On Arvia with 6000 passengers. Tips on how to deal with a ship this busy

[GSPG]

13 minutes ago, Bazrat said:

I was on a TA last year and a pair of bloggers was on there, they complained about everything food décor atmosphere you name it they complained about it, strangely enough there must have been a dozen other bloggers on there who had a completely different view of the holiday, just put a search in for TA in October 2023 on Arvia.

 

 

As I say, we were on on 9th July, so hopefully by then ‘issues’ may have been addressed, there perhaps were less kids around?

 

Those bloggers did seem picky, though just my opinion the food, the decor on most of the modern medium band quality lines and ships anyway seem to be much the same, all very good.

[GINGERWILDCAT]

We were on in February and don’t recognise these complaints, in fourteen days the biggest queue we had was three or four minutes at the sunset bar. As for people, we always got a lift at the first time of asking 🤷‍♂️Always got in restaurants (on virtual booking) within 15minutes of registration 

[purplesea]

On 4/7/2024 at 12:48 PM, Megabear2 said:

My one trip on Arvia Marseille had the same crowd problems.  Is the ship providing the boat service to supplement the buses? This was very good and certainly helped on the return journey.  The other option was the port bus which was a short walk away, this is used by MSC and Princess but P&O didn't tell their passengers of the existence of it.

I was on this cruise too and got off Arvia last week. We stopped in Marseille this time too, but there was not mention of the port bus or a boat service, although there were a lot more shuttle buses and the queue wasn't (when I saw it) wasn't as long, and seemed better organised than in May last year. Perhaps they have learnt a lesson?

[Megabear2]

7 hours ago, purplesea said:

I was on this cruise too and got off Arvia last week. We stopped in Marseille this time too, but there was not mention of the port bus or a boat service, although there were a lot more shuttle buses and the queue wasn't (when I saw it) wasn't as long, and seemed better organised than in May last year. Perhaps they have learnt a lesson?

I hope you had a great holiday.  Certainly there were lessons to be learned last year.  Personally I would always use the port bus as opposed to the shuttle as Marseille can be a difficult port at the best of times with it's very stroppy port workers!

 

I'm glad to hear it was better although personally I've no wish to ever set foot on Arvia again.

[Kittyonions]

Totally agree with you on that one Megabear! The memory of the shuttle queue at Palma (amongst other problems too numerous to mention) will remain with me forever.

[jeanlyon]

On 4/3/2024 at 3:55 PM, nellydean said:

We had absolutely no issue with getting a table on our March cruise around the Caribbean, however, we do like to eat from 7.30 if possible. Only a couple of times did we book on the app (one of those beeped within 2 minutes even though there was supposedly a long queue), the rest of the time we just showed up at whichever dining room we wanted to eat at - usually the Zenith - and we never had to wait for a table for two.

 

My complaint was the quality of food, specifically in the buffet (but also sometimes in the dining rooms), which was often bland and mediocre. You were fine if you liked roast spuds and meat, but there were no sandwiches we we know them - not at lunchtime anyway - just bits of roll with a dab of something in the middle. Maybe it will be different in the Med. 

 

Club 710 - no chance of getting in here unless you had pre-booked before boarding. Which was fine for cruisers in the know, but not for anyone else. Shows were booked out for virtually the entire cruise, and there were a lot of complaints.

 

 

 

 

That's my complaint about all P&O food.  Roast and spuds seems to be all they can do.  Just cruised with Fred Olsen and didn't see a roast for the first week.  Many different dishes.  Really so much better.

[doog442]

1 hour ago, jeanlyon said:

That's my complaint about all P&O food.  Roast and spuds seems to be all they can do.  Just cruised with Fred Olsen and didn't see a roast for the first week.  Many different dishes.  Really so much better.

 

I don't think we ever ate a roast or spuds on our recent Arvia cruise, very easy to avoid plus we'd never entertain those dishes in the Caribbean.

 

You think a new ship branded to specifically target a new younger family demographic would only serve roast and spuds ?