Worst cruise ever on Arcadia

[zap99]

15 minutes ago, Dermotsgirl said:

The cruises and Warner's do seem quite interchangeable for entertainment. I recognise a lot of the names of entertainers at Warner's from the ships 

Yes, we have seen a few. Most recent was Maxine Mazumder doing Adele at Littlecote ,We saw her on Britannia. We saw  Tony Hadley and his band at Sinah Warren. Next day they were oop North at a Butlins. Funny old world.

Edited January 19, 2023 by zap99

[Megabear2]

15 minutes ago, zap99 said:

Yes, we have seen a few. Most recent was Maxine Mazumder doing Adele at Littlecote ,We saw her on Britannia. We saw  Tony Hadley and his band at Sinah Warren. Next day they were oop North at a Butlins. Funny old world.

Tony Hadley regularly plays with Peter Cox of Go West.  One of the biggest events at Butlins Bognor Regis every year is the weekend where they are the acts, it sells out.  The pair of them have big followings both here in the US and a large number of Go West fans from there attend every time it's on.

 

Apart from the obvious Pretty Woman connection Tony Hadley and Peter Cox were on the ITV show Reborn in the USA (anyone else remember that one?) With Hadley winning and Cox coming third.  As huge Go West fans we try to see them at least twice a year but Tony Hadley no longer works with them apart from on the Butlind tour.

Edited January 19, 2023 by Megabear2

[snaefell]

Been nearly 6 years since we were last on Britannia,Brodies was very much a mix for us,loved the room but we hate Bingo,Pub Quiz's & Karaoke so we didn't get to spend much time in there!😎

[Bazrat]

22 hours ago, zap99 said:

We were on Britannia in October all very acceptable. Are you referring to the young singer/guitarist. If so, quite entertaining and competent,  but a bit samey. 

Yes cannot remember his name just his hair, was going to nick some whilst he wasn't looking.

[Bazrat]

10 hours ago, Fionboard said:

Buskers seem to be popular on P&O lately. Same repertoire every day and far too loud!

Some were really good so didn't mind listening to some of them depending on style of music 

[white_bear]

We were on Arcadia's Christmas cruise as well and it probably rates as the worst one we've done (and we have done plenty).  The "app" didn't work (although they kept telling us to use it) so getting into Freedom dining at the time we wanted was hopeless.  Organisation of the Freedom dining MDR was poor - inexperienced wait staff and tables not being cleared/reset meant that there were long waits as the tables weren't being made available to a second sitting.  We were also amazed at the (apparent lack of) protocols when the norovirus outbreak hit - we were still being given shared items on the MDR tables.  The buffet was ghastly and the wine "service" was appalling.

Having second thoughts about an Arcadia cruise this summer.

[Fionboard]

I enjoyed the Xmas cruise. The plumbing problems did not spoil it for me and I was on fixed dining (great company) so did not have the problems associated with "Freedom".

[bbtablet]

23 hours ago, Fionboard said:

I enjoyed the Xmas cruise. The plumbing problems did not spoil it for me and I was on fixed dining (great company) so did not have the problems associated with "Freedom".

Ah! yes - freedom! - be careful what you wish for! (we are stoically fixed dining only, and only book the ships that do it).

[Selbourne]

49 minutes ago, bbtablet said:

we are stoically fixed dining only, and only book the ships that do it.

Looks like you can book any of the P&O ships then, as it appears that those ships with freedom only dining are allowing people to pre-book fixed tables at a time of their choosing for the entire cruise (well, that’s certainly happening on Arvia)!

[Kittyonions]

Can you explain when/how to book the table on Arvia please!

[Selbourne]

3 minutes ago, Kittyonions said:

Can you explain when/how to book the table on Arvia please!

If you read the posts by TigerB, including the Arvia TA thread, you will see that he was able to make MDR bookings for the whole cruise prior to boarding, and others have reported similar. No prizes for guessing why there are long queues for the MDR when the system isn’t being operated as intended (I.e. freedom dining, first come, first served)!

[Kittyonions]

Many thanks Selbourne !

From the  initial problems re dining it appears more of us than P & O expected, are choosing to eat in the reduced number of MDR. We are not sailing until May, but will look out for the chance to pre book tables.

[Fionboard]

To avoid all these dining problems, why don't they just  do as on the other ships and have one MDR for fixed sittings and others for proper Freedom dining only. That would suit everyone surely. 

[Selbourne]

3 minutes ago, Fionboard said:

To avoid all these dining problems, why don't they just  do as on the other ships and have one MDR for fixed sittings and others for proper Freedom dining only. That would suit everyone surely. 

