Selbourne ‘Live’ from Aurora’s 2024 Grand Tour

[pennib]

Interested that you are doing the wine and food tasting. We did it on Britannia the week before Christmas. This was new as it had not been offered on Britannia when we were on before. 
We have done wine and food tastings in many parts of the world and whilst the experience on Britannia was quite good it was not the best we have had. For a start, they served too much wine with each course (what a complaint!!!). We got the impression that it is a new venture on Britannia which goes alongside all the other upselling that we were offered. They may learn by experience.

[Selbourne]

10 minutes ago, pennib said:

Interested that you are doing the wine and food tasting. We did it on Britannia the week before Christmas. This was new as it had not been offered on Britannia when we were on before. 
We have done wine and food tastings in many parts of the world and whilst the experience on Britannia was quite good it was not the best we have had. For a start, they served too much wine with each course (what a complaint!!!). We got the impression that it is a new venture on Britannia which goes alongside all the other upselling that we were offered. They may learn by experience.

They described it as a wine tasting with nibbles, rather than a proper food and wine tasting. 5 different wines apparently. I’ve no idea what the cost is. They didn’t mention it and I didn’t think to ask!

[TigerB]

1 hour ago, Winifred 22 said:

I don’t like Stugeron so will add these to my arsnel for next time.

 

Careful, you're supposed to take them orally!🤭

[Selbourne]

20 minutes ago, TigerB said:

 

Careful, you're supposed to take them orally!🤭

Brilliant 😂 That reminds me of the sketch on ‘Not the 9 o’clock News’ when the Swedish guy goes into a chemist and asks for some deodorant. The chemist asks “ball or aerosol?” to which the customer, in a thick accent, replies “Neither. It is to put under my armpits” 🤣 

[Selbourne]

Dinner menus from last night and tonight, plus yesterdays MDR lunch menu

[TigerB]

Ooh! I likes a bit of tuna I does!  Trouble is, when it's been on in the MDR on our recent cruises, we've dined elsewhere. Usually in Olive Grove, where I will have the tuna steak.😉

[CarlaMarie]

The menus look very nice so far. Will you be booking speciality dining as well?

[pennib]

Regarding the wine and food pairings: on Britannia the food part was not nibbles but a proper meal for each course. 

[lancashire_cruisers]

The first lunch and dinner menu look delicious and like Tiger I love a bit of tuna!

[Guest]

1 hour ago, pennib said:

Regarding the wine and food pairings: on Britannia the food part was not nibbles but a proper meal for each course. 

Was this in the Cookery Club? Can I ask what the price was and the theme of the food? 

[pennib]

No it was in the Glasshouse and was held in a private room in the glasshouse that I didn’t know existed!! Can’t remember the price but it wasn’t outrageous. They gave us 2 menues ahead of time, basically a veggie one or a meat one. We sat at a high table which would only hold 8 people.

[Guest]

44 minutes ago, pennib said:

No it was in the Glasshouse and was held in a private room in the glasshouse that I didn’t know existed!! Can’t remember the price but it wasn’t outrageous. They gave us 2 menues ahead of time, basically a veggie one or a meat one. We sat at a high table which would only hold 8 people.

Ah fantastic, I’ll look out for it! 

[Selbourne]

4 hours ago, CarlaMarie said:

The menus look very nice so far. Will you be booking speciality dining as well?

We booked four nights each in Sindhu and Beach House before we came, just to break up the cruise a bit and having heard that the MDR menus repeat every 3 weeks.

[Purdey16]

Selbourne the talks on Aurora in December repeated on the tv a few days after each talk but as you say it was bad reception a lot of the time and pictures fuzzy, can’t remember the channel they were on but I went through them all and some were better than others at different times of the day but they were definitely on the tv later .

Im sorry to hear you’re feeling the roughness, there is a couple of pharmacies in the main strip we passed and I think they should be open even if it’s Sunday.

[Selbourne]

7 hours ago, Purdey16 said:

Selbourne the talks on Aurora in December repeated on the tv a few days after each talk but as you say it was bad reception a lot of the time and pictures fuzzy, can’t remember the channel they were on but I went through them all and some were better than others at different times of the day but they were definitely on the tv later .

Im sorry to hear you’re feeling the roughness, there is a couple of pharmacies in the main strip we passed and I think they should be open even if it’s Sunday.

I’m delighted to report that the talks have now appeared on the TV, so I managed to catch up on the one that I’d slept through 😂 Day 3 report to follow…..

