Bluestar made an obvious presence during a very busy and important week in Southampton’s maritime history, as our Do the Docks Tour made a comeback for one week only.
This all started with the historic first and last meeting of the three Cunard liners on Tuesday 22 April, namely the QE2, Queen Victoria and Queen Mary, as they
converged on the Port Of Southampton. We were asked by ABP Southampton (the port’s owner) to provide an open-top vehicle for the occasion, and our friends at Go-Ahead’s London General company very kindly lent us everyone’s favourite bus, an open-top London Routemaster. Given that it was such a special occasion, hundreds turned out for the event, and such was the demand that an additional vehicle was required, and so one of our New Forest Tour buses was also ‘shipped’ in, providing some well-timed exposure for that Tour which starts on May 24.
New Forest Tour-livered Volvo B7 is posed next to the London General Routemaster, with the Queen May 2 as a dropback at Dock Head
Then, on the following weekend, the city held a special ‘Caribbean Festival’ which took place in Mayflower Park to coincide with the arrival of reputedly the World’s Biggest Cruise Liner – Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas. Again, we got by with a little more help from our friends; in this case, Southern Vectis, who provided us with ‘Island Breeezer’ open topper for the tours, which ran throughout the afternoons of both the Saturday and Sunday 26/27 April. Over the weekend, we carried around 350 people, which made the operation an overwhelming success. Although the Tour was well advertised on our buses and through flyers, we were certainly surprised in the most positive sense by the amount of people who turned out!
The Island Breezer open topper, full of happy travellers, is seen progressing around the Tour around the City Cruise Terminal, as The Indepedence of the Seas sits in the background.
Whilst the open-top buses were obviously the crowd puller, the people in our company made it all happen. Thanks and well done to our pilots consisting of the two ‘father and son’ teams of Steve and Reg Cuff, and Paul and Barry Dawson, who all gave up their time at very short notice, and sent all our customers away happy!
The Island Breezer open topper, full of happy travellers.
We are also indebted to the support of ABP, Southampton City Council and Business Southampton in making the week such a success.