Getting set to sail…

In two weeks time we will be heading off on our long awaited cruise! We originally booked this cruise back in 2019, but due to major surgery for Miss S and Covid thrown in the mix, it’s needed to be moved from one year to the next! This will be our first cruise and although we are trying to stay grounded and not get our hopes TOO high, we are all hoping we will love our first cruise experience and it will be an easier way for us to travel a bit further afield. Having both come from a travel background, Mr S and I, are always itching to get out and explore and the kids love to also…hopefully cruising will help satisfy this desire! 

We have spoken to P&O Customer Services a fair amount over the last few years, with varying success! This is our experience...

The good bits…

P&O have been great moving our booking and spent a lot of time trying to find us an accessible cabin on the various cruises we have looked at over the last few years (but more on accessible cabins below!) 

Our cabin SHOULD be fully accessible for Miss S and she should be able to access everything onboard in her power chair. 

Customer Services have been as helpful as possible with advice on port visits. It looks like Miss S will be able to zip straight off the ship ok, but we have to be prepared that in some cases this may not be possible and therefore need to bear in mind we may be stuck on the ship whilst alongside. 

The not so good bits…

Looking for our cruise -

Unlike other cruise liners, P&O don’t offer the facility to check availability or book accessible cabins online. We have lost count of the hours and money we have spent calling P&O. 

Accessible cabin availability - 

Iona and Arvia are both brand new ships and yet their number of accessible cabins are pretty minuscule. 

Iona has 2614 cabins of which 55 are ‘accessible’ cabins but this also includes PARTIALLY accessible cabins, so the true number of FULLY accessible cabins is even less. If I’ve got my maths right, this is only around 2% of their cabins! 

Arvia is almost identical having 2610 and again only 55 accessible cabins. 

This seems a pretty pathetic number bearing in mind there is a clear demand for such cabins. Trying to secure an accessible cabin can be really difficult, they get snapped up as soon as they are released, so we are sure they’d be able to sell all of these cabins multiple times over! 

Parking - 

Booking parking is something we have really struggled with and have ultimately had to give up on and make fairly elaborate arrangements to get us to the cruise terminal. This is something P&O have been pretty useless with and flatly refused to help us, despite explaining the difficulties we will face with not being able to park. Upon enquiring, local taxi firms that own wheelchair accessible vehicles informed us they don’t work weekends so that was not even an option for us! 

Due to the small number of accessible cabins, we feel each booking of an accessible cabin should be offered the chance to book a parking space also. We are of course happy to pay for this, we are not asking for a freebie, but this seems to be a severe lack of understanding on P&O’s part that their disabled customers need a bit more support than their other customers! 

Random changes - 

First world problems here but… we had a drinks package booked and paid for that included lots of options of drinks for the kids also. P&O have JUST decided to make a change to their drinks packages, days before our departure which means there would not be much at all included for the kids, unless they want to drink coke all day long, which they don’t! We felt P&O should at least honour those who had booked and paid for their drinks packages as a minimum! 

So, as you can see trying to book a family holiday and ensure EVERYTHING is in place for Miss S is never plain sailing (pardon the pun!) so we always end up in a slightly heightened state of anxiety approaching anything new. Overall our excitement is outweighing that anxiety right now, so we hope P&O can go and surpass our expectations and blow us away with a holiday to remember! Fingers firmly crossed!