[Selbourne]

DAY 3 - Friday 5th March

 

I had a better nights sleep than the night before. The sea was still rough, but I’m getting accustomed to the creaking noise, although it’s still damned annoying. I usually jump to the defence of the maintenance teams on P&O ships when people criticise maintenance issues, but they’ve let me down this time. I have reported the creaking 4 times now - twice to the steward, once to the deck manager and once at reception. As of yet, not a soul has been to look at it or, if they have and couldn’t fix it, nobody has told us. Very poor. 

 

We went to breakfast in the Medina Restaurant. I cant remember if I’ve mentioned this yet, but the lovely host, Rachael, recognised us from Ventura and even remembered our name without even looking us up. How on earth they can do that whilst dealing with thousands of different passengers every few weeks is completely beyond me. Anyway, Rachel knows that we like a table for two for breakfast, so we don’t even have to ask, and she usually gives us a four top for the two of us. Even though there was still a lot of movement, I didn’t feel sick (having taken a Stugeron) so I managed a bowl of Bircher Muesli, some diddy croissants, a smoothie and toast. Nothing cooked yet. The only minor gripe is the same as @mrsgoggins is experiencing on Ventura - they don’t top up the hot drinks enough. 

 

After breakfast we had a wander, read the Britain Today paper and caught up with emails before going to the Playhouse for the second of the talks about U-Boats. I managed to keep awake for 90% of it this time and personally felt that the presenters delivery was good. As we were close to the Glasshouse we paid our first visit and each had a glass of Peller Ice Cuvée (I had the white, my wife the rose’). We decided not to stay for lunch but went to the MDR. We don’t mind sharing at lunchtime so joined a table of 8 and, yet again, enjoyed some nice company. Food was OK, but nothing special. 

 

I know that this will sound terribly snobbish, but I’ll just say it as it is. We seem to have a nice class of cruisers on this ship 😂 Everyone that we have interacted with so far has been lovely. It’s far more like the P&O of yesteryear. There’s an awful lot of conversations about falling standards with P&O, but that’s been done to death on this forum and, as I have often said, most of the cutbacks haven’t really affected us that much and I guess can’t have affected those raising the issues too much or they wouldn’t have booked a 65 night cruise 😂 

 

One couple had an even worse embarkation experience than we did, taking them 2 hours from arrival to boarding. It seems as though having so called ‘Priority Boarding’ was a distinct disadvantage on this cruise. I don’t know if this is true, but someone reckoned that 1,000 of us had priority boarding, hence the utter chaos (which, of course, P&O should have foreseen and forewarned Intercruise and CPS about). By contrast, our dinner companions arrived at 3.30pm and were on the ship within minutes. With hindsight, and especially as the priority boarders lunch was so poor, we would have been far better to have ignored priority boarding and arrived much later. 

 

Another interesting conversation over lunch was with a couple who had been on Saga. They had multiple problems which I won’t go into on here (but some involved disability issues being handled appallingly). The more I hear about Saga the more I am put off them. P&O is far from perfect, but at their current prices I don’t expect perfection. Paying Saga prices my expectations would be sky high. Interestingly, quite a few people have mentioned Ambassador Cruises favourably. 

 

As the rocking and rolling had calmed down a bit (now force 6), after a brief rest in the cabin I decided to do some laps of the promenade deck. I hoped to do 10 laps but chickened out at 7 as it was ruddy cold and still impossible to walk in a straight line 😂 This time I wasn’t on my own. There were probably 30 of us trying to get some exercise. I was shamed by a couple that I’d say were at least 10 years older than me that lapped me 😩

 

Returning to the cabin there was a lot of crashing, banging and drilling going on from the next door cabin, so the maintenance guys obviously do exist. I hoped that they might come into us when they finished but sadly no, we are still being ignored. 

 

Tonight was the first Black Tie night and the Celebration night. This was preceded by the welcome aboard drinks which was split into four different sessions - 5.15pm and 7.15pm in the Crows Nest and 5.30pm and 7.30pm in Carmens. We went to the 7.30pm one in Carmens. We were saying to each other that we have increasingly noticed that the officers don’t seem to like mingling with the passengers anymore and prefer to talk to each other, or just stand around looking like security, when a lovely lady from the HR department came up to chat to us. I asked how many of the 800 crew were on their first contract with P&O and was surprised to hear that it was 100. She said that they now recruit from far more countries than they used to. The Captain confirmed that there are 1,674 passengers on the cruise but didn’t give any more interesting stats that I can share (I’d like to know the average age of passengers - my guess is mid 70s, as is usual for Aurora). 