I agree. Even if there’s not enough demand for fixed dining to fill one of the two MDRs, perhaps they could section an area off in one of them. Cunard do a similar thing on QM2 between Britannia and Britannia Club. As you say, that would satisfy those who like the same table and time every night, whilst leaving the bulk of the MDR provision as Freedom dining, operating as it should.
 

We use Freedom dining on the other ships because it works really well, and we vary our dining times based on port departure times (we like to watch the departures from our balcony) and how hungry we feel. From the reports I am reading, it strikes me that in trying to pacify those who like fixed dining (which isn’t advertised as being available on Arvia and Iona) they are causing problems for those who use Freedom Dining (which is advertised) - hence the queues. 

[Megabear2]

40 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

I agree. Even if there’s not enough demand for fixed dining to fill one of the two MDRs, perhaps they could section an area off in one of them. Cunard do a similar thing on QM2 between Britannia and Britannia Club. As you say, that would satisfy those who like the same table and time every night, whilst leaving the bulk of the MDR provision as Freedom dining, operating as it should.
 

We use Freedom dining on the other ships because it works really well, and we vary our dining times based on port departure times (we like to watch the departures from our balcony) and how hungry we feel. From the reports I am reading, it strikes me that in trying to pacify those who like fixed dining (which isn’t advertised as being available on Arvia and Iona) they are causing problems for those who use Freedom Dining (which is advertised) - hence the queues. 

The early booking between 6.00 and 6.30 if you are on freedom dining has been in place on Britannia since P&O first introduced the concept, it just wasn't well known and also the bulk of people using the dining room wanted to dine after 6.30.  When I spoke to the maitre de the first time I was advised of this he told me the period between 6.00 and 6.30 was traditionally not popular as most passengers were used to a fixed dining time of 6.30 or 8.30.  That made a lot of sense as he had staff ready and waiting for anyone happy to go in to dine at an early time.

 

Traditionally on American ships the early dining times "sell out" first due to the culture outside of their major cities and conurbations of eating early, many restaurants apart from high end ones start serving "dinner" at 5.00pm.

 

You mention QM2 and the Britannia Club restaurant, I assume you have dined there in which case you will know it is an extremely small venue in a dedicated dining room.  Of the 1,360 cabins on the Queen there are only 76 Britannia Club staterooms and 30 of those were added in 2015 during the remastering. The Princess and Queens Grill account for another 170 or so rooms meaning the remainder of over 1,000 odd are served by the Britannia restaurant.  Of course those dining in the three Grills and Club restaurants also pay a very large premium for that privilege.  The increase in people booking Club is why the extra 30 rooms were added and obviously the Queen Anne is moving on more to offer these dining options and also very new for Cunard quite a lot of extra payment venues.  An interesting experiment breaking very much away from the Cunard model.  Recently another addition has been a form of freedom dining in Britannia restaurant.  QM2 carries a maximum around 2,600.

 

Arvia and Iona by comparison carry 5,200 with 2 and 4 main dining rooms respectively. If they were to adopt the club dining concept assumedly they'd need one restaurant with 1,000 cabins to use the space profitably and this would require a very large premium to be in the mould of Queen Mary 2.  Remember the Club staterooms are more or less standard balconies with upgraded furnishings on the Queen and therefore that would have to be the offering on the P&O ships.

 

Personally I doubt around 1,000 people on a P&O ship will want to do that?

Edited February 2, 2023 by Megabear2

[Selbourne]

4 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

The early booking between 6.00 and 6.30 if you are on freedom dining has been in place on Britannia since P&O first introduced the concept, it just wasn't well known and also the bulk of people using the dining room wanted to dine after 6.30.  When I spoke to the maitre de the first time I was advised of this he told me the period between 6.00 and 6.30 was traditionally not popular as most passengers were used to a fixed dining time of 6.30 or 8.30.  That made a lot of sense as he had staff ready and waiting for anyone happy to go in to dine at an early time.

 

Traditionally on American ships the early dining times "sell out" first due to the culture outside of their major cities and conurbations of eating early, many restaurants apart from high end ones start serving "dinner" at 5.00pm.

 

You mention QM2 and the Britannia Club restaurant, I assume you have dined there in which case you will know it is an extremely small venue in a dedicated dining room.  Of the 1,360 cabins on the Queen there are only 76 Britannia Club staterooms and 30 of those were added in 2015 during the remastering. The Princess and Queens Grill account for another 170 or so rooms meaning the remainder of over 1,000 odd are served by the Britannia restaurant.  Of course those dining in the three Grills and Club restaurants also pay a very large premium for that privilege.  The increase in people booking Club is why the extra 30 rooms were added and obviously the Queen Anne is moving on more to offer these dining options and also very new for Cunard quite a lot of extra payment venues.  An interesting experiment breaking very much away from the Cunard model.  Recently another addition has been a form of freedom dining in Britannia restaurant.  This ship Carry's a maximum around 2,600.

