I am on the Oceana at the moment, docked in Madeira.

Last night was our 2nd formal night and there were quite a few not in formal gear including some in jeans much to the chagrin of the P&O regulars no doubt. That said, it was later on I noticed them and they may have dressed for early dinner and then changed.

To answer your question, formal wear is required in the Club and Freedom dining rooms. However you don't need to dress up for the Plaza buffet and I think you'd be OK in the Horizon Grill and Cafe Jardin.

luci

Thanks for that Luci it helps a lot
Rita

Good to hear from you Luci....hope you are having a real ball.

Yes Luci have a great holiday!! You deserve it!!

Sue

Thanks peeps. In La Palma today and it´s very humid.

luci

We did the Panama Cruise on the Arcadia. We flew from Manchester in December with Thamas Cook(Not very good) could not pre book. We have been reasured by P&O that they are going to use First Choice airways this year, have you had your confermation yet? We are flying out in January for an Oceana cruise from Manchester.
Try not to book the tours with P&O as they are quite expensive. We did most of our tours with the local Taxi Mini Buses men on the dock side for a quarter of the price! Just get togeather about 6-8 of you and fix a price and don't pay untill you get back. The lock tour is only $10 each from the terminal. We even did a trip in Costa Rica and Guatemala $25each. I think we saw more than anyone on the organised trip(look for badged drivers).

I think you can only pre-book seats on flights if the holiday you are travelling on is part of a package (with the tour op and airline being part of the same company), or - if you have booked your own flights separately.

However, some airlines allow an overnight check-in so if you are planning spending a night at an airport hotel prior to your trip, it may be worth looking into. There used to be a charge of £10 per party, which was a lot cheaper than pre-booked seats. All members over the age of 12 had to be present and I think all had to have the same surname too. If I remember correctly, you go and check your luggage in and your seats are allocated but you have to collect your boarding cards at the check in desk again the next day.

It may be worth checking with the airline or the airport desk for the airline if they still allow this service. Unfortunately (I lie), we no longer live in the UK so haven't had to use a uk flight for over 4yrs

Enjoy!

CwB

No we havnt received tickets yet but have been told it is still Thomas Cook we fly with and you cant pre book seats and all the upgrades are sold so we hope we manage to get an aisle seat as I have heard the seats are not very roomy.

Not very roomy is an under statment(packed to bursting). We flew on an Airbus A330 with 3*3*3 configuration,with the ideal configuration for this aircraft is 2*4*2. Hope you fly with Thomson or First Choice and I hope we do? Please let us know who you are flying with.
I will watch this blog in anticipation.

Hi we booked a Far East Cruise with Thomas Cook travelling on Nov 8th
with BA Heathrow/Hongkong [must be lucky]
ann

Hello . Can anyone help me with the following please.

I am going on the oceana in a few weeks and off to panama canal. I am a bit concerned about the smart casual requirements for the evening dress.

I have a few dresses which i am having to switch between for the formal and semi formal evenings. They are not glamerous but i am confident they will pass. im sure i wont be the only odd bodd will i if i am not looking like im wearing a £500 dress.

Other than my dresses i was only planning to take my combat shorts and vesty tops for the excursions, and take my linen trousers, pair of jeans, and a pair of black work trousers for the smart casual and lunch/breakfast times. for the smart casual evenings my tops are only gonig to be nice pretty summery tops-not boring vest tops but strappy summery ones.

Will this be good enough?

In a bit of a situation as we are getting married whilst on board and some of my weight will be the dress and the wedding bits,and by the time my other half has added his wedding suit and dj suit, he will be needing some of my weight allowance.

I have a few long floral skirts and boring tops too that i was also hoping to wear to breakie and lunch. how dressed down can breakie and lunch be?

also how much is the dry cleaning? i will be using it a lot! oh yeah,one more thing....do you get let off of the formal and semi formal evenings if you are in certain restuarants/bars.

any advice is deeply appreciated.
loz x

Hi loz and welcome to HT!

First of all, stop panicking! You won't need endless skirts, trousers and tops for breakfast and lunch as shorts and vest tops are fine during the day even in the restaurant.

Remember you have breakfast, lunch and dinner in either the Plaza buffet, the Adriatic restaurant or Cafe Jardin on Deck 8 which a lot of people don't discover until a few days into their cruise. However Cafe Jardin serves Marco Pierre White meals between 5.30-10.30pm and has a cover charge of £4.99pp.

I didn't see a huge difference between semi-formal and smart casual to be honest as there was a range of dresses, skirts and trousers on both nights.

There will be 3 or 4 themed nights which you can check on the P&O website under Cruise Personaliser. The Black and White formal night was well supported, there were quite a few Hawaiian shirts on the Tropical Night and I only saw one lady dressed up for the 60's and 70's Night.

I don't know the dry cleaning charges as I didn't use it, but there is a launderette on each deck. However they are in a poor state. There was only one of the two washing machines on our deck, Deck 11, working and none on Deck 10. Both of the dryers were worse than useless as they only seemed to blow cold air and my clothes weren't any drier after almost 2 hours. They dried quicker in the cabin on hangers while we were out for the evening.

HTH

luci

We did a full panama in Sept/Oct 04(NCL) and it was VERY hot on the pacific side during the day so hats and sun screen a must.

On Panama day it rained(heavy) from the afternoon onwards so a lightweight waterproof was also a usefull item(need it for UK anyway so carry on) to have it also cleared the decks for the locks that evening since only about 10 people on the ship had rain coats. The morning transit was 8 deep at the rails at 6:30am so hard to see what was going on.(UK ship with more brits may mea more have the rain gear)

Don't forget allthough warm/hot day time and on deck in the evening inside the ship will not be warm and some ships it will be cold(so my OH says don't bother me) so if you are the cold type strappy tops may be a little too lightweight

Daytime anything goes(within reason) so for b,fast lunch, day out shorts will be fine.

We find ship cleaning OK price wise and put the formal shirts in for wash/pressing anyway, OH often gets one of the posh frocks done since cheaper than at home.

You could investigate shipping the wedding gear back from one of the ports and top up the clothes by buying some.

Hi Luci

i'm Lozzi's Fiance, thanks for your reply, can i ask you if the sun crean that you used was good and didn it tend to bleach your tops?, we have Boots own brand and although it worked ok, it tended to bleach our tops, not nice! . it has ruined a couple of my tops also and was wondering whether you have any ideas for a good one that is not too expensive and will not bleach? (although it may be the chemicals in sun cream that dose it with all makes,not sure?) but would be great if you or some one else could let me know of a good 1, i would appreciate it alot.

Once again thanks for info Luci

Nobbie

That is a question best suited to our General Holiday Enquiries forum. If you do a search of that forum this subject was certainly discussed last year or perhaps earlier this year and various sun creams were discussed.

luci

I have found the topic on suncream discolouring clothes HERE. You may wish to post in that topic with any questions.

luci

Just to let those people know now that we have received our travel details for our Panama cruise on the 28th Nov that the carrier is still Thomas Cook out of Manchester.

hi evansr.
we did the panama canal in 2006 on the arcadia.flew to acupulco from leeds & bradford airport.

while in acupulco we went to see the divers,we walked up through the streets from the port to where the divers were.would'nt reccommend an excursion,you will more than understand if you go there under your own steam.it's something you do once.cant remember the st. names sorry.

Hi Sam1
Already booked an excurtion as my husband can not do a lot of walking and we thought it would be easier to be taken to the divers hopefully it will be ok.