longer flight and a bit of inconvenience.

I seem to recall Slug33ukuk is on a stay and cruise package from a leading travel agent - I recall 3 or 4 days in a hotel pre-cruise. If my memory serves me well he booked November time and asked about various things at the time.

There was a couple of guys outside Sindhu on the afternoon of the first sea day. I stopped to speak with them and they were signing people up there and then. The app did not work for us as even IT department could not get it to load so I cannot say if it could be booked there. We met a couple who did go to one of the events - there were two different ones - but they again had just bumped unexpectedly into the people outside Sindhu.

There was hardly any low alcohol or free beer on Britannia in the last two weeks - it is of course bottled so a pint required 2 bottles. Cannot speak for P&O drinks package but on Princess each bottle reduced the 15 drinks so maximum was 7 1/2 pints in a day. We drink better quality wines onboard mainly around the £30 level but sometimes the £50 Cloudy Bay. I also have 3 or 4 speciality coffees a day and my husband drinks fruit Tea Pigs. A couple of G&Ts in the evening and one or two cocktails for me plus a few pints of Peroni for my OH gave us a balance of around £150 (plus our Christmas Dinner and an additional Limelight Club visit) on top of our £610 OBC. A pint of Peroni (well at least until it ran out!) was £5.30 if I recall correctly.

That would be your personal risk assessment. Passing through the shed the area is much like any other area you come across in ports. Obviously the bulk of luggage is bonded on these cruises so there aren't a lot of bags there. The cruisers on non P&O have luggage areas for both embarkation and disembarkation. I've never seen anyone interfering with these. If you've ever boarded a ship in Genoa or other smaller Italian ports it is very reminiscent of those areas.

Only the TUI charters offer bonded luggage. Those on scheduled flights such as BA and Virgin collect their luggage from the "shed" at the port and then transfer to the airport with it.

In fairness, apart from Christmas day we never queued or saw anything other than four or five parties checking in at the desk. We dined in Epicurean for Christmas day but I believe most people on Britannia were happy with their arrangements once they'd made any alterations required on 22nd.

We had the 14 day ultimate package on our Christmas cruise. We used it daily for work and apart from day 2 it worked okay. Sea days were slower, most likely because of the number of people using it it cost £246 fo the package but we had bought it in advance of the price rise and my discount was applied to bring it down to £198. This year I have used the included package on Celebrity Edge (normally payable at $35 per day) and Regal Princess ($15 per day but I paid a reduced rate due to my aunt's loyalty status). These also were slow when at sea and large numbers were using the wifi. These two wifi packages are advertised as the best at sea - when Enchanted Princess was alongside us in St Kitts the Medallionnet was stronger onboard Britannia than her own one! Internet charges are expensive on all lines if you require it unless it's in a "free" package.

Happy New Year to you too. I have been looking at a lot of cruises for this year the past couple of days including Saga. Strangely a great many are cheaper than we paid P&O this year but we could not stretch to Saga fares and also the itineraries at the time we want to travel all appear to be for longer cruises. Currently our favourites seem to be on Azamara and Celebrity. We are also looking into land based holidays in Costa Rica but have an open mind on what to do. Glad you are having a good cruise, after your previous trials and tribulations you certainly deserve it.

Those on club dining had their booking extended by 30 minutes so 6.00pm and 8.30 extended by 30 minutes at end. Freedom dining passengers who had bookings in place were emailed on 2 December with two times to choose from 5.45 and 8.45. You could request the size of table and indicate any dietary requirements. If you did not request a time and table size by replying you were allocated a table automatically on boarding. A card was in your cabin confirming your arrangement when you boarded. No discussion could be had until the morning of 22 December when desks ere set up at 9.00 in the Atrium. You could then change your allocation if it was wrong or unsuitable. On 22 December a form appeared in your cabin so you could order your wine in advance. A lot of people had booked after 2 December so the allocations were fairly random and big queues developed.

I often wonder the same about other lines too, but we are all guilty - even our esteemed Host sings the praises of Saga here. Sure makes for interesting reading and research.

These photos were not looking down though. They were in a normal seated position looking forward as much as you can from the slant of the chairs due to the narrow balcony. We had a deck 8 last year further forward. Nothing in front of us and had to lean out and look left to see the boats. No problem at all which is why we booked same grade in virtually the same spot this year on deck 9 but were moved to this instead. It's apparently the same grade but they are poles apart.

The photos don't show it but if I sat on the right hand chair - remember on Britannia they are narrow and you sit slanted onto straight on - the stations for the boats were in my direct line of view. I've had the C deck balconies on Azura and love them but you can see straight ahead on those as you can sit forward.

No, this was the light on the boat stantion. It was so bright we did not need our balcony light! Understand why it's there but for what they charged us I'm extremely displeased. I appreciate they did tell us 2 days before about the change because of the air con problem but having paid a very high select fare meeting first time cruisers who'd been given upgrades of 8 and 9 grades from insides to in one case a deluxe balcony I was very disappointed.

Excellent! I can recommend a good lawyer for the argument whose looking for something to do now she's sorted the insurance issues ... Strangely I never ask for compensation but it just keeps rolling in from all sources. Must be the way I tell them.

The light was on all night as well and shone around the edges of the drapes. There is no net curtain any more either and in St Masrten we had to keep everything closed as those on the NCL ship could see straight in - I assume the glass is not clear to them but preferred not to take the chance. The cabin was s replacement for one on the same deck further forward, same grade.

We do use Glass House a lot. I love the Scotch eggs made with salmon and the tempura prawns and we often have the most reasonably priced 3 dishes and a bottle of wine for lunch and skip dinner. Excellent value .. the fish and chips are rather moreish too!