 

Arvia and Iona by comparison carry 5,200 with 2 and 4 main dining rooms respectively. If they were to adopt the club dining concept assumedly they'd need one restaurant with 1,000 cabins to use the space profitably and this would require a very large premium to be in the mould of Queen Mary 2.  Remember the Club staterooms are more or less standard balconies with upgraded furnishings on the Queen and therefore that would have to be the offering on the P&O ships.

 

Personally I doubt around 1,000 people on a P&O ship will want to do that?

That’s very interesting. Thanks. We have been on 3 cruises on Britannia and I had no idea that they were offering that facility. Seems odd when they have a dining room offering fixed dining anyway, but I get the point about utilising down time in Freedom dining. We always dine much later, so maybe that’s why we’ve missed it. Is it the case that they only offer this facility for very early diners on Arvia and Iona? If so, I wonder what the cause is of the queues being reported on Arvia? The other two issues being reported are the fact that the pre-booked and walk-up queues seem to be merging and, as you say, Arvia has less MDR options. If so, they should be able to resolve the first of those issues, but the second one will be less easy to fix. 

 

Regarding QM2, no we haven’t cruised on her, just done a ships tour. We have, however, booked Britannia Club on Queen Anne as we like the concept. As you say, cabins are the same size, so P&O could contemplate it and use one of the smallest dining rooms, but with the shift in market position that P&O is adopting I suspect that you are right that there wouldn’t be enough people willing to pay the premium. Thinking about it, it’s why we will no longer book suites on P&O. If paying that sort of price we would now rather look at other operators. 

[Megabear2]

6 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

That’s very interesting. Thanks. We have been on 3 cruises on Britannia and I had no idea that they were offering that facility. Seems odd when they have a dining room offering fixed dining anyway, but I get the point about utilising down time in Freedom dining. We always dine much later, so maybe that’s why we’ve missed it. Is it the case that they only offer this facility for very early diners on Arvia and Iona? If so, I wonder what the cause is of the queues being reported on Arvia? The other two issues being reported are the fact that the pre-booked and walk-up queues seem to be merging and, as you say, Arvia has less MDR options. If so, they should be able to resolve the first of those issues, but the second one will be less easy to fix. 

 

Regarding QM2, no we haven’t cruised on her, just done a ships tour. We have, however, booked Britannia Club on Queen Anne as we like the concept. As you say, cabins are the same size, so P&O could contemplate it and use one of the smallest dining rooms, but with the shift in market position that P&O is adopting I suspect that you are right that there wouldn’t be enough people willing to pay the premium. Thinking about it, it’s why we will no longer book suites on P&O. If paying that sort of price we would now rather look at other operators. 

I believe the Arvia booking times are between 6.00 and 6.15 although I haven't sailed on her - I'm on Iona on 18 March which I anticipate will be sold out as only insiders remain and a certain Mr Barlow is onboard.  Another thing to consider is the age demographic of the new passengers, the 30 to 40 year olds.  With children being born far later nowadays many of these will be with parents, far more than on other ships.  As a consequence people will want to eat earlier, possibly with the children or to ensure they can go to entertainment if they need to pick up children from other places.  

 

Add into this mix people like myself who the app wouldn't work for - fine on Britannia not so good on the big girls - the people without telephones, the just plain stubborn and a long corridor leading to two restaurants with inadequate seating and it's very easy to see how the queues can arise.  The reception podium has one computer screen allocating tables - I assume its the same on the new ships - and 2 staff who use it.  If at 7.30 when the rush starts 30% of the seats are occupied (90 minute turnaround being RC's aim on their megaships) those two people and screen have to move prebooked people through, pass them to available waiters, mark them into the computer as to which table they've gone to, record Auntie Ethel looking for a table, check the computer to see if anything's immediately available if not give her a pager not doubt deal with her grumbles ... Then of course everyone in a party is in the queue to go in despite only one needing to check in, so Auntie Ethel could have Uncle Bill with her and Curt Cobain could have his wife, three kids and grandma and grandpa ....  now we have the chaos we see in the photos and that's just my fertile imagination, imagine the reality ...

[Selbourne]

23 minutes ago, Megabear2 said:

I believe the Arvia booking times are between 6.00 and 6.15 although I haven't sailed on her - I'm on Iona on 18 March which I anticipate will be sold out as only insiders remain and a certain Mr Barlow is onboard.  Another thing to consider is the age demographic of the new passengers, the 30 to 40 year olds.  With children being born far later nowadays many of these will be with parents, far more than on other ships.  As a consequence people will want to eat earlier, possibly with the children or to ensure they can go to entertainment if they need to pick up children from other places.  

