Megabear2

It's extraordinarily rare to get a UK Cunard offer as is being mentioned over on the Cunard forum. My OH has surprised me while I'm up north and told me he's just booked me on another Cunard fly cruise next year as it's three weeks to Italy and the Adriatic. The price is exceptionally good looking at the confirmation, cheaper than a not so good itinerary on P&O. I'm well pleased.

We weren't embarrassed as such but very angry when we had to "enjoy" their company every night with the drunken behaviour and then watch them on their bargain saver fare go into far better rooms than us. We had been moved from our original booked cabin four days before departure due to some stated problem with it and had been told we had no option but to accept the replacement as the cruise was full.

We'd never had it happen before but because the prices were reduced so much for that cruise there were some shall I say interesting characters onboard who were enjoying their drinks packages and telling the world their business!

Is this flying into Valletta and out of Tenerife? If so these flights for 2024 won't be on sale yet so it could well be P&O have a charter. Commercial airlines operate on 12 month schedules so bookings are currently on sale to end August 2024. Jet2 do have flights on 3rd available with single fare on 06.55 being £177 each currently. They don't seem to offer multiple airport flights though so 2 singles would be very dear. I'm guessing Easyjet, BA etc will be releasing their flights end of next month so m8gyt be worth considering as they should offer the multiple flight option.

This happened to a large number of cruises last year and dribs and drabs occurred when people cancelled. If P&O are saying no flights as its October 2024 they must have been offering a charter. Scheduled flight programmes are not normally released until 12 months before the date of departure and assumedly aren't on sale yet. Did you actually look into this before booking the cruise? If you are using a reputable travel agent they should be able to arrange the flights. Personally with such a long time to go before the cruise I'd consider an overnight in Malta the day before if I'm relying on a non P&O flight just in case of aircraft problems etc.

Very difficult not to know when all around you are loudly discussing their bargain £999 last minute booking as they were last Christmas, particularly when they assume everyone's paid the same and you've paid nearly four times that for a standard balcony cabin with sofa and suffered the indignity of your "clear view" actually being the mechanism for the lifeboats!

I think it must just be certain cruises. I've not seen any noticeable reductions advertised by P&O and today's prices in general look the same as earlier in the week. They did something similar last year with one or two cruises and then slashed the prices on remaining cabins to total bargain basement levels on just about everything left. I received £150 OBC by way of making it "better". I had ended up nearly £2,000 down on my Christmas cruise so it was a pittance!

Noticeably a lot of the Caribbean cruises already have limited flights and cabins. Will be interesting to see if there are drops outs as the payment dates approach. Tye Arvia ones in particular look quite restricted with several 7 night sailings apparently sold out.

Surprise peas - the surprise being no matter how much you boiled them they came out like cannonballs.

I just checked my booking and there are no deluxe balcony cabins available so even if I wanted to rebook I wouldn't get the same cabin type. The OBC of £660 which we have seems on an ordinary balcony to be £340 now so we will stick to what we have. Prices for 2024 seem to be slowly dropping now, I just had notification of sales from both Cunard and Princess and have just booked two of the former.

Cunard fare on the transatlantic and obviously saver as everyone was for the Coronation cruise. I noticed on the recent "Back on QV" thread a mention of the same happening (#40) so I am assuming it's getting more frequent and not everyone in Britannia is getting their preferences regardless of ship.

