Who We Are & Sun Princess Suite Natured Cruise Cast Ep.1 - Audio Version

This is our first episode of the Suite Natured Cruise Cast Podcast. 

In this episode we introduce ourselves & Suite Natured, as well as talking about the last minute cancellation of our Sun Princess Cruise, and give our thoughts on other recent cruise news.

In each episode we cover a range of topical cruise related topics, antidotes and cruise news stories.

Each of our episodes in shot in real time and is totally unscripted, meaning the direction of each podcast can go in a very different direction to what we intended :)

If you enjoy this podcast, please consider subscribing to our channel both for the podcast and on YouTube, https://youtube.com/c/suitenatured for our full range of cruise content

Chapters

• 0:00 Intro To Cruise Cast
• 0:25 Episode 1 - Who Are Suite Natured?
• 7:00 Sun Princess & Other News
• 29:00 Linzi Reads Menus!

Transcript

Linzi & Mark (00:00.636)
Welcome to episode one of the Suite Natured Cruise Cast. Hi, I'm Linzi as always I'm joined by Mark Hello. Hello, but first a little mood music.

Linzi & Mark (00:21.692)
Yeah, I'm really not sure about that intro yet. Episode one intro, episode two may be different. It may, but it has set the tone for a Negroni. So let's imagine it's late, we're in a lounge on QM2 and we're going to talk things cruise. Okay, that sounds good. But we thought we'd start off episode one. Oh, not assuming that people know who we are. No.

and just talk a little bit about who we are and Suite Natured and the podcast. And then we've got some news to talk about from this week's news, including the Sun Princess cancellation. Thanks. Sorry for the reminder and some other bits and pieces. Okay. Okay. So we're in the Commodore Club on QM2 and we're going to talk about who we are. Are we? Yes. Looks suspiciously like our lounge.

Obviously for those of you that are listening to this on audio as opposed to watching the video, imagine a lounge. That's where we are. Not a Commodore lounge. Just a normal living room. I thought we were going to do a bit of cruise role play there, but obviously not. No, it don't work as much as well when people can see the podcast as well as listen to it. Okay. But for those of you with imagination, pretend we're in the Commodore.

or turn us off. I mean the pictures. The video, not the whole podcast. It'd be nice if people listened to the podcast. Thank you. I feel we've gone off on a tangent. Well, that's how these are going to go because we're shooting them like we would do our normal voiceovers. Single take, no script. We've got some topics we want to talk about, but not a script. Let's go back to we're in the Commodore lounge. Let's introduce ourselves. You start off. Hi, I'm Lyns.

and we have a little YouTube channel and now a little podcast talking about cruise things. And we do a little reviews to help you cruise. Is that a good summary? It's a start. I mean, I, I mean, it's the channel we started what? Just over two years ago now. Yes. So post pandemic, we came out of it and thought let's do a cruise channel. We did.

Linzi & Mark (02:41.596)
Yeah, because we make the videos of things that we want to find out, not necessarily typically vlogs in the traditional sense, but we do things that we want to know basically about drinks, packages, about the we take a bit of a deep dive. Is that a good summary? Yeah, it's things that, you know, when we're doing cruise research and for various reasons that we'll get onto in a minute, we've done a lot of that this week. We want to try and find ourself.

Yes. So we love watching cruise vlogs. Some of our favorite YouTube channels are cruise vloggers. We don't really do that style. It's more sort of reviews and tips and sort of getting into a little bit more on that. We said that we have the YouTube channel membership and we do sort of more traditional vlogs on there, but not on the main YouTube channel. Yeah, because we figure if you want to see what we do and know a bit more...

We don't want to, if we're not for you then, you know. No, we're not pushing that on the main channel, but there is more that you can find if you want to. I don't like talking about myself. Let's talk about cruises. Well, no, we have to tell a little bit more, because you can't assume that anyone who's listening to this for the first time or watching it has watched any of our sort of videos. Okay, well, let's just be quick about it. I'm drinking a Negroni.

It's 11 .38 in the morning on the day that I should be boarding Sun Princess. How does that? Thank you. Does that, I think that covers an awful lot about you. It's 11 .38 on a Sunday morning and you have a Negroni. Yes. Traditionally associated with the Commodore club, sort of pre -dinner or post -dinner. Yes. So yeah, we thought it would be right to have sort of that style of drink for the first podcast. It the tunes fault. It was the tune.

