Ventura 1 May - where is she?

[tom_uk]

I've just been looking at the P&O webcams and Ventura's is showing a scene that I wasn't expecting. According to her itinerary she's supposed to be at Villefranche, which is a tender port, of course. However if you look at Ventura's webcam she's very obviously berthed alongside a long quay with a high backing wall. As soon as I saw it I thought that it looked like Civitavecchia.

 

Furthermore, Artemis is in Civitavecchia today. If you look at her webcam you'll see that immediately in front of her - indeed, filling all the webcam view - is the a**e end of a 'Grand Princess'-class ship; and of course that would include Ventura.

 

So it looks as if Ventura has gone straight to Rome and missed out Villefranche. Anyone got any information about this? Perhaps the seas were too rough to moor in Villefranche bay? But in that case how did she get to Civitavecchia so quickly?

[Gerrym]

Hi Tom, message from another board -

"P&O have changed the order of their ports of call and they will be in Rome on Friday (which is a public holiday, so most of the shops will be shut) and in Barcelona on Sunday, so they miss the markets."

 

 

 

 

Cheers

 

Gerry

[tom_uk]

Hi Tom, message from another board -

"P&O have changed the order of their ports of call and they will be in Rome on Friday (which is a public holiday, so most of the shops will be shut) and in Barcelona on Sunday, so they miss the markets."

 

Thanks, Gerry. I bet everyone onboard is really pleased about that!

[cruisebore]

Typical P&O they must have known months before about the change. However IMHO P&O treats it customers like mushrooms. (keep them in the dark and feed them s h eye tee)

On a recent cruise we were taking P&O were in emails denying all knowledge of a change of Port (Aruba) despite the port authority emailing me their schedule months before which did not include Ventura.

Needless to say we did not visit Aruba.

A Disgusting way to treat your customers, smacks of Marks & Spencer or Gerald Ratner arrogance and look what's happened to them.

[davedex]

They told my parents ( who are on this cruise) in writing before they went that the reason was due to the fact that there were too many ships in Barcelona on the Friday so they decided to reverse the itinery and go to the other way round

[tom_uk]

They told my parents ( who are on this cruise) in writing before they went that the reason was due to the fact that there were too many ships in Barcelona on the Friday so they decided to reverse the itinery and go to the other way round

 

Thanks Dave - though that would have been on the Thursday, I think? (That's when Ventura was scheduled to be at Barcelona.)

 

CruiseTT shows the following ships as having been scheduled to call at Barcelona yesterday (30 April): Navigator of the Seas, Summit, Costa Mediterranea, Grand Princess, and Ventura. That would have been a 'port load' of 14,077. That's a lot of people.

[davedex]

yes thanks for that i guess that was what i meant!!! 14½ thousand people is a lot of people in one day!! Just looked back at P & O's web cam pics & it looks like soem of them have all gone back 24 hours because Artemis looks ike it is looking at Vesivuis in Naples?? And Oceana looks like it is in port in the south Of France !!!! Unless the scenerey is catching them up !LOL

[LibraLass41]

Yes, but they write and tell passengers like your parents AFTER they have paid the final payment and usually just before you are about to go on the cruise...they must of known for weeks/months which ships are in port on that day and whether or not it would be too busy - its surely booked in well in advance!....but treat them like mushrooms, yes....I agree they do that alright!

[stopgo]

Isn't this always going to be an ongoing problem. There are just too many Cruise Ships taking the same Cruise routes stopping at the same ports. More new ships every year many with 3000 plus passengers is all going to detract from the Cruise Experience. I can see more and more passengers not leaving the ship at the really busy ports, there is not much point if your milling about with 14 half thousand passengers at a time. As regards P/O there must health and safety issues with so many passengers moving about between the ships. Maybe there is a limit to how passengers can arrive then it become a safety concern.

[tom_uk]

At least somewhere like Barcelona or Rome are significant cities with a large number of attractions for tourists; I would think that 10,000 cruise passengers would actually be a small part of the overall number of visitors in those cities on those days. The problem is more acute in smaller places, e.g. Santorini or Dubrovnik.

 

We're in Santorini this autumn on Solstice, and she's just one of 4 ships there that day. At first I was assuming that that meant that our day would be hard work and not very satisfying, but it turns out that Solstice's times are different from those of the other ships: we arrive early afternoon and leave late evening. Here's a table I drew up.

[jfks]

I was on this cruise and like many other pasengers I was unaware until I had checked in and went to my Cabin , Notification was in the cabin, I did go and complain along with many others but there response was in the terms and conditions we can change the ports at anytime...

 

So 3 port days were a waste of time due to Sundays (Barcelona, Vigo) and Bank Holidays(Rome)