Lets talk cruises

I loved iona great ship, nice and modern with fantastic dining, entertainment and comfort. I would go to on it again without an issue. I wish there was a promenade on the Britannia as it’s a really nice to walk round in the morning in a new place before breakfast. Enjoy!
 
My tuppence ha'penny's worth....

I'd never been on a cruise before & sometime after my separation, I felt comfortable with the idea of solo travel & there was a convenient juncture in my life between contracts to try one out.

I didn't have a lot of time to research and availability was fairly limited as I booked approximately 2 months before departure date.

So I went on a kind of 4 night "taster" cruise from Miami around the Bahamas with Norwegian to fit in with a road trip down to the Florida Keys.

Road trip was great - had a couple of nights on South Beach before picking up the car and spent 4 nights on Key West before returning the car in Miami and joining the cruise.

Did I enjoy the cruise? Not especially - I think I had expectations of meeting other singles but I didn't fit into the age range which was either young couples with & without children and much older folks. There were also quite a lot of intergenerational groups where the whole extended family has gone along. So, it was a fairly lonely experience - I think I met a nice Israeli couple on the first night and chatted with another American guy the next evening and that was it. So, it was dining alone eavesdropping into the conversations of other travellers for the most part, which is quite entertaining when 90% of the passengers are American.

Highlight of the cruise was the day on Grand Bahama where I hired a scooter and found a great little bar on the beach belting out reggae. Locals seemed very friendly.
Didn't feel especially exotic - it was sub tropical & very flat and could well have been Florida in many ways (unsurprising when you view the location of the islands on a map). Certainly not much like the tropical Carribbean Islands I'd been to in the past.

I'd also add that the demographic (especially of the younger passengers) was very much like an American Club 18-30s crowd. Very much party city & it was already in full swing on the main deck when I boarded the ship before we'd even left the berth.

Not sure I'd do another, to be honest - even with a partner. Just as well it was only a taster ;-)
 
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That Jekka Gal said:
My tuppence ha'penny's worth....

I'd never been on a cruise before & sometime after my separation, I felt comfortable with the idea of solo travel & there was a convenient juncture in my life between contracts to try one out.

I didn't have a lot of time to research and availability was fairly limited as I booked approximately 2 months before departure date.

So I went on a kind of 4 night "taster" cruise from Miami around the Bahamas with Norwegian to fit in with a road trip down to the Florida Keys.

Road trip was great - had a couple of nights on South Beach before picking up the car and spent 4 nights on Key West before returning the car in Miami and joining the cruise.

Did I enjoy the cruise? Not especially - I think I had expectations of meeting other singles but I didn't fit into the age range which was either young couples with & without children and much older folks. There were also quite a lot of intergenerational groups where the whole extended family has gone along. So, it was a fairly lonely experience - I think I met a nice Israeli couple on the first night and chatted with another American guy the next evening and that was it. So, it was dining alone eavesdropping into the conversations of other travellers for the most part, which is quite entertaining when 90% of the passengers are American.

Highlight of the cruise was the day on Grand Bahama where I hired a scooter and found a great little bar on the beach belting out reggae. Locals seemed very friendly.
Didn't feel especially exotic - it was sub tropical & very flat and could well have been Florida in many ways (unsurprising when you view the location of the islands on a map). Certainly not much like the tropical Carribbean Islands I'd been to in the past.

I'd also add that the demographic (especially of the younger passengers) was very much like an American Club 18-30s crowd. Very much party city & it was already in full swing on the main deck when I boarded the ship before we'd even left the berth.

Not sure I'd do another, to be honest - even with a partner. Just as well it was only a taster ;-)
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We always end up making friends in the smoking sections
 
I am off to France and Spain on Friday on the Britannia and my friend is on Iona on Saturday. Looks like the weather isn’t gonna be great for us in Spain for the next week but the break is what I need.
 
This is why only book excursions with the cruise company and if walking out alone don't go far / depend on public transport to get back.