We'd been sort of listening to sort of the intro bit for a while. What cocktail? Well, it has to be a Negron. Yeah. Okay. Early in the day. Yeah. But yeah, it's, I said we started the channel a couple of years ago and it's been great fun. It has, but I'm uncomfortable talking about myself. So let's talk about cruise. Okay. Well, we're married. We're married.

Linzi & Mark (04:57.564)
I think we should say we can talk a little bit more not brother and sister, I'd just like to point out. Yeah, because the similarities won't get it. I'm sure that anyone who's watching this, obviously those listening, maybe not, but anyone watching will be like, oh, they look so alike. They must be related. No, we've been together, what, 38 years this year now. Oh my goodness. On and off. It's our 30th anniversary in a few weeks. It is, and we're planning on few weeks at the time that we're recording. We're planning on doing something special. We are, fingers crossed. But not in the way that we -

planned on doing something special. And knew something special. We both have full -time jobs, we're not full -time YouTubers or podcasters. No, you can tell. What do you mean from this highly professional set up that people might guess that we don't do this every day? Let's go back to the cruise things now. Okay. And so I can have a drink. It gives you an excuse for a drink. Well, what we thought we'd do on...

each of the podcast episodes and it'd be great to get some feedback from you. So if there's things you'd like to see us or hear us talk about doing more, please tell us in the comments, drop us an email. If you like what we're doing, then fantastic. We'll do more of that on episode two. Can I just say, please be forgiving. This is our first time. Yeah, on a podcast. Be gentle with us for this episode. Yeah. Maybe be gentle for the first two or three episodes with us on the podcast.

YouTube we've been doing for a couple of years now so we kind of got used to where we are with there. The live streams we've been doing them for about a year so they're a little bit more but this is a little bit different for us. Yeah and I feel we've still not talked about anything cruisey apart from today we should have been going on something. Well that's a brilliant lead -in. Thank you. Well done. So we're gonna talk about sort of some cruise stories. Oh my goodness darling! No but we're starting off with a really big one. Okay.

for us personally. I mean, it's big to be fair within the cruise industry, not just for us. But today, which is the 18th of February, the day that we're recording it. 2024. 2024. We should have been boarding. In fact, we should have probably just boarded. Princess Cruises knew Sun Princess Central European time. Yeah, which is what we should have been on that now. And it was only three, four days ago now.

Linzi & Mark (07:21.596)
Yes. We found out the cruise was cancelled. So this was its rescheduled inaugural. Originally the inaugural was on the 8th of February. I want to say that. Yeah, it's 10 days. Yes, yeah. So and they notified everyone sort of just over two weeks before that, if I remember right, that unfortunately the ship still wasn't quite ready. They had a couple bits to do in the dock and then it would be setting off on the new inaugural.

would now be the 18th. I just like to add they never put that in writing. It only appeared on Twitter to say that the crews on the 18th would be going ahead. They never called it the inaugural, they never called it the maiden. No they didn't and to be fair when they then cancelled this one and I think it was later on... 28th you say that it goes out? Yeah I think it was later on in the day after the announcement of the cancel which I'll come back to in a sec.

the press release that then came out on that was the first thing that we'd ever seen that talked about a new maiden. So whilst ours Stars wasn't canceled and they talked about it still sailing. There was never this official press release on Princess and I think a lot of people felt sort of a little bit nervous about that that were going on the 18th. So we knew quite a few people. And so there was this sort of trepidation, will it go ahead, will it not? But when you get to within three days before we were due to...

take off and four days before the cruise. Yeah, cause we were flying out the night before because we don't fly on the same day. We try and avoid doing that. I mean, we know lots of people that do. We just prefer to be there a day before, get settled in and have a nice night where we are. Yeah, try and get this all the time. And the panic of something being delayed in Mystery Cruise. No, no, we don't like that. But we sort of go for work as we normally do on Wednesday, which was Valentine's.

And we were sat down here. We get up for work about five in the morning. I just like to say I'd written you your cards and the night before and in it I'd wrote some lovely things about how what a wonderful holiday we're going to have and how I was so laughing because it's on the shelf at the side of it there and I can see it. We were going to have a wonderful time and now you know. But the thing is we'd opened the cards that morning when we're having a cup of tea.

