Worried about having sufficient spending money..

[Cruising cruiser95]

Hi everyone :)

 

I'm going on a 2 week West Med Oceana cruise in 3 weeks, and life being life (car repairs, mortgage etc) am a bit tight on cash.

 

Gratuities and shore excusions aside, would £250/£300 be do-able for a 2 week cruise? I don't gamble, won't buy photographs (will take my own), won't buy any art, spa treatments etc and will only be having 2 or 3 drinks a day. I'll be taking on some of my own booze to make my own drinks also.

 

Should I be stressing or do you think it's manageable? What's the lowest your account tab has come to?

 

Thanks everyone and happy cruising!

[davecttr]

Hi everyone :)

 

I'm going on a 2 week West Med Oceana cruise in 3 weeks, and life being life (car repairs, mortgage etc) am a bit tight on cash.

 

Gratuities and shore excusions aside, would £250/£300 be do-able for a 2 week cruise? I don't gamble, won't buy photographs (will take my own), won't buy any art, spa treatments etc and will only be having 2 or 3 drinks a day. I'll be taking on some of my own booze to make my own drinks also.

 

Should I be stressing or do you think it's manageable? What's the lowest your account tab has come to?

 

Thanks everyone and happy cruising!

If you exclude excursions and tips you will only be spending your money on drinks and occasional expenses ashore. If you avoid speciality coffees and drink the free tea/coffee from the buffet your main onboard expense will be drinks. Allow say £15 per day for drinks equals £150 for a fortnight so you should have plenty left for excursions. £250 should be OK :)

 

Ooops, of course you don't pay cash for anything onboard apart from the casino so it will only be occassional expenses while ashore.

 

You can deposit cash at reception toward your onboard account.

[winniesbestm8]

I think you should just get by on that!

 

As a couple we have always spent typically £600-900 on a 14 night cruise, but we have just gone wild and enjoyed ourselves (excursions included)

 

Last year on Ventura we had £50 OBC each and spent £790 as a family of 4, but only 2 excursions and free child place on excursion

[Morgans]

You can ask for a print out of your on board spend at the reception every few days. This will help you keep track of your bill throughout the holiday.

[jenny wren]

we came back last week from 2 weeks in the Med and spent 200 euros ashore having coffee and cakes at each port (11) and bits and bobs of shopping, drinks at airport and on plane, taxi in Gib, newspapers, etc. so you should be fine ! :)

 

Just realised you meant on board account....ours was £100 for two of us we don't drink much but did have a few and two speciality restaurant meals (£60), no photos or any other ship purchases. remember drinks are priced reasonably on Oceana (no added 15%).

 

We spent five weeks on Oceana in January/February and loved her !!

[Jo and Rob]

Cruising is a great way of not overspending so don't worry. It is not like a self catering holiday which appears cheap and then costs a fortune after you've been eating out etc. So much is included and you can definitely keep the costs down.

 

1. Avoid the specialty restaurants and then all food is free.
   
2. Bring on a box or two of wine and other preferred alcohol as there is no limit on alcohol with P&O.
   
3. Drink the free tea and coffee in the MDR and buffet and enjoy the coffee making facilities in the cabin.
   
4. If you enjoy wine with the meal have half a litre of house wine for only £8 ish.
   
5. Look out for for cocktail and mocktail of the day which are always cheaper.
   
6. Avoid P&O excursions unless distance is involved and instead use the free shuttle buses provided.
   
7. Enjoy the free items on room service.
   
8. Order fruit juice for breakfast from room service then put it in the fridge for later in the day.
   
9. Enjoy all the free activities during the day.
   
10. Wait until the last sea day to buy purchases onboard and you will find lots of items will be cut price.
    
11. Go along to the free spa raffle on the first sea day. I won a facial which would have cost £79!!!! (it was fab!)
    

We get a daily printout of our account to keep an eye on spend. It also makes it much easier to spot a mistake if you have been wrongly charged for something. Your budget is definitely fine and you will have a wonderful time I'm sure. Have a great cruise. :)

[Cruising cruiser95]

Thank you everyone! You've eased my mind a lot, was getting rather worried but I'm now really looking forward to it :)

[magpieman]

You should easily manage on that amount, as others have said you don't have to spend a lot on board to have a good time, all the food is free if you use the main dining room, buffet and room service.

 

As well as print out's you can keep check of your onboard spend on the television in your cabin.

 

Enjoy, we did the Western Med in June and it was fabulous.

[Brayman]

You should easily manage on that amount, as others have said you don't have to spend a lot on board to have a good time, all the food is free if you use the main dining room, buffet and room service.

 

As well as print out's you can keep check of your onboard spend on the television in your cabin.

 

Enjoy, we did the Western Med in June and it was fabulous.

 

Not available on Oceana yet!

[winniesbestm8]

Not available on Oceana yet!

 

Can you not do this on Oceana? grr

[Brayman]

Can you not do this on Oceana? grr

 

Afraid not, you need to go down to reception to get a printout. (As of last month [June] anyway!)

[jeanlyon]

Sounds OK to me too. We don't do excursions, don't do specialty dining, art, hairdos etc. We do like to have a couple of drinks before dinner and some wine on the table. So we reckon on £20 a day or just over for both of us. We're not particularly skimping, we just don't enjoy those other things. Mind you we obviously spend some money ashore when we are DIYing. Usually take about £400 in whatever currency.

