When Our Cruise Excursions Go Wrong | Suite Natured Cruise Cast Ep.2 - Audio Version

Welcome to Episode 2 of the Suite Natured Cruise Cast Podcast.

In this episode, we discuss our experiences with cruise excursions that didn't go as planned. Sharing three examples, including a chef's food market excursion, an Albanian wine store excursion, and a disappointment in the Azores. We reflect on the lessons learned from these experiences and the importance of thorough research when booking excursions. Additionally, we discuss recent cruise news, including a partnership between Princess Cruises and Diamonds International, Virgin Voyages canceling its Australian season, and a crime-themed cruise by Nicko Cruises.

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
• 1:21 Cruise Excursions That Don't Go as Planned
• 4:13 The Albanian Wine Store Excursion
• 9:16 The Disappointing Azores Excursion
• 13:01 Lessons Learned from Excursions
• 29:58 Virgin Voyages Cancels Australian Season
• 31:46 New Internet Solution on Virgin Voyages
• 33:39 Niko Cruises' Crime Themed Cruise

Transcript

Linzi & Mark (00:00.796)
Welcome to episode two of the Suite Natured Cruise Cast. Hi, I'm Linzi as always I'm joined by my Markey. Hello. Hello. And today we are talking about when excursions go wrong. But first, a little mood music.

Linzi & Mark (00:23.804)
Wow! I'm not sure if that's better than the last one or not. You know what? One day we will find the perfect music. That's not it. No. We wanted to find some music for our channel member Jo that sort of... She wasn't a big fan of the first episode music. No she wasn't and we wanted something a little bit more upbeat and she's gonna hate that one. You don't think she'll like that one? No. Well, Jo can let us know and everyone else can as well and we'll see what happens next week.

Oh. So episode two. Yes. We're, as we did last week, we've got our main sort of topic that we're going to have a natter about. And then we've got our take on a couple of the cruise news stories, which you don't know what they are. No, you're going to spring them on me. Yeah. So you know what the topic is, but we haven't discussed it. Nothing about the news. Yes. Okay. Well, let's start off with the topic then. We're going to talk about when cruise excursions don't go to plan.

or are they not what you were expecting? Or are they go, I would say, weird? Yeah, I mean, I think people think that most of our cruise excursions go wrong. They don't Ours? Yeah, but we have had a few. We do seem to have a high percentage. What you think we're booking and what we're actually getting are two different things. And I wonder if it is just us or whether it is a...

like a wider thing. Well, we're going to cover off three examples where it wasn't quite what we thought. And they weren't cheap ones. No, no. And these are all proper ship excursions as well. So these are not ones that we've done via a third party. Yeah. And one of them you can't book anymore because it just, I don't know whether it was illegal. Well, let's start off with that one. That's when we talk about cruise excursions not being quite what we thought they were going to be. Yeah.

This is the one. This is probably the one that we think of. But it's also probably our most memorable cruise excursion. I mean, we can laugh about it now. We were laughing about it that night. Well, yeah, but we like discreetly because we did get a refund. I think we got 50 % refund. We did. No, that's true. But let's set the set the sort of scene. We were on Celebrity Eclipse. We were and we booked the chef's...

Linzi & Mark (02:49.66)
special food market excursion and meal and at the time this is a fair few years ago it was quite pricey yeah this were 2017 2018 so a good six seven years ago oh i'm gonna say it's earlier than that um so yeah it wasn't a cheap excursion but the the premise of this so i'll set up the premise and then you can tell the story okay so the premise is that you go with one of the head chefs

from Celebrity, and it was the head chef that we went with. It was. The executive chef on it. They took you out on a food tour around the island. You stop off at several places to select food that that chef's gonna make into a bespoke meal. Yes. Three course meal for you that evening. And you all sit around the table. So in the way that they do the chef's tables now, it was an extension of that. So you had the chef's table plus a...

an excursion on land which was sort of about three hours. Yeah, but I don't think they do it anymore now because there's some, I want to say FDA ruling that you can't buy anything off the on land and bring it onto the ship that hasn't been pre -qualified. I'm sure I've read that since. I've definitely not seen the that excursion exist anymore. No. But it did. So I've set that up. Take it away. Oh my goodness. He put me on the spot now. So it was a small group. Yeah, they're about.