Linzi & Mark (09:40.86)
and read them and I said to you oh I would debate in putting something in about the ship in the card and I didn't want to curse it. The thing is normally the first thing you do normally the first thing you do is like you get your breakfast you have a cup of tea and then you check your emails and sort of sort yourself out for the day because it was Valentine's you'd not done that. So you'd gone up to get ready after breakfast I was just tidying up down here at which point I checked my email and I shouted up and like they've cancelled the cruise to each

some expletives did leave Linzi's mouth I know you're gonna find that hard to believe no no I didn't swear in a big way I didn't it wasn't a big swear but I didn't swear words within it I didn't think it was kind of you to do it to me on Valentine's morning I thought that's not nice have you you thought it were wind up I just thought valentine's no no no way would anyone do that especially a cruise line that's associated with all the love

And that for me was the weird bit of everything that happened. Whilst I'm sure they had internally at Princess a go no -go day in which they had to say, right, we now can't do the 18th. And I'm sure they did. I don't think that they only knew at 2 .30 our time on the morning, which is what time the email was sent, that that cruise was going ahead. I think they probably knew two or three days before that. Now this occurs to me, I've been thinking about this a lot this week. If you are going to cancel a cruise,

should you cancel the cruise within the time zone within a reasonable time of the time zone of the time zone that the ship's leaving oh that makes perfect sense you know i mean so this this cruise was going out of europe yeah um and should they have informed the people that it was being canceled you the passengers the passengers within a reasonable time of

Do you mean the time zone to say not doing it at 2 2 .30 in the morning? Yeah. Yes. But the vast majority of passengers that would have been on that ship would have been from the US. Well, we saw, was it port monkeys that had packed and they were setting off? We know people that had already set off and were in Rome. We were in the Facebook group for that sailing and people had already put pictures up the following evening of them arriving in Rome and how they were excited.

Linzi & Mark (12:03.644)
For a lot of people, it's a bucket list location. We can take it a little bit for granted being in Europe anyway. Yes. Yeah. But to travel all that way to Rome and everything else that's within there, you can imagine that it being canceled. Because we've been to Rome a few times. So we were going there It's fantastic place. I'm looking forward to going there again at some point. Yeah. But if you've got out there and it's been canceled, that's even worse. But I get what you mean in terms of that time slot. Should they have done it at like...

five, no, then five PM that day, central Rome time. I think they tried to tie it into where it was where most of the passengers were coming by. I mean, imagine getting on the plane. Yeah. In the US, landing in Rome and then finding you've been, your cruiser's So we, we saw the port monkeys who they'd already, they'd already said they won the twin. No, they won the eight. And then, and then the 18th, they won back to backs. But.

that first one had been canceled from, they were literally leaving the door to go to the airport. The bags were at the side of it. They were going to the airport in an hour and then found out. I always assume that everyone checks their email constantly, but I think that's a work thing. And the reality is, I know most people don't. So imagine you got to the airport or you've checked in or at what point, even worse, you tap Wi -Fi on the plane.

which has cost you a load of money. And then you're sort of midway over the Atlantic and you find that your cruise has been canceled. Oh, let's just think, just take a moment to think about those poor people. But I've also had another thought. Oh, careful. I know in respect to the compensation for canceling, they have processed that really quickly, which incredibly quickly good on them, which also means that they probably knew a few more days before they did. But

they have in respect of the cruise credit that appeared within 24 hours. It were less than that. And here's a tip for people. If you're expecting a cruise credit, it comes individually as passengers, not all to the lead passenger, doesn't it? Oh yeah. So we, we had our cruise credits come through and it was the same day. So I told you like six 30 that morning that had been canceled before we went to bed that night. We'd already had it back. The cruise credits were already on there, but I looked on our...

