Cruises and cruising
Posted in Cruises, Swan Hellenic on Jan 11th, 2018
We plan to restart the operation of Swan Hellenic in early 2018 with a new ship and new voyages….. About a year ago the All Leisure Group collapsed, taking with them two cruise lines, Swan Hellenic and Voyages of Discovery. Some parts of All Leisure Group live on – the Travelsphere operation, which was apparently […]
Posted in Cruises on Jul 13th, 2017
This is a sad story: Sint Maarten jet engine blast kills New Zealand woman I’ve no idea if the woman who died was a cruise passenger or not, though probably not. But like many others I’ve looked at the YouTube videos of planes landing and taking off from the airfield on Sint Maarten. First just […]
Posted in Cruises on Jul 3rd, 2017
We all know that P&O are due to get a new ship in 2020. What’s often forgotten is that this new ship will be one of half-a-dozen or so on the same hull and therefore with broadly the same facilities, and these will ships will be distributed around the various Carnival Corp fleets. The first […]
Posted in Cruises on Mar 29th, 2017
I’ve read a story that suggests that the city of Amsterdam is considering a building new cruise terminal further away from the city centre than the the present one. I’m sure that many of my readers will have visited Amsterdam on a cruise and will be familiar with the cruise terminal there. It’s quite handily-placed […]
Posted in Cruise industry, Cruises, Small Ship Cruising, Swan Hellenic, Voyages to Antiquity on Jan 1st, 2017
There are various stories swirling around about the problems that these two lines seems to be experiencing. Both were due to embark passengers on cruises in the next few days – Swan Hellenic (SH) on 3 January from Marseilles, and Voyages of Discovery (VoD) on 4 January from Malaysia – but both cruises have been […]
Posted in Cruises on Oct 11th, 2016
A quick post to say that the reports of Royal Princess’ just-finished refit at Fincantieri say that the main work done was the addition of a mid-ships stairwell. The absence of this has caused a number of complaints among Princess customers, and of course also among P&O customers – Britannia is a sister ship to […]
Posted in Cruise industry, Cruises on Oct 5th, 2016
Apparently it’s had British owners (Star Capital Partners) since 2011. (Who knew that B+V was British-owned?) But no more. It’s been sold to a German firm already active in the same markets – ship repair and super-yacht construction. It’s thought that the acquisition is to increase the new owners capacity. B+V recently did the refurbishment […]
I’ve just read that Carnival Corp have placed an order with Meyer for three new 180,000 ton ships, all of them LNG fuelled. Two are for Carnival Cruises, but the third is stated to be for P&O UK. Delivery not before 2020. Here’s a link to the Press Release page on the Carnival Corp site. […]
Posted in Cruises on May 31st, 2016
It’s just after 11:30 and we have just berthed in Bergen. One advantage of arriving late was that we were able to enjoy the sail in, which was spectacular. The upper decks were all open today – the wind has slackened a lot – and there were a lot of people watching the landscape go […]
Posted in 2016 Cruises, Check-in, Cruises, P&O on May 20th, 2016
Over the winter I’ve been reading some interesting comments online about how P&O have started to make the check-in time real. Let me explain what I mean by that. In our Cruise Information booklet there has always been a stated check-in time. We and everyone else have always ignored this, and just rocked up to […]