Megabear2

On our cruise he kept telling us he wanted to open a restaurant in Salisbury as it was near his home, seemed strange as he kept proudly telling us about his Northern roots. Wind on a year he opened the restaurant January 2020 ... it closed February this year. Probably needs to sell a lot of books at the moment!

As a foodie you should try a cruise with the Celebrity Chefs. I had a meal cooked by Aktul Kochar when he was associated with Sindhu and it was fabulous. On Britannia my husband did the Cookery Club with Marco which he thoroughly enjoyed. Marco also did cook a special meal you could book into but unfortunately it was sold out so we missed it. I'd quite like to do the Spanish one with Jose Pizzaro but as he's on Arvia sailings only k can't see me doing it for a while.

MPW was onboard on 3 June cruise. When we sailed with him on Britannia he had signed piles of menus and on arrival in the dining room we were presented with one each. It could be they had leftovers so handed them out

From my observation on Arvia the tables are not sitting empty. My normal dining time was 6.15pm. When I entered the dining room there were very few tables unoccupied in Zenith at least. Remember there was only 15 minutes left of the "reserved" period left to come after I entered so it would be right not many empty tables. As the meal progressed I looked around and what I did notice was not many sharing tables completely emptied in one go, often stragglers lingering over a chat and also the staff we running round like the proverbial blue a...d flies serving and hardly any tables that were vacated were able to be reset immediately they were vacated. Zenith also required tablecloth changes on some tables, all consuming further time. The real problem in there seemed to be lack of staff. I only had one dinner in Meriden, that time at 6.00pm. Again even though earlier it was pretty full. Here they didn't offer coffee/tea one of my dining companions asked for a cup and the waiters seemed quite nonplussed. I left there at 8.00pm to catch my 8.30pm show and several on the 8 s3ater table were still eating cheese and biscuits. That table was full with 8 diners at 6.05pm, I was by then checking it out. Also 3 of the people were walk ups, the other five including me reserved in advance so no one from the app queue. Thinking back on it I cannot recall dining in Zenith with anyone who used the app and I had breakfast most mornings in Meriden where I seemed to be the only one who had used the app to go to breakfast. Most mornings there would be 13 or 14 people in the queue when I joined it and I never once got to leave my room before it summoned me.

This is brilliant. Thanks so much. Any babies in the swimming pools? I know you don't have a swim up bar but do you now have an adults only pool and area up front as Arvia appears to have acquired?

I don't doubt they are Olive Grove is very nice, if you can get in ... I booked it before sailing for 6.00pm I wanted to go again but it was always full and the app closed before I reached the top of the queue!

I appreciate the space is used for dining but the menus are set on weekly turnaround and are not offering the variety of a MDR menu which changes every day. They are a totally different experience. The Diner in particular is very much a casual option in my opinion, nice food but very short menu. The Olive Grove also offered shared tables but very few seemed to be bigger than for 4 and I assume sharing in there isn't too popular.

I've never sailed on any RCI ships except the biggest ones. They limited how many could book freedom dining and when you reserved it via the app or boards around the ship it gave you a time they were in 10 minute increments. The club dining rooms still existed and were allocated to bookers in the order received, ie you could choose 6.00pm or 8.30pm but once the most popular was gone you got the one left. Mind you I only sailed out of Fort Lauderdale, Barcelona and Dubai and the bulk of passengers were US residents who are very used to doing as instructed without chancing their arm or questions!

The Local Government Association is very keen on all car parking only being payable by an app, no cards or cash. As a result I currently have 8 parking apps on my telephone with associated accounts as during and post pandemic it was the only way to pay to park. Most of these app controlled car parks use ANPR as well, even buying a train ticket is stressful as the free15 minutes on railway business starts counting down as you enter our local station not when you've found a space. By the time you've parked and walked back to the ticket office you've usually eaten into your first 5 or 6 minutes and just hope there's no queue at the machine inside or the window is manned, otherwise its £2.75 straight of your parking app account or a £75 fine!

Reading the current Iona threads things seem to be working well over there with the app opening at 5.15pm rather than 6.30pm as on Arvia. That indicates either opening the app earlier is relieving pressure and more are using it, or the four dining rooms allows the app to handle demand better. Whichever it is it certainly sounds more civilised and less pressure. Trying to seat the numbers on the big ships may look like a challenge but it seems RC and MSC are doing it reasonably well. It must therefore be doable.

Yes I very much enjoyed the fireworks and Liverpool music with the addition of Time to Say Goodbye. I did go to the sailaway as it was the first "proper" Cunard one I'd been on since 2019. It was well attended. I spoke to a lot of Cunard newcomers on deck who were a little surprised that all the British songs etc were taking place day 1, they'd thought it would happen later near the actual Coronation. The sailaway was little changed from Cunard's traditional leaving of Gibraltar although the flag waving etc was a little tame compared with those heady days.

Each to their own.

Britannia Christmas 2018 was the first cruise I'd been on in the Caribbean without it. I think it possibly now wouldn't suit the "new" demographic. Another sign of the times changing perhaps. Personally I'm not a fan of sailaway parties and can take or leave them however I did enjoy the enthusiasm for 4th July on Regal Princess last year which was just a big party. QM2 had a traditional sailaway for the Coronation, flags as well which were better quality and not plastic. We were asked to keep them for reuse.

Yes, sailaways are back but I actually was referring to The Great British Sailaway resplendent with Union flags, Last Night of the Proms etc. I assume over the Coronation it made a return in that form but I haven't seen a sailaway in that format on a P&O ship apart from a big royal occasion for a number of years and as I say the last one was on Azura in 2017.