15, 16 of us and like yeah. And then we had our own little minibus. And the plan was that we went to a... This was in Nassau, that we'd go to a fish market. Yep. We'd go to a... A very fancy fish market. A fancy fish market. A regular market. Yep. And then lunch at Atlantis. Yep. And then back on the ship and then dinner.

Later that evening. Later that evening in one of the restaurants that of the things that we'd sourced during our trip. Yeah and it was going to be a little bit of a of a joint sort of selection in terms of what we what we picked. Yes. The chef had talked through with us and get our thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. So that's sort of how it was. Yeah. So how did it go then? Well the fancy fish market was set under a a bypass or a flyover or what?

Linzi & Mark (05:09.678)
highway to Atlantis underneath. Yeah. You can use your imagination for that, but it's worse than it sounds. What I've personally never looked for in a fish market is for it to be under a bypass. It's just not been something that I wanted. No. And when we were there, we, some of the people got off and then got straight back on the bus.

We got off and had a wander with them. We did. When I say wander, we stayed with the chef because we are on his is excursion Yeah. But if I remember right, and correct me on any of this that I get wrong as well as I'm jumping in while you're telling it. I think we stayed there about 10 minutes and then the chef went, yeah, there's nothing edible here. No, he was like, yeah, I don't know if you use the word edible. I think he was a little bit more diplomatic than that. It's just not what he was looking for. Yeah. So we're going to go somewhere else. Somewhere else. Now, at this point, we were also told...

that we would not be going for lunch at Atlantis. No, we were going to go somewhere special, somewhere different instead, which that didn't necessarily go down well with a lot of the people. We'd been to Atlantis a couple of times when we'd been to Nassau We'd not been for a meal there, because we'd been to the water park. We had had some food there, but that was a long time ago when you used to get the package to AquaVenture and lunch. They don't do that anymore.

Well, not how we bought it. We definitely didn't at that point. So we now weren't going to be going there. We were going somewhere else. But we had to firstly go find some fish type food. But people were not happy. No, people were not happy at that Not happy. Then we went to the market. The secondary fish market. No, we went to the vegetable stall. Oh yes, we did. Yeah, because when you say market. It was a vegetable stall at the side of the road. Yeah.

And we've paid a couple of a hundred dollars a piece for this because we were like, oh, lunch at the Atlantis. Yeah, I mean, can't remember exactly how much it was, but it was definitely at the time that we did it, the most expensive excursion we'd ever done. Ever done. And and then we went to the second fish market, which was basically a guy. I don't think you've really got into the food market element to it, because by any mind, they said to us, we're going to go to a food market and we'll select the vegetables and.

Linzi & Mark (07:24.7)
I said it was a lady at the side of the road. Yeah, but it was literally a cart at the side of the road. Yeah, but I mean, that's that lady's living. I don't want to disrespect that lady's living. No, and to be fair, she gave us samples of some of the stuff and it were all very fresh and tasty. And he did get the stuff from there. He did. But as I say, I don't think this is an excursion you can do anymore. No. But then we went to the second fish market, which was a gentleman with a

Machete. Machete in the camping table and we got the conch from there. We got some, what is it from there as well? And some spiny lobsters. Yeah. But that was right at the side of the sea and it was where the fishermen sort of pulled in and were selling it to the locals who would then prepare it. Yeah. Right there in front of you. So what we were getting and what we got, that is one of those excursions that we were like, oh.

And the people on that tour were not happy. Not happy at all. Some people just did not get off the bus. No, they didn't find it funny. There's probably about half of the people on there who were having a laugh at it and it not going to Atlantis and keeping ribbing the driver and the chef. So, are we going to Atlantis now? No, we were basically, and now we're going to, and it was an Australian couple, Atlantis and we're like, no. So that was that one.

and then we had the meal in the evening, which was actually very nice. It was very good. It was lovely. I'm not convinced it used any of the stuff we bought. I probably, I want to say no. No. Because I say you don't really get that anymore. No, I think it was something different. So that was the first excursion that didn't go quite to plan. The second excursion was much more recent. Oh, and we went to Albania.

It wasn't... I'm genuinely not setting you up with that in advance. You just knew what I was going to say for the second one. Yeah, so we went to the largest wine store in... Well, this was on Virgin Voyages when we went into Kotor Yes, it was. We thought we were going on a 45 -minute bus ride to where they keep all the wine and there'd be a wine tasting. But was this old military...