Linzi & Mark (14:23.1)
Well, that's strange. It's only half the amount of what we expected. And I'm like, hang on, that's in my name. So then we checked onto your Princess account. And of course, there it was. When we then looked at potentially booking something else just as a test to see what happened, it pulled everything together. I didn't have to then put in your details. It pulled it all in. So we do know that a lot of people have looked at it initially and gone, hang on, that's not as much as I thought I would get. Now we have had people ask us as well because we had time off from work.

and both works have been really, really good about it in respect of cancelling it, such short notice, and then saying that we could rebook something with short notice. But in respect of a lot of people said, well, why don't you just jump on something? And then we talked about this and we said, we don't really want what we feel is, because we had looked at plan B suddenly in respect to what would happen. When the first cruise was cancelled on the 8th, so that was two and a half.

two weeks before when ours was canceled. We started looking at plan Bs then because we thought, hang on, are they really just going to cancel the one cruise? But at the same time, from a PR and a marketing perspective, try and get all that bad news out in one go. But the issue we had is our plan B departed the day, wasn't it? Because it was the Norwegian transatlantic, Norwegian joy. Because we were like, if we were going to get canceled, this is...

Not being on. Well, we had another Plan B as well, which was the wind style from Barcelona to Rome. Oh, yeah. Because we're like, hang on, that we can still tie some things up. And we should get a good price because it's so close. And but the problem being we missed both of those sort of Plan B ones because it got so close within it. And I think that we were well within our rights. And I think most people that when you get three, four days out from a cruise like that, where it's inaugural and it's not canceled for bad weather or.

something along those lines, then to expect it to go ahead is not unreasonable. So as soon as we got inside that sort of one week window, we were like, okay, it's definitely going ahead now. And then when it was canceled, we'd looked at a load of Plan B stuff. We spent a full... Evening. Well, Valentine's... Evening and the following day. Valentine's evening was the most subdued Valentine's we've ever had. Well, what did we rename it? Midweek Wine Wednesday. Yeah.

Linzi & Mark (16:50.94)
decided it wasn't Valentine's Day anymore. No, we just we just drank wine and we looked at cruise. romance went out of the window that day didn't There no romance darling. You did have some flowers for me which well it's not those flowers. There's some over there. I've got some over there um but it it because we weren't you weren't going to get me any flowers because there's no point because we'll be dead. We'll be traveling in a couple of days. We just have to throw them away. But that was it. It was just like it but we did spend a lot of time looking at alternatives for short term it's like yeah.

is the things we can get on this weekend. So we didn't have to cancel holidays and work. But it so much like a rebound. Yeah, that's probably a good word to describe it. Don't get me wrong, I'll go on any cruise at any point. But this is our 30th anniversary that's coming up. Yes, and that's probably what's... And that was the bigger thing for us. It's like, there's not enough time between now and the 30th anniversary to go on a short one and then another one for his anniversary, because that's only a couple of weeks. And I think we had that in our head then of going, well...

some Princess was so special for our anniversary. And it's 30th anniversary. It's quite a big tick one. We didn't want to just go on something for the sake of it. And the more that we looked at things, because it was so close, the more it was, yeah, that we'd be going on that just for the sake of it. Now don't get me wrong. When we found out sort of some vlogger friends of ours as the cruise monkeys were going on Azora.

And we were like, oh, we could sneak on that. That'd be quite nice. And there was still enough time at that point. And we'd have the money back as well. And then we're like, hang on, go back to our original thing of this is our 30th anniversary. It's like, you know, let's take a couple of weeks. Just take some time. So as you said, we spoke to work and both of our companies were fantastic. Yeah. We're like, yeah, it's not a point where I'll cancel it. You can come back to us, give us a couple of days, notice that you want to go on something else, still take your time off.

which then that was the deciding factor. It's like, okay. Yeah, we can take some time, which we have, which we have. And we've gone down so many cruise rabbit holes because now we've got the cruise credit to play with. We've kind of upped his budget, which is dangerous. It is because we've got all the money back. What we should be doing is looking at spending exactly the same sort of money and then go, oh, we've got this budget. We can do that on another one. Instead we're going...

Linzi & Mark (19:13.788)
Ooh, we've got more money. Yeah. So we're probably going to go further afield. So we're now looking to see where we can go. Yeah. And we've looked like a bucket list. And we've looked all over. We've been looking at Japan, Alaska, basically, this is a future cruise credit from Princess. Anywhere that Princess goes, it's a little bit further away. So, okay, where can we go? So we haven't full on decided on that at the time of recording. We're not nailed down for anything right now. No.

