Venice is removed from Marella Adriatic Cruises

[GOQ]

Hi

I've just had an email from Marella informing me that they will no longer calling at Venice on a future Adriatic cruise I have booked. 

They will be calling at Trieste instead.

 

[Maryjanerob]

We just paid for a June cruise with them, wonder if it’s entirely coincidental that 4 days after final payment they tell us we’re not going to Venice. 

[GreigAlyson]

Wife and daughter are gutted by this, been planned pre-covid, re-booked etc, then just over 3 months beforehand they do this, not impressed. I am still waiting on the email, found out by accident that its Trieste instead. I could walk from Koper to Trieste....

[joeecco]

We were gutted at first but we have a 4 hour longer stay in Trieste than we did in Venice and they are providing free return transfers from the ship to Venice (2hrs 15 each way) so we are still happy with that. 
 

Plus they are crediting us £50 per adult onboard spend for the inconvenience which is more than fair. Especially from our experience with P&O, they’d have just said ‘sorry but never mind’ 🤣

[FIFE1]

We have not had any communication yet for our October cruise, but when you do a dummy booking for the weeks now "Ravenna" comes up instead of Venice.

[Emmandjay]

Had our email yesterday changing Venice to Ravenna. Still doing Venice tours (2hrs away) or offering a free Venice on your Own trip and £50pp on board spend. Happy with this.

[Britboys]

11 hours ago, joeecco said:

We were gutted at first but we have a 4 hour longer stay in Trieste than we did in Venice and they are providing free return transfers from the ship to Venice (2hrs 15 each way) so we are still happy with that. 
 

Plus they are crediting us £50 per adult onboard spend for the inconvenience which is more than fair. Especially from our experience with P&O, they’d have just said ‘sorry but never mind’ 🤣

That is very fair of Marella. I'm on a Med cruise with P&O later this year and Venice has been replaced with Trieste. No obc and no mention so far of a free transfer. Fortunately for me, I have been lucky enough to visit Venice several times and have never been to Trieste, so am not that unhappy.

I guess there are far fewer available berths in Marghera so a lot of cruise lines have been affected.

[joeecco]

1 minute ago, Britboys said:

That is very fair of Marella. I'm on a Med cruise with P&O later this year and Venice has been replaced with Trieste. No obc and no mention so far of a free transfer. Fortunately for me, I have been lucky enough to visit Venice several times and have never been to Trieste, so am not that unhappy.

I guess there are far fewer available berths in Marghera so a lot of cruise lines have been affected.

I believe it is too. P&O are getting naughtier with things like this. We’ve never been to Venice before so we’d be furious if we were on the cruise you are but I’m glad it still works well for you. 
 

only thing that baffles me with our Marella cruise is the day before we are in Koper Slovenia which is just a 23 minute journey by road to Trieste. Our original times were departing Koper at 11pm for an 8am arrival into Venice. Now we have a 6am arrival in Trieste (great - makes up the time spent travelling there) but we are now departing Koper at 8pm 😂 This is normally a P&O trick to go as slow as possible to the next destination so I’m surprised to see this change. I thought we’d have left Koper even later than planned - hey ho it’s just an observation nothing for us to cry about haha. 

[Dinglebert]

14 hours ago, Maryjanerob said:

We just paid for a June cruise with them, wonder if it’s entirely coincidental that 4 days after final payment they tell us we’re not going to Venice. 

I would be surprised if they were waiting until you had booked before making the change.  Mind you it would annoy be too.

[Britboys]

7 hours ago, joeecco said:

I believe it is too. P&O are getting naughtier with things like this. We’ve never been to Venice before so we’d be furious if we were on the cruise you are but I’m glad it still works well for you. 
 

only thing that baffles me with our Marella cruise is the day before we are in Koper Slovenia which is just a 23 minute journey by road to Trieste. Our original times were departing Koper at 11pm for an 8am arrival into Venice. Now we have a 6am arrival in Trieste (great - makes up the time spent travelling there) but we are now departing Koper at 8pm 😂 This is normally a P&O trick to go as slow as possible to the next destination so I’m surprised to see this change. I thought we’d have left Koper even later than planned - hey ho it’s just an observation nothing for us to cry about haha. 

That is a bit strange...

[Lexa25]

We’ve just had this email. Does anyone know if we’d be able to cancel or transfer our deposit to a different holiday, as Venice was a big pull for us.

[pennib]

Sorry, all, but the only way to “do” Venice is to take a 3 or 4 day city break, stay in Venice and be prepared to do a lot of walking. There is so much to see you couldn’t possibly do it in a day from a cruise ship. Also the thought of seeing a monstrous cruise ship parked almost by the main square fills me with dread. 