 

Dinner was very good. It was a different Marco Pierre White menu to the two that we usually have. We both had the fillet of beef with garlic prawns. Having learned on our other cruises that they tend to overcook steak, I asked for medium rare in the hope I’d get medium. The plan worked! The cheese plate was most definitely not as described. A very fancy sounding biscuit had been replaced by a Jacob’s Cracker, Digestive and Ritz biscuit. I pointed this out to our waiter who kindly appeared 5 minutes later with the advertised ones (which were very nice). We then had a rush to get to the theatre for the second (and final) performance of The Privateers. As with the first show, thoroughly enjoyable and a real step up from the usual P&O offerings. As we retired to the cabin there is still some noticeable movement (and creaking) but it's not as bad as the last 48 hours. Hopefully we will have our first calm day tomorrow, which is our last sea day before Madeira. 

Edited January 6 by Selbourne

[PurpleMoonlight]

I thought all ships cabins creaked to a greater or lesser extent in anything above a slight breeze. 😄

[Selbourne]

7 minutes ago, PurpleMoonlight said:

I thought all ships cabins creaked to a greater or lesser extent in anything above a slight breeze. 😄

Indeed, but our last two cruises have both been in the ‘greater extent’ category 😂 Whilst annoying, this one isn’t half as bad as the one we had on Ventura, which was deafening. 

[mrsgoggins]

On 1/2/2024 at 8:38 PM, Selbourne said:

 

 

Another interesting post, so thank you. Sorry about the box above, it's from an aborted post and I don't know how to delete from my phone 🥴

 

Just a couple of points I wanted to share with you. 

 

On my Ventura 35-night cruise, the high tier lunch (Caribbean and above), despite being held over 2 days because of the numbers involved, was a proper sit-down affair and not the buffet you were given. Attendees I have spoken with seemed to enjoy it greatly.

 

Last night at dinner, a 'young' chap (all relative, he was under 50 😉) shared that a member of staff he'd spoken with said the average age of passengers on board our cruise was 77, which I can imagine being accurate.  

 

I hope you get some attention for your excessive cabin noise. Like you, we are now in calm seas and so that should help at least.

[TigerB]

I'm glad things are starting to get better for you; hopefully your cabin gets sorted soon.

 

With about 60% of the passengers being priority boarders, it's no wonder the embarkation was such a shambles. Let's hope they learn from it.  We sail for the first time on Aurora next year, and we wouldn't have reached the dizzy heights of PC members like you, so would expect a mid-afternoon embarkation time. That's fine with us; at least I won't suffer the stress you encountered. Mind you, given the passenger demographic, and at 61 and 57 years as we will be then, we would be considered teenagers, so would be expected to cope!😉

 

Now that you've started to treat your liver, have you put the bar staff on notice to keep some ambient Doom Bars aside for you?

 

[Selbourne]

10 minutes ago, mrsgoggins said:

On my Ventura 35-night cruise, the high tier lunch (Caribbean and above), despite being held over 2 days because of the numbers involved, was a proper sit-down affair and not the buffet you were given. Attendees I have spoken with seemed to enjoy it greatly.

Thanks. To be clear, the poor buffet lunch that I referred to was the priority boarders lunch (Caribbean and above loyalty plus Suite passengers) as we joined in Southampton. I fully expect the mid cruise loyalty lunch to be the usual good quality affair, but as the majority of passengers on this cruise seem to be high loyalty tier I also expect it to be split over multiple days!

[Interestedcruisefan]

Sounds good. Everything settling down now.

 

We are all jealous of you (apart from Mrs Goggins of course) who we are all also jealous of!

[Selbourne]

Todays lunch and dinner menus

[Interestedcruisefan]

It strikes me that lunch in MDR on P and O is purely for the calm experience of being served at the table

 

Which does appeal to many I guess.

 

Albeit lunch in the buffet would provide more choices. 

 

We may try though. We really enjoyed the MDR evening calmness on our last cruise.

 

On a warm cruise sea day is it ok for shorts and t-shirt for MDR lunch selbourne?

 

 

[Interestedcruisefan]

20 minutes ago, Selbourne said:

Todays lunch and dinner menus

I guess everyone knows this already but when you can't decide on what to have we've never been refused 2 starters and 2 desserts. When I say we - I mean me most of the time!!

 

Lol

 

Albeit my wife sometimes asks for a dessert and cheese and again we've never been turned down

 

Makes MDR even better when that's possible

 

More like a tasting menu. 

 

Don't think I've ever asked for 2 mains but maybe I have at some stage??

 

Lol

 

And of course they will always add ice cream to another dessert if you ask

Edited January 6 by Interestedcruisefan