It's just what we will be in the next couple of days. I'm sure we will because you like to sleep on things. I do. You do a bed. Yeah. And you it's just we don't want to go just like we don't need to burn a hole in this pocket. Basically. It feels to be. You look at your sort of future cruise credit or your bank account and you got that one in there before. Yeah, it wasn't. That's cruise money. It is cruise money. So now we have to decide.

where we're gonna go and that's gonna be interesting. And the thing is we love, we watch everybody's cruise videos. So we've watched all, I think we've watched, in fact, we've got more lined up. I think we've finished YouTube this weekend. No, we haven't. We haven't, but we watch everybody's and anybody's videos. Even just like, that's not specifically cruise videos that have things that people have just put together for the family. We've been watching that as well. Just to look at this.

get a full spectrum. Yes. And also in respect of then you look at, so the cruise thing is one thing. The excursions, wowsers are another thing. Depending where we're going. Depending on where we're going. But when we looked at the Alaska stuff, some of the cruise excursions up there compared to Caribbean or Mediterranean are very expensive. But they're like, oh, you're only coming once. I think that's what their general theory is. Yeah. You're probably not going to do that. Certainly from our side of the world, you're probably not going to do that every week. No, but like the Husky thing,

We're like, oh, well, we've got more Husky options because we can do the Norwegian fjords. Yeah. So, so as I said, not decided yet, but it's been an interesting week. I really do hope the Princess maiden does go ahead. Some Princess on the 28th. I hope there's no more delays in it now. I think that they just need to get that ship out now. Yeah. And then sort of get it out there.

Linzi & Mark (21:41.596)
how to see people enjoy it. Yeah. There's going to be 10 ,000 passengers that would do on those first cruises who are not going to be that happy about it. But if they get it out there and they can show the ship running and all the stuff that's on it.

build up that excitement again and get people back on. Yes, like Icon. We still desperately want to go on it. We do. And like, oh, we've been watching all the Icon material as well. Yeah. But we've got to admit when it came to Icon, we watched the crew's vloggers that we enjoy, like Paradija. And then we've got, no ordinary adventure. I can't remember. It's Peter and Kitra. We love them. We watch them. We watch George.

Joe's world because he's not a cruise vlogger. So we like to see what cruise vloggers think of it. And then we like to see what non cruise vloggers who like Disney. It's been interesting to sort of watch sort of how, cause you've got two massive ships from two massive companies. Carnival Corporation with Princess, Royal Caribbean for Icon of the Seeds. How both of them approached a massive new project, brand new ship types for both of them to be a classic icon class. And the promotions that they did, you look at the marketing on.

icon it's almost a lesson in how to market a cruise ship. Do we know who is the godmother or godfather of? Messy isn't it? No of some Princess. No. That's interesting isn't it? It is messy isn't it for icons? Messy because he's he's an icon so they picked him as icon yeah and you can buy the shirts but they're about 150 dollars. But again going back to that some Princess one I don't know who's been named I'm sure I probably do and I've just forgotten. I don't you know what I But he's certainly not as high profile.

No. And you look at how they both approached it when it was on the sea trials. There were a lot of stuff on online and Royal Caribbean putting their official stuff up when it were doing its transatlantic over to San Juan, when it were arriving in there, all the media trip. You look at how they approached it. Whereas Princess had been very quiet about it really since about late September, October. There'd not been much out. There'd been like the odd drip feed about some of the restaurants. I would like to see their project Gantt chart for. I want that.

Linzi & Mark (23:54.332)
just imagine the project behind. I mean, just the project side for the marketing of Icon, let alone a project for building something like some Princess. But it's been fascinating to sort of see those two because it's within literally a month of each other. You can do that direct comparable. You know, this isn't during a pandemic. It's not during different things in the world. It's not one big and one small. But it does bring me on to another new story.

I know, nice segue. Which is Royal and Carnival have both placed some big new orders this week as well and announced them. And Royal Caribbean has just ordered another Oasis class ship. Now that's interesting. For 2028. Wowzers, because that's interesting. They've ordered another icon class which is going to be Star. Star of the Seas. Yeah, because Princess's name is called Star as well. Princess in the Sphere class.

But yeah, it's interesting then they've then swung back to Oasis class. I wonder if that means that we and by we I mean the UK Southampton now get an Oasis class ship. That would be marvelous. Well, that's then their eighth. I think it might be. I might be wrong on that. Please tell us. Yeah, but be nice. It's our first time. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's their eighth one. So if you look at them putting one in each major area.