Linzi & Mark (09:43.932)
plane hangar, wasn't it? Built into the mountain, which was amazing. Which now stock wines So we were like, that sounds great. That's very us. An hour we're into the bus ride. The lady said, if anyone needs a bathroom break, we can stop at a service station. Cause we're nearly halfway through. Cause we're nearly halfway there now. This is after an hour. Yeah. And people were like, no, no. And then when we finally got there,

and people definitely needed a bathroom break. A lot of the ladies, the loo, the toilet was about four foot off the ground. Oh, I remember you saying that, I didn't go, So my legs were dangling. It was like... It like you were sitting in one of those hammock chairs on Virgin. I just, I was like, what, what is this? Who is this toilet designed for? Yeah. I didn't have my camera else I would have taken a picture. Anyway.

Then we got into the hangar. It was a 10 minute tour around the wine. Yeah. Then, then. I it was a massive hangar. The tour could have definitely been a lot longer. Then we sat down for our food and our meal and the wine tasting. But of course it's a two hour ride back. So I was literally taking little sips because I was like, I can't do it on that bus again. No, so no, there were no toilets on the bus. No, no like loo's or anything on the bus. And then, then the power went out.

Oh yeah, and you have to bear in mind, this is in an underground cavern and they lost the entire power and it was off for about five minutes. We have got some footage of it. So they brought out candles. So everyone, so we were sitting pitch darkness for about a minute and I got the impression this happened quite often because they didn't panic and they had candles and matches ready to go. And then we're all sitting sort of this candlelit cavern, which actually quite nice. It was and then the power flicked back on. And then I found a nicer...

and nicer ladies to go to before we set off back. But we got back with like, it was coming up to six o 'clock in the evening. to get back, it took nearly two and a half hours to get back. The traffic were getting busier. Yeah. We were due to get back for, there was a splash of romance, a sail away party. Yeah. That we were in and we missed the first half hour of that. With free drinks. We got on there and some friends of ours were on there as well.

Linzi & Mark (12:09.276)
just loaded you up with drinks. Oh, my face must have been like Thunder And they're like, where have you been? And I was like, Albania. Because it was literally just off. We could see Albania. It was. We were less than 10 miles from the border of Albania from where we got on at Kotor which was a lot longer. Yeah. Now, you might think, well, that was your fault for not checking in advance. Yes. But we did.

We did check. We did check. And this was like the second, well, the first time it had been to that place. Wasn't it? And to be fair, they updated it. The next time we saw it, it had updated and it had correct times on it. Is it? I mean, the actual tour itself, when we got there, wasn't that bad. It was the fact that for, you know, we were there for an hour, but we had four and a half hours of driving. Yeah. And it just wasn't, I'd have rather stayed on ship and drank and had a wonder on Kotor And then there's the Azores.

I've gone on to another excursion now. I could list so many. This is the, and I'm sure you're all the same. That what you think you're booking and what you, what you actually get in is two different things. Well, the Azores is on our most recent cruise on Celebrity Apex. Yes. And again, I'll just set this up for you and then I'll let you, I'll wind you up and then let you go. You look so angry. For people who are sort of just listening to the audio. You're very good choice this week.

as well. Lindsay's talking about this, she's getting angry. I look like grumpy cat. So the Azores is somewhere that you've wanted to go to for so long. It's been on your bucket list for so, so long. And we'd watched a lot of videos. We knew that we wanted to go to the hot springs where you get in, get to sort of being those volcanic waters. You can in places like Iceland, but obviously in the Azores. So it was something from when we booked that.

And it was the very first thing we booked as soon as it were available to book when Celebrity opened the excursions. The very first thing we booked before restaurants and anything. Yes, wanted to make sure you got it. So it was one that you'd built up since we knew we were going on the ship. I was so excited. Take it away. Oh goodness. So we were delayed arriving into the Azores. Yeah, because the weather had been a bit rough so we were about an hour away. So we got there in the afternoon, late afternoon.

Linzi & Mark (14:24.668)
I got my little bag ready with my swimwear and my towel to look at the hot springs, to go in the hot springs. And we were going to have a look, a wander around this where there was a thermal pool at this beautiful hotel, this resort. And I was like, I cannot wait for this. And then we were going to go and just tour the island and go up to a viewing point and everything. We were basically got to see...