 

Add into this mix people like myself who the app wouldn't work for - fine on Britannia not so good on the big girls - the people without telephones, the just plain stubborn and a long corridor leading to two restaurants with inadequate seating and it's very easy to see how the queues can arise.  The reception podium has one computer screen allocating tables - I assume its the same on the new ships - and 2 staff who use it.  If at 7.30 when the rush starts 30% of the seats are occupied (90 minute turnaround being RC's aim on their megaships) those two people and screen have to move prebooked people through, pass them to available waiters, mark them into the computer as to which table they've gone to, record Auntie Ethel looking for a table, check the computer to see if anything's immediately available if not give her a pager not doubt deal with her grumbles ... Then of course everyone in a party is in the queue to go in despite only one needing to check in, so Auntie Ethel could have Uncle Bill with her and Curt Cobain could have his wife, three kids and grandma and grandpa ....  now we have the chaos we see in the photos and that's just my fertile imagination, imagine the reality ...

Yes I can imagine all of that and more! Hence the need to find a way to clearly separate pre-booked (which should move quickly) from walk-ins (which won’t). Sounds as though on Arvia the pre-booked are stuck behind Auntie Ethel, either virtually or physically! I shall be very interested to hear how you find Iona as we are on her in August. If there are problems off season in March then I can see us booking the extra cost dining venues for all 7 nights in August 😂 

[Cathygh]

There will be 11 of us on Iona in May looking to eat together every night at c 7pm. I can't see that happening under the current arrangements. 7pm is our compromise time between the ones who eat at 6 and those who eat at 8

 

I do wonder if Arvia only has 2 MDRs as P&O thought most of the passengers would opt for alternative dining? But the cost of living crisis means that people aren't spending money in Speciality Dining Restaurants and this is putting the MDRs under pressure. 

 

[AchileLauro]

2 hours ago, Cathygh said:

There will be 11 of us on Iona in May looking to eat together every night at c 7pm. I can't see that happening under the current arrangements. 7pm is our compromise time between the ones who eat at 6 and those who eat at 8

 

I do wonder if Arvia only has 2 MDRs as P&O thought most of the passengers would opt for alternative dining? But the cost of living crisis means that people aren't spending money in Speciality Dining Restaurants and this is putting the MDRs under pressure. 

 

I hope that you have more luck than we did one evening when we cruised on IONA last July. The app would not allow us to book online because there was 7 of us and it only allows for a maximum of six. So we approached the desk outside the restaurant late afternoon and enquired to see if we could book there and then for later in the evening and was told that they couldn't do it and that we had to come back at 6.30.

When we returned at 6.30 we were told that the restaurant  was fully booked for the evening and to try another restaurant, we then tried another two restaurants with the same result. My frustration was starting to show especially as we were dragging around an elderly relative who has mobility issues. The last restaurant fitted us in but rather begrudgingly and they made quite a fuss about it as if they were doing us a great favour.

 

We also tried to book the glass house on a couple of evenings, once again it was fully booked and could not accommodate us. It appears to me that P&O have totally misjudged the whole freedom dining thing on IONA and are incapable of dealing with it if significant number of passengers would rather sit down in the dining room of an evening to eat, rather than using the various buffets/cafeterias.

 

Incidentally some of the other alternative extra pay dining venues were not in use for the duration of our cruise.

 

While we have in the past experienced freedom dining that worked on some P&O ships, should we decide to cruise with P&O again it will only be if club dining is available.

We have also experienced the equivalent of freedom dining on both Marella and Celebrity in both cases it was absolutely faultless.

[AchileLauro]

Correction to the above - It was the Olive Grove that we couldn't get a booking for and not the Glass House.

[davecttr]

6 minutes ago, AchileLauro said:

Correction to the above - It was the Olive Grove that we couldn't get a booking for and not the Glass House.

The Olive Grove is popular as it does not have a cover charge although some items are chargeable. On Arvia it has moved to the larger of the two small MDR's. They will probably introduce a cover charge to rake in more money.

 

Possibly the  two large MDR's on Iona and Arvia accommodate less than 2000 passengers per sitting and the ships have 5000 passengers!

 

Maybe the idea is to have low fares and high OBC which we spend on food, oops, a lot of people would rather spend it on booze.

[Megabear2]

1 hour ago, davecttr said:

Maybe the idea is to have low fares and high OBC which we spend on food, oops, a lot of people would rather spend it on booze.

My latest advertising missive from P&O has just hit my inbox. New offers of large onboard credit being offered on selected cruises.  Checking them out the majority are Iona Norway 7 nighters and the Arvia Mediterranean cruises over the entire on sale range.  You may be right ...

 

Also included are every other Norwegian cruise on any ship.  It runs to 14 pages of cruises with the offer and I'd guess 11 pages are for Norway. It's no wonder the Norwegian people are getting fed up with cruisers - they must be inundated!