I wandered over to Belgium yesterday in my car and went Dover Calais on the Spirit.
Having been across countless times on most of the old P&O tubs that rattle their way across I was quite interested to see what the new one was like.
Loading seemed to take a long time for the cars as everthing goes over the same linkspan then the cars up the wing ramps onto the upper deck. I was one of the last cars to go on and they were taking cars up one at a time then reversing us back past the top of the ramp. There was an Audi that had been stuck between in gap between the lift and the stairwell IIRC in a space not much longer than itself. The front of the car deck has a half circle arrangement for parking where you have to loop back round and do another u turn for the down ramp.
For car drivers it seems like a step backward, the queue for the restaurant was huge (OK it was busy) but the food was decent and expensive if you didn’t have the half price voucher. The shop was rammed with people for most of the crossing and general riff raff drivers like me are pretty much confined to one deck plus the food court.
Looking at the plan on the wall the truck drivers seem to have done well with a very large area. Is it better than the older ships for a truck driver?
Out of interest do you have to have a ticket or pass to enter the commercial drivers bit or just a greasy hi viz?
Truckers area is fine, plenty of showers, admission is with a ticket, you scan the bar code on a machine outside the restaurant door, although nine times out of ten it’s broken and they just leave the door open. Even if it worked you could just tailgate the eastern European in front of you after he had scanned his ticket.
The Spirit of Britain is likely to be going “off-service” soon though, it has vibration problems caused by the main bearing (this is also why the Spirit of France, which was due to start service in October has not arrived yet).
It’s a huge boat, when you are waiting at Calais for the trucks to come off, they just never seem to stop coming.
I think it’s a brilliant boat. Drivers area is fantastic and it’s great never having to wait for a shower, plus they are nice and clean not like the skanky old things on a lot of the other boats
Seems like my thoughts were right then, for once something that has been improved for the commercial drivers rather than the car drivers. It wasn’t a bad experience, I just couldn’t see that it was massively better than the older ships.
8wheels:
Seems like my thoughts were right then, for once something that has been improved for the commercial drivers rather than the car drivers. It wasn’t a bad experience, I just couldn’t see that it was massively better than the older ships.
I do think the drivers area is a great improvement on what went before, I doubt that the rest of the ship is far different just cleaner and bigger, I think the main thing for P&O is a couple of new bigger ships are cheaper to operate than a few old smaller ones. I should think once both are up and running they’ll have fewer sailing per day, so longer loading and unloading times aren’t such a big deal, of course if you’re in a hurry then there is a tunnel.
Don’t know anything about the half price vouchers!
The price is the same as the others. And from my experience. You can’t help yourself to chips, they are served to you.
I had a surly young woman tut when I asked for more. But I am a greedy barstool.
The toillet seats were broken 2 weeks after the official launch. Possibly due to fat fools squatting on them. But not been on it in ages…(or likely to be soon!)
bigvern1:
Don’t know anything about the half price vouchers!
The price is the same as the others. And from my experience. You can’t help yourself to chips, they are served to you.
I had a surly young woman tut when I asked for more. But I am a greedy barstool.
The toillet seats were broken 2 weeks after the official launch. Possibly due to fat fools squatting on them. But not been on it in ages…(or likely to be soon!)
The half price voucher is given with the freight ticket.
I had a half price meal ticket and a ticket for a box of free wine, was part of the day return car +7 pax for £29 deal.
Another question, when you go as freight are you booked on a certain sailing or just turn up and wait on standby. Saturday morning was heaving with traffic, trucks everywhere.
8wheels:
Another question, when you go as freight are you booked on a certain sailing or just turn up and wait on standby. Saturday morning was heaving with traffic, trucks everywhere.
You are booked for a certain date (or the day after) and when you turn up you are just put on the next available crossing, it can be a bit slow during school holidays because they give priority to tourist traffic then, but in general I would say that from booking on at the booths you would expect to be driving onto a ferry between 30 and 90 minutes afterwards.
I believe that waiting times are a bit longer than normal at the moment though because of Sea France being down.
Thought it might be something of the sort, my only commercial ferry experience is the Woolwich and the IOW where I was always allocated a booking time, but usually I could get on an earlier ferry if needed unless it was busy or I was carrying fuel.
8wheels:
Thought it might be something of the sort, my only commercial ferry experience is the Woolwich and the IOW where I was always allocated a booking time, but usually I could get on an earlier ferry if needed unless it was busy or I was carrying fuel.
There aren’t booking times on the short sea crossings, though you do have them on the longer south coast ferries out of Portsmouth, Poole etc and on the east coast ferries, Harwich, Hull, Purfleet etc
We had an account and turned up without booking. Then got on the next available.