Well, take it right back to the start, because when we got on the coach... Yes! So we was a coach of a 42 coach. We waited for 45 minutes because we were a 40, not a 42. But when one of the actual people on the coach, one of the guests counted, we did have 42 people. So we'd been sat there waiting for a 2. For 45 minutes. For people that didn't exist. All the other coaches had gone.

We were the last coach. We were on coach one and we were one of the first people to get off and get on the coach. So everyone were on and ready to go within a couple of minutes of the... They just counted on So yeah, so we sat there for 45 minutes. So by the time we'd set off, the sun had already started on its decline down. It had, it started getting... It wasn't dark. No, it wasn't dark. I would it was more dusk. More dusk. Wasn't a problem because we weren't leaving until 10 o 'clock at night. Yeah. So...

We weren't worried at all. Then we got to the beauty, we went through and it was still light so we could see things. And then we got to this hotel with my bag. And then the guy went, and there's the changing rooms and there's the water. I was like, oh, this is amazing. It looked dreamy. And there were other people in there. We could see the steam, it looked fantastic. But we're not going, you're not going in there. We're just going to have a tour around the gardens and we're going to go again. And I was like, what?

We're not getting in the water. And I sort of looked at the people and people were like, we're not getting in the water. Yeah. And other people had got their bags with them with swimming costumes. He's no, no, we're just going to go around and see the gardens. And we're like, OK. So we went around and , saw the gardens. And then we got to the where there was some some ladies losing some gents as well. I know. No, no, don't worry. Where we're going now, the next place, then they're nicer toilets. And it won't be as busy. And it won't be as busy.

Linzi & Mark (16:53.244)
So we were like, okay. So these were the other hot springs. We're like, oh, wonderful. Yeah. So we thought, oh, we must be going there then. In that water. Got there. Well, we carried on for a wander around the garden. Yeah. Got back on the bus. Yeah. Well, it actually separates off a little bit because you said, I really do need a wee. So you went into the bathroom. The guy decided he didn't want to wait for anyone that were going to do that and said, just catch me up. He went around the corner and the paths played out three different ways.

and turned straight away. So we got up and we weren't the last to catch up. And we're like, okay, we've no idea what you have. So we kept going and we're like, we could see a group ahead of us. I was like, all right, cool. So we joined that group. Wasn't our group. No. But we joined them and listened. And then we got back to the coach before the rest of our party. And then we were just waiting there for them. And a couple of others did the same as well, didn't they? Yeah. So I've been left there. So then we got back on the coach. And then he said, okay, so there's some nicer loos

Now the thing is, I didn't want to go into this because I didn't want to tell you, those loos were so, I didn't like them, so I couldn't really go. Well you did tell me at the time. Yeah, but I didn't want everybody else to know listening. So then they said, oh, we'll go to the ladies at the thing and I was like, oh, that's nice. Cause everybody needed to go at this point. When we got to the other hot springs and we were like, oh, this is lovely. It was closed. The loos were closed. They were all locked.

locked up because we were running late at that point. And they weren't hot springs you could get in. We passed all these beautiful looking resorts and hot spring sparklers. Signs all the way up. And then when we got there they were hot springs that were like geezers or geysers. And it was that sort of sulfuric smell. You could walk around them. It was like a little hot springs park and you couldn't get in There were various bits of water that you couldn't get in them. Oh no you definitely couldn't get You'd die. I can't qualify.

You would die. But it wasn't meant for getting in. You'd die. So again, swimming costumes stayed in the bag. Yes. So at that point then, not only are you, because you've walked around the first hot springs, needed the loo and can't go up, so there's water making noise everywhere. We've gone to the second one, where geese are splitting everywhere and water's Oh, the ladies look, everybody were pained. And you need that, not one another. So he then said, don't worry about it, we'll call at the bus station on the way out. Yeah.