Last year we ended up being delayed 2 hours returning from Florence, Virgin waited, because they had to.
 
bingham67 said:
www.dailymail.co.uk

Cruise passengers look devastated as ship sets off without them

Crew on Royal Caribbean's Rhapsody of the Seas waited 30 minutes for a pair of latecomers to return to the dock in Saint Kitts before they pulled the boarding ramp up and left the port.
www.dailymail.co.uk www.dailymail.co.uk

Not sure how I see this so many times, considering how your given a time to be back.
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I've just come back from my first cruise on the Norwegian Pearl. We saw this in St Maarten too - we were docked alongside the Wonder of The Seas and we both had the same all-aboard time. A few people missed it, and by the time it had come around a lot of passengers on both ships had gone to room balconies and various other decks to start shouting, cheering, booing, and jeering all the latecomers. It was nice to see the collective hatred of people who somehow still haven't mastered a clock.
 
I think several people were put off our ship at a couple of the ports. We saw a group of people that looked like they had been kicked off at La Coruna. I saw them standing by the entrance to the gangway with security round them, then a couple of crew members bought out a few cases then they helped an older woman with a walker thing down then a taxi came and picked them up while they were standing about not looking happy with the staff and security.
 
Off to the Caribbean on the Arvia in December and me and the missus are trying to decide if to book the drinks package while it's on offer or just put the money into a seperate account to pay the cc bill when we get back, not sure what the most cost efficient way is to do it, we aren't massive drinkers but sometimes have a blow out and the missus usually only drinks prosecco or rose whereas I'll drink just about any beer
 
Maundie said:
Off to the Caribbean on the Arvia in December and me and the missus are trying to decide if to book the drinks package while it's on offer or just put the money into a seperate account to pay the cc bill when we get back, not sure what the most cost efficient way is to do it, we aren't massive drinkers but sometimes have a blow out and the missus usually only drinks prosecco or rose whereas I'll drink just about any beer
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I looked at drinks packages on the Azura on our last cruise and it was just crazy imho. The classic is £50 per day per person and the deluxe over 60.
I'm not a big drinker at all, mainly was hitting the 7up zero, my wife didn't hold back on mai tais and the like, and our ship account was £2.2k for 14 days - but £1500 of that was spa stuff. So £700 on drinks and excursions, and also a couple of visits to the non-included restaurants. Definitely in our case not worth paying £1400 for a drinks package.
 
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Sinbad2000 said:
I looked at drinks packages on the Azura on our last cruise and it was just crazy imho. The classic is £50 per day per person and the deluxe over 60.
I'm not a big drinker at all, mainly was hitting the 7up zero, my wife didn't hold back on mai tais and the like, and our ship account was £2.2k for 14 days - but £1500 of that was spa stuff. So £700 on drinks and excursions, and also a couple of visits to the non-included restaurants. Definitely in our case not work paying £1400 for a drinks package.
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Interesting, may well not pay it then although I did work it out with the offer around £1k for us both for the 2 weeks
 
I work in the industry, unless you are doing a sailing with 50%+ sea days, or are a massive alcoholic, drinks packages are never worth it.

You need to drink a minimum each day for it to be worth it, and if you miss a day, you need to make up that difference. So if you are doing lots of ports and will be off the ship often, hitting that drink amount gets tricky.
 
krooton said:
I work in the industry, unless you are doing a sailing with 50%+ sea days, or are a massive alcoholic, drinks packages are never worth it.

You need to drink a minimum each day for it to be worth it, and if you miss a day, you need to make up that difference. So if you are doing lots of ports and will be off the ship often, hitting that drink amount gets tricky.
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Add to the fact that the drinks packages are also capped at something like 15 alcoholic drinks a day, so there's a limit to how much drinking you can do to catch up :D
 
Only time a drinks package was worth it for us was on RC when the basic level was thrown in "free" with the room along with some bonus on board spend. Putting the spend towards the drinks upgrade meant it was only $10 extra each a day to get the full package, or the price of one cocktail. We very much got our value out of that one.

P&O I can't ever see a scenario where it's worth it. Even if you're a big coffee drinker as well as alcohol and see it as a split cost it's still crazy money. As Sinbad said above, PAYG works out cheaper in all but the most extreme cases.
 
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