That should mean that we get one, hopefully, in the UK in 2027, maybe. Because independence is going to be a 25 and 26. So maybe 2027, we get one, which would be brilliant. Because the Oasis Class 1, for me, is still my favorite class of shape. You love it. Not just of Royals, of anyone. You love it. You love Central Park. I think the design of it is pretty much perfect. I know there's been a lot of talk about Icon and how people feel that it's the pinnacle evolution of that.

I don't, there's areas where we've not been on it. So I'm not saying that we have, but just from that floor, Oasis for me, I know for a lot of people it's still too big, but I do love that ship. So when they said they were doing another one, I'm like, oh. Yeah, that they've gone back to Oasis size again. And I say, as always, they've gone back to like, it's not dining. They've only just delivered Utopia.

Linzi & Mark (26:17.628)
Have they delivered Utopia? No, it comes out this year, doesn't So they've had an icon, then they get Utopia in the same year, then we'll get Star and then we'll get unnamed currently, Oasis Class 8. But also Carnival, which is not a cruise line we've been on yet. No, we haven't. They do very little from Europe and even less from the always very pricey. And we tend to get the older ships. We'd get the older ships that go out of Dover.

And then when we cost them up, they're not. And Dover for anyone not from the UK is down the Southeast coast as opposed to Southampton. And a trade port than it is a cruise port. Yeah, it is. It's not somewhere you go, oh, let's set off on the cruise from here. We've had Disney set off from there before. Disney have gone from there. Yeah, I think they're back in there from Southampton now. Because if there's any issue with it being a trade port, it's the main access to...

Europe in respect of the ferries and everything. Yeah it can be a bit of a may down to that. But certainly going out of Southampton or Portsmouth is an easier path for passengers. Commute, yes. And like you say, commute, getting there etc is just a lot easier. But it'll be interesting to see if Carnival, because it's other cruise lines, P &O, Princess, go out of the UK constantly. So it'll be interesting to see if they're thinking about

with all their new cruise lines that they're pushing out that they're going to put one more permanently based in the UK and Europe and try and build that brand a little bit more. I still heavily associate Carnival with the US market. Yeah, we do. And they did sort of they did a major campaign a few years ago, but then sort of pulled it back. Did we have Carnival Pride out of here for a little bit? I think we've got Carnival Pride this year as well. Right. But I'll have to you'll have to bear with me while I check that. You don't have to check it now. Thank you.

So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how those are, but again, that's billions of dollars continuing to be put into the industry with new shapes because they know that they're pretty much hitting capacity at the moment and need more availability. I mean, you say that because I was then checking due to our cruise credit, I was checking quite a few cruises for Princess and we're gonna have to decide on something pretty quick because every time I was looking at everything, they were sold out.

Linzi & Mark (28:43.74)
the sailings were available and then gone. Well we know again speaking with Gavin and Luke on Azura they got the very last 14 day cruise on that because it's made up of two seven day ones on P &O's. They had a lot of availability they booked on to it when we booked it was only then the one week one that were available. I think you could technically do two one weeks but you couldn't do it as the back to back. No. So

things are selling out quickly and we can see the need to get more stuff into the itinerary. Which great from that side, not always the best of news from a passenger point of view because when there's that demand and there's not currently the availability, the prices have gone way way up in the last two or three years compared to sort of pre -pandemic. At least from me casually looking at it when we're booking a cruise.

And then the last bit of cruise news that I wanted to talk about in this episode is linked. And that's the sort of ongoing issues around the Red Sea, which I don't want to get into all the political side in there. me have some Negroni. That's not what we're Oh no, it's not a heavy one. It's causing a lot of cruises to have to divert and take alternative paths. And our Virgin are looking at it as well for the relocation of a resilient lady coming back up from Australia. Yeah.

But the one that sort of really caught my ear in the last few days at time of recording was the Royal's ultimate world cruise. Oh, they're having to vote on the change of... I don't think they're having to vote. I don't think the passengers went, you know, we demand a vote. But what print... The world cruise is Royal's first world cruise in a long time. Yeah. On Serenade of the Seas. Yeah. And...