[joeecco]

10 hours ago, pennib said:

Sorry, all, but the only way to “do” Venice is to take a 3 or 4 day city break, stay in Venice and be prepared to do a lot of walking. There is so much to see you couldn’t possibly do it in a day from a cruise ship. Also the thought of seeing a monstrous cruise ship parked almost by the main square fills me with dread. 

Guess we should all cancel the cruise and not bother then 🤣 if we all lived with that attitude we wouldn’t see anything. If we like it we’ll go back, if we don’t then we haven’t wasted annual leave on one place alone. Thanks though 👍

[Snow Hill]

Cruise ships over a certain size are prohibited from docking in Venice as from August of last year, cruise companies are now using Trieste or Ravenna to dock and transferring passengers to Venice by bus. 
 

There are plans by the Italian Government to build a new cruise terminal at Marghera but this will take time. 

[solidus]

We have recently booked on exp2 which includes Ravenna ( which has fabulous mosaics) can anyone give me a short answer on Covid instructions re Marella ? 

[solidus]

May5th

[PearlroseRea]

On 3/28/2022 at 10:24 PM, joeecco said:

We were gutted at first but we have a 4 hour longer stay in Trieste than we did in Venice and they are providing free return transfers from the ship to Venice (2hrs 15 each way) so we are still happy with that. 
 

Plus they are crediting us £50 per adult onboard spend for the inconvenience which is more than fair. Especially from our experience with P&O, they’d have just said ‘sorry but never mind’ 🤣

Hey, Did you go on the venice trip? Got this trip booked for May but Tui can't seem to tell us what time the coach leaves after the ship has docked. I really want to get everything pre booked, like a gondola, Doge's Palace tickets but if you miss your time slot you loose your money. Any info on this would really be of help.

[dronnygirl]

If you want to do a gondola trip the best time is in the morning. It gets busier later so they charge less in a morning. Also, unless you want to be ripped off, don't get a gondola on the grand canal. You can walk into the back streets and negotiate with the gondoliers. 

Enjoy just wandering around Venice, it's beautiful!

[ElmaLee]

On 3/29/2022 at 7:47 PM, pennib said:

Sorry, all, but the only way to “do” Venice is to take a 3 or 4 day city break, stay in Venice and be prepared to do a lot of walking. There is so much to see you couldn’t possibly do it in a day from a cruise ship. Also the thought of seeing a monstrous cruise ship parked almost by the main square fills me with dread. 

You could say the same about Rome, Florence, Barcelona, Athens.......

 

Cruising gives visitors a "taste" of the places it visits, not an in-depth experience.  

[paularmstrong]

Has this not been the case for sometime now

[GreigAlyson]

5 hours ago, PearlroseRea said:

Hey, Did you go on the venice trip? Got this trip booked for May but Tui can't seem to tell us what time the coach leaves after the ship has docked. I really want to get everything pre booked, like a gondola, Doge's Palace tickets but if you miss your time slot you loose your money. Any info on this would really be of help.

We done this trip from Trieste last year. You will get on to Venice Island about 11am, then have approx 4 hours before you get the boat back to the mainland.
Gondolas were a fixed price 80€ with no need to pre-book. 
There were also "large" queues to get access to specific buildings.  
The 4 hrs allows you to take in the sites, ie up to Rialto bridge, trip on Gondola, have lunch, browse the shops etc. I wouldn't fancy trying to stand in a queue for the likes of Doge's Palace, then have to run around to fit everything else in. If you skip lunch you may manage it, but its a long day once you leave the boat. 

[PearlroseRea]

6 hours ago, GreigAlyson said:

We done this trip from Trieste last year. You will get on to Venice Island about 11am, then have approx 4 hours before you get the boat back to the mainland.
Gondolas were a fixed price 80€ with no need to pre-book. 
There were also "large" queues to get access to specific buildings.  
The 4 hrs allows you to take in the sites, ie up to Rialto bridge, trip on Gondola, have lunch, browse the shops etc. I wouldn't fancy trying to stand in a queue for the likes of Doge's Palace, then have to run around to fit everything else in. If you skip lunch you may manage it, but its a long day once you leave the boat. 

When you say "get the boat back to the mainland" did you arrive on a boat? Only the excursion info we have says it takes us on a coach.

[GreigAlyson]

17 minutes ago, PearlroseRea said:

When you say "get the boat back to the mainland" did you arrive on a boat? Only the excursion info we have says it takes us on a coach.

Once in the coach park (mainland), you have to get a boat / water taxi, to the island. As there are several coaches all arriving at the same time, you get funnelled in a queuing system on to the next available water taxi. 

[PearlroseRea]

2 minutes ago, GreigAlyson said:

Once in the coach park (mainland), you have to get a boat / water taxi, to the island. As there are several coaches all arriving at the same time, you get funnelled in a queuing system on to the next available water taxi. 

thanks very much, that is really helpful.