[Futureal]

Great tips in this thread! :) We learned from our mistakes on our first cruise(14 day med on Oceana like the one you are going on) last year and are applying them to our upcoming cruise on Azura. We(myself, my wife and son) spent something like £1300(possibly even more, lost track of the Euros we were spending off the ship) last year :o It was our first cruise, so wanted to have a great time, but there's no way we should have spent anywhere near that amount. Here are the areas we are going to improve to spend considerably less on Azura:-

 

1. Not paying for internet. I work online and am an internet junkie so I didn't really try to go without it. Can't remember the exact amount but I think it was £150+ I spent on it. The connection is slow, it is overpriced(in my opinion) and the only important thing I needed to keep up with was E-Mails to my parents to check the house and cats were OK back home.

 

This time, I am going to create a group on the P & O site. It is free to use the P & O site onboard, and you just give the link and password to the people back home you want to be able to access it and post in it.

 

2. Excursions. We went on 3 last year(Rome, Ajaccio and Gibraltar), and we felt the first 2 in particular were overpriced. Although the tour guide was very good in Rome, we had quite an unpleasant and uncomfortable time because it was extremely hot that day, and we queued outside the Vatican for 45 minutes, only to be turned away because(literally) a few inches of the top of my wife's back was showing :rolleyes:

 

It's only a week's cruise this time, with 4 ports of call, and I think we are doing our own thing on all 4, which leads me onto the next one...

 

3. Do more research(before we are on the ship) about things to do at the ports of call. Last year, we would decide what to do the evening before! For example, in Barcelona, we got there and just decided to do an open top bus tour. These are great, but a tad pricey in my opinion.

 

4. Go prepared with clothing/sun protection/drinks etc. Sounds a no-brainer, but we actually got on the ship slightly unprepared :o I didn't have any shorts because the ones I had ordered online didn't arrive in time. The shorts sold onboard are expensive, I think I paid £25 or so for some. We didn't have the right sun protection that was suitable for our skins(mine, anyway), so we had to buy some more onboard.

 

We didn't bring any drinks onboard at all. This time we will at least bring some sparkling water, Powerade( great for energy and rehydrating after over indulging :p ) and maybe a bottle or 2 of wine.

 

5. Soda and ice cream cards can be a great money saver, if you use them! We got both and used the majority of the soda one but barely any of the ice cream one.

 

I think you can definitely stay under your £250 threshold, especially on Oceana. Have a great time - we had an amazing time on it last year :)

[Brayman]

These days you should be able to stay in contact with home via free wi-fi in most ports. Just look for people sitting on the pavement with their laptops on their knees :)

[redwell]

how do you log onto group on po website can everybody then read what you post

[Futureal]

how do you log onto group on po website can everybody then read what you post

 

I haven't created mine yet, but as far as I'm aware, you can make it a 'closed' group which means only people who you invite can see it and post in it :)

 

If you have a P & O account(free and easy to set up), you go to 'community' then groups to view them or set one up.

[FLUFFY01]

If you use your credit card to charge everything to your account, then you will have another month to work out your finances when you get home. Also should you require cash for when you go ashore get it from reception and it will go as purchases on your credit card.:)

[magpieman]

I haven't created mine yet, but as far as I'm aware, you can make it a 'closed' group which means only people who you invite can see it and post in it :)

 

If you have a P & O account(free and easy to set up), you go to 'community' then groups to view them or set one up.

 

 

I did exactly this, created a closed group and which my family were able to join, so we were able to give updates of our cruise to the family and they could report back to us what they were doing. It is a brilliant idea and very easy to set up on the P&O site. Only the people who join the group can see what you are posting and you can allow anyone you want to join, i.e. if you just want family and friends then only allow their registration.

 

YOu can post pictures as well and you can access the site from your cabin on your laptop free of charge, or from the ships computers (again free of charge).

[Redstar46]

One tip for you, a bit naughty I know! We purchased two, one litre bottles of Brandy from the duty free shop on board at a tenner a peace, then we purchased a soft drinks card giving you 20 one pint soft drinks for 35 quid, putting the brandy in a small empty volvic bottle we went to the bars in the evening and ordered our soft drinks, we nocked the top off the one pint (ie) coke and added our brandy, on the piss, on the cheap!

[jeanlyon]

You don't even need to set up a closed group, you can just use the Messages function on the P&O free site.

 

If you have a 3G Kindle, you can use email for free in port.

[southwinds]

Cocktail of the day... is often the best priced drink and MOCK tail of the day the best priced soft drink..

 

Tea and coffee free all day in the self serve or in your cabin...

 

take drink from home to have in your cabin... also take squash to pop in water from the fridge for a freeby soft drink when its hot... and to save pennies..

 

You can do the whole cruise with out spending a penny..

 

Really its tips... drinks... tours... are the main spending things which you can control what and how much you spend.

[Cruising cruiser95]

One tip for you, a bit naughty I know! We purchased two, one litre bottles of Brandy from the duty free shop on board at a tenner a peace, then we purchased a soft drinks card giving you 20 one pint soft drinks for 35 quid, putting the brandy in a small empty volvic bottle we went to the bars in the evening and ordered our soft drinks, we nocked the top off the one pint (ie) coke and added our brandy, on the piss, on the cheap!

 

I like it :D

[panama pete]

Why go on holiday on a budget , I would rather not go !!!!

[Futureal]

Why go on holiday on a budget , I would rather not go !!!!

 

Like the OP said, life happens. Personally, I'd rather go on a cruise and watch the pennies, than not go on a cruise at all. Besides, £250 is definitely doable and a great time can still be had.

[goose30]

Two rules for any vacation be it cruise or otherwise.

 

1. Determine how much money you think you will need. Then double it.

 

2. Determine how much clothes you want to take. Then take half of it.