Linzi & Mark (19:20.028)
I'll let you carry on with the story. So now the night, it's gone from day to night like that. It's absolutely pitch black. Absolutely pitch black. We pull up at the bus station. All the ladies get off. There is a ladies loo and a gents loo. The ladies loo didn't have any toilet roll in. So we were all like sharing tissues. Not the same tissue. But while we were queuing in the...

into the actual QT, user ladies, because as I say, there's only one. On the big screen in the bus station, they were playing. It wasn't a Chuck Norris movie, but it had that kind of 1980s ultra violent feel about it on a big screen. That you could see from the loo. No, that we could see from the queue. And then just the guy sat there watching it, looking at all these ladies, looking at this really violent.

movie. We were like, what is this? What is this? So then we got like, we all had to queue, the bus had to wait because there's only, oh, I feel that toilets do, and that's the thing. That's the thing thinking about it. We're only human. Yeah. They need to address this on excursions. Especially when you're a lady of a certain age. And going on.

bumpy excursions. I'm going on bumpy excursions. There's going to be a requirement for that. Let's do that basic housekeeping that we're only human and you might need a loo. You might need. Yeah. I feel that it's driven by that. We can now carry on from the excursion. So you've finally managed to go to a loo. We've been sat for the rest of us that didn't want to go to a loo or didn't need to go to the loo at that point. Well, you've got a camel's bladder. Yeah, we're fine. Plus I was just like, I'm not going into a bus station.

We then got back on the coach because we were going to go to the scenic sight Oh, I forgot to mention that the guys loo didn't have a door on. Oh, that's right. So anybody, any guys that went, they could look the violent movie or straight into where the guys were I just looked at my feet. I was losing at this point. So we're back on the coach again now. Yeah. And we had two more stops to do. There was a scenic stop.

Linzi & Mark (21:45.916)
and a town because we were meant to do them on the way out. Yeah. We were going to be going to the scenic town and then go to the scenic viewpoint on the way to the hot springs. Yeah. But because we were 45 minutes late, they changed it around a little bit. So tell us about the scenic viewpoint that we went to. So we were going up this road that was and I don't think I'm going to do it justice. It was misty.

There was creepy ass, oh I can't say that, creepy trees. Creepy trees like something from a fairy tale. At the side of the A dark fairy tale. A dark fairy tale as the bus kept just going up and up and up and up into darkness. And there were no one else on that road or No, there were no vehicles, no nothing. It was a single track. Then we got to what we think was the viewing point. The bus stopped. We all got off on the edge of a cliff. We did.

and we could kind of see the water. He could in the distance. He couldn't see anything else. And couldn't see anything else. Nothing else. Just pitch black. And by this point, we're all starting to lose it. Yeah, everyone's finding it very We're all starting to lose it. And then when we start going back down the mountain, I was going to say, the guy, the tour guide said, if you look to your left, I'm not going to tell you because you'll start laughing at me again. Well, he kept telling us up to that point. He's like...

And if you look on your right, you can see this power station and everyone just like, we literally can't see anything. It was so dark outside and all you could see from inside was the reflection of the coach. So you just couldn't see anything. The bit I was going to say that when we were coming back down from there, I went, well, that were first for me. I've been doing these for years. I've never been to here in the dark before. Honestly. So then we finished off by going to this picturesque town. It was picturesque. It was, it was completely shut

And we got there and again, at this point, some people were like, we're not getting off the coach. They pulled in, they went right, actually it was meant to be a guided tour. It wasn't guided. And we could see the other bus were getting a guided tour. Yeah, we could, which made it worse. I just went right, get off and have a wander. He didn't say it like that. He wasn't so Yorkshire about it. I translated that. Okay. And there were no guided bit. We just got off, wandered around this completely closed up town apart from it had one...

Linzi & Mark (24:09.884)
kind of like convenience store, off license type thing that were open. And then we just wandered around this little square and got back on our world. it so windy if you remember as well. It was almost freaky, the wind. It was, yeah. Yeah. Then we went back to there. So there's been, as you will gather, that's just three examples. We could make this podcast three hours long. We could just keep running through them all. This could be like a therapy podcast. Oh, let's do that. Just don't publish it anywhere. Just let us vent it.

and don't put anything out there. So I would like to say that there's lessons to be learned from this. But you just can't predict, can you? And the thing is, when you start looking at excursions, and they have gone really pricey now. Some of them crazy pricey. Really pricey. And it's like, do you... Are excursions, are they good value? I mean, we're talking about it and we can laugh about it now, but should you do them?

