More pictures of Aurora’s new livery

Andrew Sassoli-Walker sent me these images today. Obviously, they’re of Aurora in Southampton. I think she looks good, although I’m not sure how good the funnel colour, which is OK on its own fits with the rest of it.

As Andrew said, there are obviously some problems with the paint used for the ‘P&O Cruises’ lettering on the beam – as you can see, it’s nearly worn away already.

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Aurora’s new livery

I received a couple of images late last night from Andrew Sassoli-Walker, of Aurora arriving into Southampton. They’re night shots and I gather were not taken in ideal conditions; nonetheless they’re a record of how she looked on her first reappearance in the UK with the new livery so here they are.

Andrew hopes to take some daylight images today, and I’m hoping he’ll send me some…

Many thanks as usual to Andrew for making these images available to me; and also as usual they are © Andrew Sassoli-Walker.

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Aurora Refit

Aurora in Southampton 2012

I had completely forgotten that Aurora is in Hamburg for her refit. In fact she’s been there for almost two weeks and will be returning to Southampton in just a few days – Southampton VTS has her returning to Southampton on 17 December and departing on 19 December on a two-nighter to Zeebrugge followed by a 14 night cruise to the Canary Islands on 21 December. (This means we’ll pass her on Arcadia on the night of the 20th as we head off to Zeebrugge, but I suspect the Channel Traffic Separation scheme will mean that we’ll be miles apart.) The headlines for the refit seem to be about the new livery – the hull art and new funnel colours – followed by the creation of a Glasshouse, other dining venue changes, and various areas being refurbished. Here’s a link to a P&O page giving details.

And here is a link to a webcam in Hamburg harbour more or less opposite the Blohm + Voss dry dock where the refit is happening. The cameras seems to be a cycle of movements so you may have to wait until it pans across the scene just across the river.

There’s also this YouTube video taken from a boat on the river Elbe, and showing good close-up shots of Aurora in the dry dock, Fred’s Balmoral (also in dry dock) and a long section passing back and forwards alongside Artania, the former Artemis and original Royal Princess. Phoenix Reisen seem to be looking after her.

 

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Aurora refit

I’ve found some details of the forthcoming refit for Aurora. (Actually, they weren’t hard to find – they’re on the P&O ‘Our World’ site.) Here’s a summary:-

• Changes to her appearance – the Union flag will be painted on her bows, and the funnels will become blue with a ‘Rising Sun’ symbol;
• Part of the Medina restaurant will be made Freedom Dining;
• There will be a Sindhu restaurant with an Atul Kochhar menu – it’ll be located where the Library currently is, at the top of the Atrium;
• A new Library will be built just off the Crows Nest, which will also get/become a Costa outlet;
• The existing Cafe Bordeaux will be replaced by a Glass House;
• The current pub/casino area will be replaced, by a Brodies and some single cabins;
• There will be a makeover of the children’s clubs/facilities;
• There will be refurbishments to the passenger cabins;
• I think the retail areas will be smartened; and
• I think there will be some single cabins.

I’ve never been on Aurora so I can’t comment on the disappearance of some of her existing facilities. I can imagine that features such as Cafe Bordeaux will have had their fans, so some people may be disappointed by these changes. As regular readers will know we’re big fans of The Glass House on Azura and Ventura and of Sindhu on Azura, so the existence of these features on Aurora is very attractive to us. Who knows, we might cruise on her yet – although I’ve noticed that prices on Aurora are always higher for equivalent cruises than those on Ventura and Azura.

The refit is scheduled for the period between the end of November and mid-December this year. Here’s a link to the ‘Our World‘ page.

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A bit more on P&O prices & itineraries for 2015

I’ve had a bit more opportunity to look through P&O’s just-announced programme for summer 2015. What seems clear to me is that there’s a bit of a divide opening up – prices on Britannia, Ventura and Azura seem to be noticeably lower than prices on the rest of the fleet.

Oriana and Aurora definitely seem to be the most expensive. I’ve looked at a couple of Mediterannean cruises for mid-June 2015, 14 nights on Azura and 17 nights on Aurora, and in each case have compared the prices for a balcony cabin.

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Aurora cruise cancelled

I’ve heard that cruise R424 on Aurora has been cancelled. This was a four-night cruise to Amsterdam and Bruges, with a day at sea before the call at Amsterdam and was due to start on 29 November and finish on 3 December. Crucially, it was the cruise immediately prior to Aurora’s refit, which was scheduled to last from the 3rd to the 19th of December.

Obviously they’ve decided they need a bit more time for the refit work. They may be feeling a bit sensitive about this sort of issue – Arcadia’s refit had to be extended by a day or so earlier this winter, which resulted in the cancellation of the first cruise afterwards. The ostensible reason on that occasion was (very) high winds which prevented cranes from being used rather than extra work, but the impact was the same. So perhaps P&O are being very cautious this time. After all, we’ve not been told of any additional work in the refit.

But wait! – we have!! I did a post some weeks ago about the new hull art on Britannia – basically, a stylised Union flag on the bows. This is actually going to be rolled out across the whole fleet. The information we have says that Aurora will get it first so presumably that will be done during her refit next winter. But surely they wouldn’t cancel a cruise just so they could paint a flag on a ship? Would they??

Here’s a (computer-generated) image from the P&O Facebook showing how they think Britannia will look with the hull art.

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Some P&O snippets

A couple of snippets from P&O for the first post for a couple of weeks, almost.