Yeah, it's had a lot of coverage on TikTok and Instagram and all of it favorable. It's become a fascination for people. It has. Yeah, I do have to. I have watched more than one TikTok on it. But when they found out that they weren't going to be able to go through the Middle East and the Red Sea, Suez Canal, for whatever reason, I don't know if this was a head office or decision operational on the cruise line. I'd be interested to know who made that call. They then put it out to the

Linzi & Mark (31:05.596)
passengers to vote and they could decide whether they wanted to have an Africa intensive part of it because no matter what happens they have to route through Africa. Yes, passed. But that meant they were going to miss out a lot of Italy, Greece etc by doing that or they could instead do a couple of stops in Africa. Yeah. They ended up with an extra couple of C -days and they were going to have 26 C -days plus 21 but

they would then go up and do Greece and the islands up there. Yeah. Which for me, it seemed like an obvious bit that the public would pick that that Greece inside because they're doing tennery for this. Well, there's canaries. Yeah. So they'll go there. But I just thought it would just such a strange decision to put it out there. No, I mean, I think they just want to they want to have people feel included because it's a big change. And it's it seems a bit.

Which one would you have voted on out of interest? I would have done, I would have voted, um, cause there's quite a few more sea days added, isn't there? Yeah, there is. Not consistent, consecutive. But I think when you're also on a world cruise that's nine months long, you've got a lot of sea days anyway. So it's five really that much more? Well, it's not five. It's like 25. No, they already had sea days anyway. Yeah. Okay. So we're going to be 25 or 26 rather than 21. Canaries and Greece, I think.

So they were still doing some stops in Africa like Cape Town and things. Yeah, but maybe yeah, I think as well. Or Madagascar or somewhere. Madagascar was the other one. This one included the Seychelles. Did it? I would have definitely voted on that one. But I just thought it was an interesting piece for them to sort of do that side. Now we're coming towards the end of our very first episode. I hope you're still with us. Hopefully you are. One of the weirdest requests.

that we've had. We get quite a few actually. Yeah, but I found this one weird, but we thought we'd try it for the first podcast on either the Facebook group or the YouTube channel where people put comments on. I'm going to have to put my glasses on. Well, I'm going to say you definitely need your glasses on for this next bit. Is that they would like to hear Linzi read a cocktail menu. So if you do want to drop out at this point, thank you for watching or listening. We appreciate it. But.

Linzi & Mark (33:31.292)
We're just going to have about a minute of Linzi reading a cocktail menu and then that'll bring us to the end of the episode. So do you just want to say bye bye before you go into this? I'll say bye bye now. I'm a firm believer of giving the people what they want and this may not ever come back into a future episode. So if you do like Linzi reads a menu, please let us know in the comments. Maybe suggest a menu and a ship. A menu and a ship and you know what?

whether you want to read some food out or cocktails, whatever you'd like. The spa menu? The spa menu. That'd just be so weird. The sort of Swedish massage section. But before you go on to it, thank you all for joining us for this first episode. We hope you've enjoyed it. Whether you're watching it via YouTube or you're listening to us, and we'll look forward to joining you for episode two. I will now hand over to Linzi. Sit here quiet, drink my drink.

and listen to the cocktails. So we're back in the Commodore club again. Oh, is this why you insisted on that I'm trying to theme it, I'm a professional.

That's what I've always said. Thank you. So here we go. So this is the contemporary collection on both Cunard chips. Well, first of all, we're going to start with the, uh, shall do the prices as well? No, just the cocktail and the ingredients. Okay. So just do three. I think that's all the people can cook. I've got five on my list. Okay, go for it then. Thank you. First of all, we're starting with penicillin, which is Balmort 10 year old dark and intense. Nice.

Kings ginger liqueur, honey water and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Then we go to a smoky whiskey sour Van Verhoent still house smoked corn whiskey, freshly squeezed lemon juice, maple syrup and Angostura bitters. I like that. This is so surreal. Pommatini, which is a Himmador Blanco tequila, Cointreau pomegranate syrup.

Linzi & Mark (35:37.532)
freshly squeezed lemon juice. There's a lot of lemon juice in these cocktails. There is. Lemon juice is cheap. Old fashioned deluxe. Van Brunt Stillhouse rye whiskey again. Maker's Mark bourbon, Angostura bitters and sugar syrup. And then finally, a slow gin Negroni with three queens gin of your choice. Pickering slow gin, Campari and sweet vermouth. So I'm going to have that one. So cheers.

Cheers, Linz Thank you for listening and have a lovely day.