I think you should because you get into these places, some of the places, you may never go again. A lot of them are once in a lifetime opportunities for people. As much as occasionally we'll take some places for granted where we've been a couple of times and we'll then stay on the ship. Most people don't get to do a lot of these ports multiple times. No, but it has made us... It's made us study a lot more. We've watched so many YouTube videos. In terms of that. This is the next excursion we want. It's...

going to be this is where we want to do in it or via tour or whatever else you're looking at yeah we'll read reviews we'll watch videos and then only after we've done a lot of research and we go okay let's pump for that and even then something could go wrong they can go wrong it's just one of those things yeah it wouldn't stop me wanting to do excursions I like no but I feel we're very cautious now and we don't want it to over promise under the

Deliver like say we read a lot of reviews and we yeah, I'm watching lots and lots of YouTube videos but yeah, it's We like an excursion. It's just We don't want we don't be burned again. No, so we take you off where you look quite so sad You just like this is stupid excursions, okay, right change of let me have a drink have a little drink and

Linzi & Mark (26:35.792)
Oh that's good. Now you see this is... Nice little mimosa. Yeah I mean welcome me with a mimosa on my excursion. Would that make you happy every time? I'd be really happy. It's almost a nice clean loo Let's talk about some cruise news from this last couple of weeks since our last podcast and just our take on it. So you don't know what any of these news stories are? No. So I picked three. The first one I'm interested in is your take.

was news that came out the other day that on sun princess, which we have a vested interest in, have opened up and gone into a partnership on board with Diamonds International. I find this weird. Now, Diamonds International, for anyone who doesn't know, who hasn't been to a cruise port where there is a Diamonds International, which I think is most of the cruise ports in the Caribbean, they're a massive chain of...

jewelry stores and they're normally one of the first things you see when you get off a ship. Most of the cruise lines have some sort of partnership with them. They'll do the excursion, sort of shopping destination conversations and things before you go. And they'll be like, if you go in here, you get a free pendant and that kind of thing. All that sort of stuff. But there's not been one where it's been based on board a ship before. No, there hasn't. That's very new. I'm wondering where's the cheapest?

For example, I'm in the market for some diamond studs. Okay? No, but if I was, if I was, where is the best, do you get them on the ship? Are they going to be the best price or am I going to get off the ship? Bearing in mind sun princess is going over to the Caribbean and doing the Caribbean. It's not like she's going to places where there's not a diamonds international. Yeah. Then.

Um, where you best getting, yeah. Are they gonna, are they gonna sort of cheat themselves out of other things on land? And well, I guess you'll still get the same treatment where you go in and you get a drink and everything. But yeah, that's really, it just seemed quite a strange one for me when they announced this and it was only this last week when they've announced it. Yeah. The

Linzi & Mark (28:59.964)
Lots of them have a sort of relationship with ones like EFFY Bulgari, et cetera, et cetera. That's not that uncommon. Whereas that's more of a wholesaler type organization as opposed to a brand that you know of. Okay. Do you know what I mean? It's not like a Omega shop. Okay. Which might be in a different jewelers. Omega. But they're selling that brand Omega shop. Do you know what I mean? Omega. Yeah. It would just...

I was quite surprised by I think it'll probably be busier actually because we've gone past stores and they've had one or two people in tops. Oh, when you're in the port? In the ship, sorry. Yeah. On the ship. They're always busy. It'll be really interesting to see how it does sort of in its European sort of maiden with that and how it does in its Caribbean maiden and how it goes. I just thought it was quite an interesting little new store. The second one and there's two parts to this one. Yeah.

was Virgin Voyages announcement recently of canceling its 24 and 25. Oh in Australia. Australian season. Now the official sort of reasoning behind it is that the transit disruption in the Red Sea. Yeah. And so again, back up and down. So it's just had its first season there. Yeah. By all accounts been very successful. Obviously, I don't know financially how successful it was.

reviews wise it's done incredible well and we've spoken to some people who've been on it while it's been down there and were very excited for next year. We know people that were booked on some of the transits going back that way and that bit I get you know the ships not just virgin not going through there right now and that's just sensible but it was the fact that there are other ways to Australia, resilient lady's coming back from Australia back to Europe it's just going a different route.

I would have thought they could just go a different route and still go down there. So for me, it was just quite a strange decision to cancel that entire season. And I suspect there's more to it. I think you might be right. The reason being is their current campaign that they have at the minute are all featuring people from Australia. They all... Yeah, every time we see an advert. These have got an Australian accent. Yeah, which seems to like we've been sort of salt into it a little bit. Yeah, yeah. So I mean...