On this particular voyage it crashed badly on day 2 and could not be used reliably for a number of days afterwards. The outage led to people having no option but to physically turn up at restaurants on day 2 to try to get in and human nature being as it is many seemed to stick to that route. It wasn't helped that day 3 was a Celebration Night with all the previously known capacity problems. Reliability of the app would I assume be the key to making it function on that particular voyage. Interestingly I saw similar problems on QM2 the week before in the Britannia restaurant for the so called second sitting freedom dining. On that voyage I used the app every night and despite being called within a 15-20 minute window every time found myself in a long queue, the worst of which was at 8.30pm one evening where after arriving at the restaurant the queue to the podium took 45 extra minutes and I ended up leaving the restaurant at 10.50pm. You may be right about training of staff but in reality on both ships the passengers were not helping themselves as it became very clear that once they had experienced a problem they anticipated it would occur every time and just didn't use the app again. At the time I posted a note of my experience over on the Cunard board and was met with a barrage of questions about why was I even trying to use the app. Providing the app is one thing, to convert people to using it will be an uphill battle if it isn't reliable and there's also the difficult situation of the mindset I don’t want to use this thing so I'm going to pick as many holes as I can. The problem is there are as many people who will love it as there are detest it and you will not win the latter over without a reliable and simple system.

Haven't seen one of those on P&O since the entertainment team on Azura decided to encourage the crowd to make football type chants of who are you to the bemused Germans on a TUI ship next door - think it was around 2017. Large number of complaints were made and an apology had to be issued onboard the following day. The next time at sailaway with a ship next door they started the We Will Rock You chant that seemed to be in place until the pandemic.

Arvia virtual queues are apparently opened at 6.30pm, and did on my cruise. The hour before was the only prebooked slots, the theory being according to the restaurant manager that the meal experience would be 1 1/2 hours and therefore the 6.30pm joiners would be seated around 15-20 minutes after joining. In reality the meal was lasting nearer to 2 hours even without coffee being served which led to an instant app queue. The restaurant staff were extremely busy and clearing tables didn't seem to be high priority leading presumably to more delays for those waiting to come in.

On my Arvia cruise 80% plus were dressed for formal night. Interestingly the young people were far keener on being dressed in formal wear and the children were also attired in very smart suits and dresses.

I completely agree with you. I think that booking 6 nights is very reasonable of you. Myself I booked 13 nights out of 14 before sailing as I eat early every night and the chances of getting a reservation were very slim if not reserved in advance. The app queue doesn't open until 6.30pm on Arvia although you can join a physical queue or take the pager up until that time. You are not making the problem worse, you are actually doing what P&O want you to do which is why they open those slots early before sailing. Things like Olive Grove are quite difficult to get from my experience and if slots are available and you want to try it, I'd suggest you book if the spaces are open, you can always cancel. The 14th day I had no booking for was due to a cancelled all day excursion with a lunch. Despite trying all cruise to get a reservation anywhere for that Sunday it proved impossible and I went to the Quays. Certainly don't feel any guilt about booking in advance, it's P&O's system that creates the inequalities not you. Have a wonderful cruise.

Arvia's virtual queue in May did not open until 6.30pm as all dining between 5.30 and 6.30 was prebooked. There was a walk up queue to the right but only a handful from there were admitted before pagers started to be handed out. As there are only two MDR the pressure on Olive Grove and the Diner was also high with the virtual queue filling as soon as they opened.

I took the Rome on your own the last time I visited Civitavecchia on QV a couple of years before the pandemic. To make sure I saw the two most congested sites I booked a couple of skip the line entries to the Vatican and Collosium with Viator which were fully cancellable until 24 hours before the day in case of the port being cancelled. It saved considerable time and we were able to use the Hoho between the sights whilst seeing the two with a set appointment. Having visited Rome for quite a long period last year it seems the authorities have cut back on numbers allowed into in particular the Vatican museum so if that's on your visit list a reservation might be a good idea.

Reviewing current pricing structures your rebooked cruise may still prove to be a big bargain. Prices on most cruises have edged up past few days and OBC is definitely nowhere near the generous levels it was, only certain cruises are covered by the current headline OBC advert. Christmas cruises seem to have a £150 or so discount but the fares are still.very high. As we head into summer it looks like capacity is tightening, at least until mid September, and prices have a higher entrance level. Definitely the gap between saver and select is.wide on a lot of the cruises. Apparently insides are extremely popular according to my Arvia salesman. I wonder if people are taking them in the hope of bidding after 80 days for higher grades.

Thank you. Gettingwarmer had also mentioned this in post 2 and I have been looking into the cruise under the terms you suggest. I'm currently awaiting a reply from a t/a Terrierjohn mentioned having a deal on cabin upgrades. I shall make a decision tomorrow, but currently think I'd like to try Sky Princess. Also if I take that one I will be onboard for my birthday which will be nice. Weighing it up it appears the "cheaper" P&O cruise isn't going to be that much cheaper once I throw in speciality dining x 2, drinks and wifi.

I'm sorry that you were not aware of the change of date for the offer that ended on 5 July. Obviously onboard booking is going to be under the terms in place as at that date. For instance the current offers of extra OBC only run until 4 September and therefore those booking onboard prior to that date will receive those terms. Like anything where prices can fluctuate if you are planning a purchase it's best to set a price you are happy with and book within that bracket. It can work both ways. Whilst onboard Arvia last month I booked a cruise with the minimum deposit and received the largest OBC I've ever had. I was also allowed to move two other bookings and was granted extra OBC and new booking required only £50 deposit. I suppose the answer is be very aware of the dates the offers change as there's always four or five days inbetween where prices and OBC are nowhere like when offers are on. Buyer beware is perhaps applicable. Ironically if you'd booked onboard up until 5th July you might well be saying what a great deal you received.

Yes, I have it and sent an enquiry, thank you.