Unfortunately not on my last thre3 Queen Mary 2 cruises, two transatlantics and the Coronation one. I have early club table for 8 as my default at booking as I travel mainly alone or meet up with friends from the US on a transatlantic. On arrival on both my last voyages I have been moved to "freedom" dining and a card left in my room saying they have booked me a first night table at 8.30pm and I should use the app for the remaining nights. When asking at the restaurant on both the last two occasions I received an apology that club was over subscribed on both sittings so I could not change back as I had done the first time it happened. I had booked that transatlantic four months before sailing and obviously along with everyone else on the Coronation cruise, the first occasion was booked by my American friends for all three of us nearly nine months before sailing. I am Diamond on Cunard and have never had this happen before and thought it was due to them making my booking. The other two were booked via my personal travel agent and my booking confirmations clearly showed dining preference as Club. Interestingly I have freedom as my preferred choice on P&O and when I recently booked direct with Cunard I was told that my preference for freedom was noted. When I said that was incorrect on a Cunard cruise they checked and said at some point my computer records seemed to have merged. I am not even Caribbean on P&O its quite a way to go so as such am a very long way down the pecking order on choice. It will be interesting to see in November on my next QM2 trip what occurs.

The promise on building the new ship? I'm not new to Cunard having been sailing with them for very many years albeit not in high grade cabins and have no knowledge of this promise so would be interested to hear about it. Having said that until 2021 I never had a problem with dining on P&O either but they have managed spectacularly to create problems on Arvia which seemed to turn my cruise into a game of Mission Impossible if I wasn't booked in advance. I assumed I paid more on Cunard for the far superior experience overall and nothing to do with a seat in the dining room. That said with all these new dining venues on their new ship someone somewhere must think they can persuade passengers into them, my question is how are they going to do that.

"Many", how many constitutes that I wonder.

Yes I'm aware you are Club on Queen Anne. My point isn't about that, more about myself and the others not booked into that end of the ship. If I was paying the prices they are quoting for Club or the Grills I wouldn't be using the supplemental dining either and would expect my included dining to be more than sufficient for my dining needs. I'm never going to be in a financial position to afford these cabin levels on any ship so with such a large number of extra charge restaurants I'm assuming that Britannia class passengers are going to be the ones expected to use them. My point of concern is how the included dining room seating requirements are being calculated and whether there will be sufficient seating in them to meet everyone's needs without people being forced as they are on Arvia to seek alternatives. I'm unsure if you have seen the details yet.

The one that's going to be interesting in this respect is actually over on Cunard. I've just been sent the blurb on Queen Anne's "speciality restaurants" for my cruise next September and there's quite a lot of them. Part of the Cunard experience is obviously the dining including people paying much higher fares for Britannia Club never mind the Grills. My suspicious mind is looking at all these extra charge restaurants and wondering who the bean counters are expecting to fill them. How many passengers who have paid for instance the Club premium for their dining will spend in these extra pay restaurants. The cynic in me is looking at the Arvia experiment with dining arrangements and wondering if I'm about to become part of another one on Queen Anne where they are counting on X number using the speciality restaurants and if they've got their numbers wrong ...

That's very sad, however of they aren't told what's upsetting people they can't put it right so you are doing the right thing. That email is Paul Ludlow's office as suggested.

Yes Damian, they do at least read emails to this address! You should get an acknowledgement in a couple of days saying 28 days to investigate. My experience day 27 they will call you to discuss. The ladies and gents there are very helpful and more to the point trained in customer relations.

Very popular with those with inside cabins though. If, as reported by Mr Ludlow in one of his reports to the press, his biggest seller is the inside cabins on Iona and Arvia you can see the attraction particularly on cruises where the weather can be iffy.

NO, you really, really don't want to.

That's interesting. I've specifically been told now that there is an IT glitch with Britannia bookings. Clearly not it would seem! Looks like I'm going to have to try again. I'm growing a bit tired of all this.

Usually sails around 5.30 to 6.00pm. The minibuses are travelling in convoy nowadays. Depending on traffic 40 minutes to an hour. Saturday's are usually not held up too much by local traffic. One point - as PE you will alight the plane first as do we. Therefore you'll be on the first couple of minibuses but due to the convoy don't be surprised if you and I end up at the back of the queue to check in at the shed. Make sure you have your phone handy, you should be able to do the log in to app bit from outside.

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Sorry, to avoid spoiling your equilibrium stay away from the Super Organised thread! I may not having dining anxiety but I certainly now have losing it with P&O disorganisation and p...up in a brewery anger.