First, cruises in and out of Venice. This picks up on something I’ve been posting about regularly – the changes in policy regarding access to the Venice cruise terminal via the Giudecca canal. From November this year ships over 96,000 tons or so won’t be allowed to do so, and the new passage that avoids the Giudecca canal won’t be dredged until sometime in 2015, it seems. So after this November large ships won’t be able to cruise into or out of Venice at all. P&O have made this point a feature of a recent post on Facebook, and have (rather cutely) linked it back to a booking page for this year’s Ventura fly-cruises which (of course) go to, or from, Venice. Here’s a link to the collection of posts I’ve done on this topic. (It includes this one, of course.)

Secondly, I received an email from P&O promising some ‘exciting new Britannia news’. On reading it I discovered that it concerned the fact that Britannia (and indeed the whole fleet) will receive some hull art – ” a stylised Union Flag sweeping across the bow captures the spirit of Britain today”. Aurora gets it first, and Britannia will take to the seas with hers. The email announced this under the banner “Proud to be British”. Well, yes I am, but I don’t feel the need to wave a flag all the time. Then there’s the whole “what constitutes a British ship?” question. Let’s see, Aurora (which will get the hull art first) has the following characteristics:-

• she was built in Germany;
• she belongs ultimately to a US corporation;
• her port of registry is Hamilton, Bermuda.

That doesn’t sound very British to me. It all sounds pure marketing – there’s nothing here that will affect her passengers’ cruise experience one bit, yet somehow this is “exciting news”. Oh well – perhaps I should go away and be grumpy elsewhere. Let’s finish off with a picture of St Mark’s basin in Venice – and not taken from a cruise ship.

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Aurora in La Coruna

Neil Ringan commented on an earlier post I did about Aurora’s world cruise departure to tell me that instead of heading for the Azores, she had turned up at La Coruna today. There was some question as to the reason: bad weather? medical emergency?

I’ve been told that it was due to ‘weather avoidance’ and the passengers were informed about the diversion before departure from Southampton. Next port will apparently be Antigua, so she will miss the Azores altogether this time. Thanks to Neil for telling me about the diversion.

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A P&O news roundup

I’ve been catching up on some P&O news that I’d missed. This is from one or another of their various blog/Facebook sites, so my apologies if you already know what I’m about to tell you.

First up is the appearance of Christopher Edgington who describes himself as ‘Director, P&O Cruises’. I think he’s one of the two marketing specialists mentioned in this post that I did a few months ago – Mr Edgington must be the one for P&O. There’s no mention about his previous experience so I guess that (as with Mr Tempest) he’s new to the cruise industry. Here’s a link to the post on Discover P&O Cruises in which he introduces himself. His comments are pretty standard “Gosh I’m pleased to be here!” stuff, but the comments at the bottom of the post are interesting to read.

Next is some information about the expansion of Freedom Dining to Oriana, Aurora and Arcadia. That will leave just Adonia as the only ship that won’t be offering this, but given Adonia’s small size there must be special challenges in doing so. Anyway, Freedom Dining is to be introduced to each of these ships at appropriate moments – in Arcadia’s case it will be in December after her forthcoming refit, for Oriana it will be in May, and for Aurora it will be from December 2014. In addition, Ventura will switch to a ‘two restaurants for Freedom, one restaurant for Club’ configuration. This is in fact what was originally planned, but – possibly in response to passenger preference – it was set back to two for Club, one for Freedom quite soon after it was introduced. Now it’s going to be as originally planned. I can’t see any information as to when this will happen, however.

More information on dining arrangements include the snippet that the ‘Classic Favourites’ will once again be available in addition to the stated choices on the dinner menus. These are dishes such as Caesar salad and fillet steak that you could order if you didn’t fancy the other dishes. We had noticed on Ventura earlier this year that they weren’t available, and I’m glad to see that they’re returning. The reason given for their reintroduction is “following feedback from passengers”.

There’s another interesting hint regarding Aurora – the introduction dat of December 2014 for Freedom Dining is to coincide with “upgrades to the ship”. I have heard it suggested that among these will be the disappearance of Aurora’s library, to be replaced by another speciality restaurant. I’m sure we’ll hear more about this and other improvements in due course.

Here’s a link to the relevant page on the P&O ‘Our World’ blog.

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Prop shaft problems for Aurora during world cruise

I’ve just learned that P&O’s Aurora seems to have developed problems during her world cruise. A post on a forum includes this email to an about-to-embark passenger, advising them of a changed itinerary as a result of the problem:

 

I am writing to you on behalf of your travel agent with some important news regarding your upcoming cruise on board Aurora’s 2013 World Cruise R301, departing from Auckland on Sunday 17th February 2013.While carrying out her World Cruise, Aurora has developed an unexpected fault with her port propeller shaft.

There are absolutely no safety implications arising as a result of this fault, but it does have an impact on her maximum speed and repairs are required. To enable repairs to take place, Aurora will stay in Auckland for an extra day and will now depart on Monday 18th February. Embarkation for your cruise will still take place on Sunday, 17th February as planned.

As a result of the extended stay in Auckland, the half day call to Napier and full day call to Wellington have unfortunately been cancelled. As a replacement, on departure from Auckland, Aurora will now sail directly to New Zealand’s Idyllic Bay of Islands for a full day call, arriving in the morning of 19th February. The revised itinerary is displayed in full below.

[revised itinerary details snipped]

A full shore excursion program for the Bay of Islands and the additional day in Auckland will be available on board.

Napier and Wellington shore excursions will be automatically refunded. We are very sorry for the unavoidable changes that we have had to make to your cruise itinerary.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please contact your Travel Agent.We look forward to welcoming you on board soon.

Yours sincerely, Matthew BarkerDirector, Customer Service

 

Let’s hope that the fault can be repaired at Auckland.

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