FionaMG

Hi @Smithville Cruises Your time of arrival would be something to take into consideration too. I'm guessing you may be coming in from across the pond, so that would likely be an overnight flight getting you into London first thing in the morning. If you choose to stay in London, your hotel would surely hold your bags for you so you can go out and explore during the morning and then you'd be able to have a nap early afternoon to refresh you for your evening in the city. As far as a hotel in London is concerned, you might want to choose based on how you are planning to get down to Southampton the next day. For example, if you are thinking of going by train, a hotel near Waterloo Station would be convenient, since this is the station where the Southampton trains leave from. We fairly recently stayed at the Hampton Inn Waterloo and found it to be perfectly fine, a couple of minutes walk from the station and places to eat, and a decent included breakfast. It might be a good choice for you, especially if you use the Hilton brand. If you decide to go down to Southampton straight away and overnight there, two very popular hotels with cruisers are the Holiday Inn, which is literally a 5-minute walk to the port (they have some rooms with harbour view so you can see your ship out of your window) and the Premier Inn Westquay, which is a slightly longer walk (but still doable, or you can get a cab for under £10) and is also right next to a big mall and to a convenience store with extended opening hours if you realise you've forgotten something. Note that there are two Premier Inns in Southampton; I haven't stayed at the other one but this one is closer to the port. Premier Inn is a well-regarded upper-end budget UK chain that offers decent accommodation at reasonable prices. If you'd prefer something a bit quirkier, you could look at the Pig in the Wall. This is a small property built into the walls of Southampton Castle. It too is very close to the port, eateries and shopping. Some members of my CC roll call for my Anthem cruise last September stayed here and really enjoyed it. Hope this helps.

Having very little experience of said beasties, I'm not sure I would notice the difference between warm water and cold water lobster. Maybe I should try to arrange a blind taste test next time.

Sounds like a good plan. I have heard good things about the Duke of Wellington and Winchester, although I have no personal experience of either. When is your cruise and where is it going? I will be back on Anthem twice in the forthcoming months, once out of NJ (April, tagging it on the main focus of the trip which is to visit the Big Apple) and once out of Southampton (July, mum + daughter trip to the Norwegian fjords), both of which were zapped by Covid back in 2020.

I believe there is a pirate museum in Nassau. I haven’t been to it so can't say what it's like but that might be something that would work for your family.

That's brilliant! Love it!

Coincidentally, it's an issue that's very much in the spotlight right now, but back early in the pandemic, I cancelled some cruise planner purchases just prior to lifting & shifting (remember that? ) a cruise. Three months passed without so much as a penny hitting my account. Not wanting to get stuck on a lengthy and costly long distance phone call, I enlisted the aid of my TA (shout out to @michelle) who managed to get it sorted and refunded pronto. And since this was our very first booking with her, she hadn't even received a dime of commission from us yet. To me, that's what it's all about - service.

Loved the water taxi when we did it pre-covid. For dinner, we got off at the Las Olas stop. There are loads of restaurants along that stretch. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory, which I guess is not very exciting for most of you reading this but we don't have that chain over here in Custard Tart Land so it was a novelty for us. We liked it.

Try a different browser. I can only see and actually use them if use incognito mode on Firefox. Otherwise, at best, like @ScottD I get a tiny glimpse before they go "poof".

The repricing rules relate to the market where you book the cruise. Residence and departure port are irrelevant. I live in Portugal and have booked cruises departing from Europe and the US through Portuguese travel agents (bound by Portuguese rules), Royal's UK website (bound by UK rules) and Royal's US website and US travel agents (bound by US rules). Under UK rules, repricing is generally not a thing.

Totally understand. @twangster suggested contacting C&A. You can actually contact them by private message through their Facebook page. Saves you having to hang on the phone if you're short on time. I've contacted them this way in the past to avoid costly long distance calls and they sorted the issue in a couple of hours.