Linzi & Mark (31:17.34)
They've given people plenty of notice that it's not happening. It's not like three days before that they found out. I mean, who would do that? Nobody would do that, surely. But it's, I just found it quite strange that it were, there's clearly more to it and we probably never will find out. No, no. It was quite interesting. And not going to tell us. No, they might. Maybe Richard rings me up. Richard, just give me a call. He's not ringing you. No, he's not. And he definitely ain't going to tell me, is he? No. But they also put some other news out that as the tech nerd that I am, I found this quite interesting.

They've announced a new internet solution that they're going to be putting out on all three of the ships at the moment, fourth one when Brilliant comes out. Because at the moment they have Starlink. And if anyone looks you Starlink, you're it's brilliant. I've never looked at Starlink and thought, oh yeah. Nobody goes, oh no, not Starlink. No, goes, please be Starlink. On the cruise ship, yeah. But they've launching a new one called Pretty Fly for Wi -Fi.

Oh, I like that. They do come up with some great names. It looks like that's a combination of without getting too nerdy. So a low orbit and mid orbit using different technologies, something called SES cruise empowered plus Starlink and giving speeds for the ship of a fairly constant 1 .5 gigabit per second. Oh, you'll love that. Which in simple terms means you're going to better stream sort of YouTube. You better watch us online on the sea.

you'll be able to watch Netflix more constantly. You better upload stuff better. Oh, that's what you like. Which, you know, it's nice being able to download, but when you want to put a video up or something, you know, it's less ideal. But I thought that was quite interesting because if you think about Starlink generally, that's still new. Everyone's still rolling that out. Yeah. And this was the first one that I'd heard where they're now going...

What's next? Starlink Plus. Yeah, wow. So I'll be really interested to see. We're due on Resilient Lady in August. Yes. So hopefully they've got it by then and we can see what it's like. And report back. Yeah. And then the final piece of cruise news. There's a company and I have to admit I'd not come across this cruise line before then. They're mainly a river cruise company but they have one ocean cruise as well. Okay. Nicko or Nicko. N -I -C -K -O. Cruises. Okay. Have you heard them? No. No?

Linzi & Mark (33:39.58)
I think there are lots of small ones. And these predominantly have done river cruises, but they have a single ship called the Vasco da Gama. And apologies if I've spelt that wrong. But they're doing a cruise around the UK from the 8th to the 20th of August, which is a themed one. And we like themed cruise. You make it sound weird, but okay. We've looked at things like Star Trek and 80s and all that sort of stuff. Yeah.

but they're doing one and they did it last year apparently and I don't remember hearing anything about this but it was a crime themed cruise. Like a murder cruise? Yeah. So you know what? YouTube is going to hate this. If we put this on YouTube, this video is not going anywhere. Oh, I'm not talking about it in, it's a podcast anyway. But it does like crime quizzes, mystery things, meet and greets, but also...

things like film and TV discussions to discuss how real the detectives have been. Wow! I just thought, I couldn't decide if I thought it was brilliant. I think it is brilliant. I think it is. But is 17 nights too long for a themed cruise, which is why we're going with this. Because you think of most themed cruises like your 80s one or Star Trek cruise. Yeah, they're like between. They're generally seven nights. Well, the 80s one's about four. Yeah, because at the end of it, you've kind of themed out a bit.

Yeah. But also that it was around the UK. Well, there's a lot. And Ireland. Yeah, but I guess they can use a lot of terms of reference. You know, we've got a lot of history and novelists and crime that you can delve into if that's your thing. No, I guess that's very true. I'll bet it's not cheap. Well, I was trying to find the pricing.

Yeah, but they don't advertise the pricing online. So it's really pricey then. You have to get in touch with them. Yeah. They have a brochure. Yeah. They book through agents as well, but you've got to go on there. There's not just a list. Wow. But if I do find out, I will let people know. I bet that's so pricey. But I just thought it were really interesting. Yeah. And that brings us to the end of the podcast then. Well, thank you, darling. I hope you're still with us. Thank you for being part of my therapy session.

Linzi & Mark (35:56.764)
Let us know about your excursions and have a lovely day. Cheers, everyone.