Brittany Ferries last Monday

[Thumper]

Was anyone else on the Mont St Michel last Monday afternoon, January 2nd, on the return trip from Caen to Portsmouth?

We've been regulars on the Portsmouth-Caen (or Le Havre in the P&O days) crossings for fifteen years or so, and that trip on Monday was one of the worst experiences of my life! To put it bluntly, the ship was grossly overcrowded, and neither the staff nor the on-board facilities could cope. Aside from the simple safety concerns - I doubt for one moment that there were enough lifeboat spaces to cater for all those people - it was just Hell on Water.

There were not enough seats for everyone to sit down, and people were forced to resort to sitting/lying on the floors in corridors and around the stairwells. The queue for the self-service restaurant was over an hour long and when you finally got to the counter, many of the options had run out. I believe the final choice was chips with a selection of sauces! The main a la carte restaurant was almost as bad, and started turning people away within an hour of boarding. That being the case, can anyone explain why the snack/coffee bar restaurant on the top deck was closed for the entire duration of the voyage? Even the drinks bar ran out of crisps and peanuts.

Surely  BF must have knowledge of the total number of passengers sufficiently in advance of sailing to be able to anticipate demand for such things? Perhaps they cram as many vehicles into the car decks as space allows and don't bother to account for how many people each car contains. Either way, they did themselves no favours on Monday. The service was a disgrace.

[Martin963]

Sorry you had such a bad experience,  but you've just reminded me why I haven't travelled with BF for over five years now.  Of course they want their boats full,  it makes them more money, and as long as no-one falls overboard I expect they're happy.

Sorry to sound so cynical,  but living in Devon and seeing how all their fares now amount to licensed banditry (and being forced to travel via Dover as a result) hardly makes me BF's greatest fan.  

The rot set in when they stopped publishing their fare structures;  I stopped using them soon after that.

[Thorpe]

We were on the Bretagne from St Malo to Portsmouth and experienced the same conditions. The situation got so bad that the computerised tills failed and crashed the computer resulting in incredible queues. Hid in our cabin for respite from the maddening crowds!

Thankfully we were one of the first to disembark!

[Pixietoadstool]

We were on the Normandie - 10 a.m. out of Cherbourg on Monday - 2200 passengers and 600 cars apparently.  Thank goodness we booked early enough to get our free 4 berth cabin (owners' club) - all the seats were taken but thank God for my mother in law who got us onto the boat earlier than usual since she is slightly disabled and needed to be near a lift.  We went straight to the main restaurant and had excellent service - unlike the enormous queue of people who came after us who couldn't even be sat down at the vacant tables  for some strange BF reason - maybe they were worried they couldn't replenish the buffet quick enough.

However, I think this ship was adequately staffed - I have never had to wait such a short time at the snack bar on the 9th deck and there was a great deal of choice still available even just before we docked.  We got off quickly too - helped by the large numbers of immigration officers at Portsmouth - we moved more quickly through the last bit than ever before!!

I think we were exceptionally lucky.  What surprises me is how busy it was - we always come back at the last possible moment after Christmas and have never seen such conditions before - our sixth trip back at New Year.

Valerie

[Will]

My experience on Tuesday afternoon from Caen was the same as Pixietoadstool's, on the same ship. The truck decks were being used for car passengers, first time I have ever seen the hoistable decks on the lower level in use. No problems though. The only minor gripe was that the ferry was a bit late leaving, due to time spent loading, and quite a bit later arriving. The official excuse was 'fog' but as the lights on the Isle of Wight and the Portsmouth coastline were clearly visible that didn't really wash. 

If fares really were extortionate (which I certainly didn't find on that crossing, despite booking only a few days before) I don't see how the ships could be as popular as that. It would certainly have cost me more than the price difference each way to get to and from Boulogne and Dover, let alone wear and tear, hassle etc.

I don't know why Christmas in France 2005 was so popular. As just about everybody in the restaurant seemed to be using discount cards, maybe everybody who is going to have a holiday home in France has now bought one, and felt duty-bound to use it over the season?

I can assure everybody that the combined lifeboat and liferaft capacity is more than adequate on all cross channel ferries operating in UK waters.