Mine were internet packages that I cancelled for precisely the same reason. I have not called or made any contact with them at all so I guess they're just gradually working through them.

I got mine from the 19th this morning, done in two separate amounts, one for each item purchased, even though they were purchased under the same order and paid for with the same card.

The new search page layout makes it easier to see when new cruises have been added. Right underneath the tabs where you can select cruise dates, departure ports etc., you should see "All cruise search results" with a number after it in brackets. I'm currently seeing 568. When they had the test loads showing that number was up to 576. So if you simply keep an eye on that, you'll know when they add more and then you can start checking for the specific sailings you're interested in. This number was always visible on the previous interface too but in much smaller letters and you had to scroll all the way down to the bottom to find it.

I can't see the icons in my usual Chrome browser (although once they sort of flashed and disappeared again) but I can see them using incognito on Firefox.

My pleasure. I'm not going to lie, I'd be a bit nervous about that connection time. However, the inbound trans-Atlantic flights usually arrive a bit ahead of time and TAP's punctuality record on their European flights is somewhat south of stellar, so the chances are your Venice flight will be delayed anyway, giving you a bit of breathing space. Definitely a good move on your part to get seats near the front though and be sure to speak to one of the ground staff working the line if you see you're running short on time. They are very efficient. The only downside is that, if everything goes smoothly, as it almost certainly will, you won't have time to sit down and enjoy those custard tarts, but you'll probably still be able to grab a couple to go!

It's pretty much guaranteed now that they've posted the test load. You'd better get your calendar out and start planning when you can go!

@teddy Yes, immigration is definitely in Lisbon as @James K said. Note, however, that all the Schengen countries have the right to require border checks even within the area, if there are special circumstances (e.g. if the Pope or a world leader is going to be in town, or if there is a terrorist alert) so, although extremely unlikely, you can't entirely rule out an immigration check at Venice too. Another heads up, since it's not something you would expect (and, in fact, I really don't know why they do this), is that at Lisbon, as well as immigration, transit passengers also have to go through a security check to get into the departure area and this can cut into your transfer time quite significantly. There are ground staff working the line to get people with tight connections through faster, so if this is you watch out for them and let them know which flight you're connecting to. They're usually very visible as they go up and down the line calling out things like "Anyone for Munich, anyone for Geneva?" Also, if you are bringing an open bottle of water that you don't want to bin you can ask the security staff manning the scanners to put it through separately and you'll be allowed to keep it. Apart from this, Lisbon is a very easy airport to connect in as it is small for a capital city airport. There's plenty of good shopping and decent food to keep you entertained while you wait for your connecting flight. Tasty snacks you might like to try are bifanas (a pork fillet sandwich) and pastel de nata (traditional Portuguese custard tarts).

Wouldn't it be great if Symphony did a proper repo from Fort Lauderdale to Bayonne instead of the usual 3-day dead-leg? Sigh...

It's probably been taken down by now. It was one of the test loads in advance of next week's release. They usually only stay on the site for a few hours.

Excellent news! Thanks for coming back to let us know. I'm guessing you must be in full packing mode by now? Have a wonderful time on your cruise.

Also, Vision out of Baltimore and Adventure out of Port Canaveral, which I missed earlier because they're loaded for April 2025 and I didn't think to check that far ahead.

I do like the new appearance. When I was looking at it yesterday, if you clicked on cruise dates it gave you the option to search by date range or by month but that seems to have disappeared now. I guess they're still working on it. I'm not seeing the hidden icons (yet?).

Test loads are up. You have Liberty and Symphony out of NJ. Enchantment from Tampa And Wonder from Port Canaveral

There is usually a test load during the week prior to the release. Typically you will see one cruise loaded for each ship being released. So if you keep a close eye out this week you may get the answer ahead of next week's release.

I know what you mean! I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I can probably get two cruises on "lesser" ships than it'll cost for one on Icon!