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Help planning Transpacific Cruise


rkr
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Here is our plan for our once-in-a-lifetime trip to Australia and New Zealand.

Fly from east coast of US to west coast of US. Stay 3 days.

Fly to Hawaii and stay 1 or 2 weeks.

Fly to Sydney and stay 1 week.

Cruise Sydney to Sydney around Australia.

Cruise Sydney to New Zealand around New Zealand.

Then cruise Sydney to Hawaii with port stops in Bora Bora, Fiji and then

cruise to Seattle/Vancouver.

 

Is this feasible? What ships would do this?

I see Solistice does April 12 Australia to Hawaii and then

April 30 Hawaii to Vancouver. I am having trouble linking cruises. Any suggestions or website to help me?

 

Thank you for your help and support!

Kathy

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Linking cruises could be problem indeed.

 

Round Australia cruises are fairly rare but Princess usually has two a year, usually in September/October and March, and it typically takes 28 nights for that itinerary. These are the best times of year for that itinerary and you'll rarely see any outside of those times.

 

NZ cruising usually starts in October and goes through to March. February and March tend to have the most settled weather.

 

Sydney back to North America only happens when a cruise line is repositioning a ship back that way, and those cruises are always at the end of our summer season ie April, and typically depart before the March Round Australia cruises finish. Otherwise you might find a World Cruise sector going that way - unless you can find a suitable one of these it may be impossible to achieve what you want.

 

Essentially doing both the Round Australia cruise and the Transpacific may not be possible. At best you might have to do a couple of shorter coastal cruises for Australia - a Queensland one, and maybe one to Tasmania, or you might be lucky to find one that goes right across to Perth across the bottom of Australia during our summer. Also look at cruises that go up to Singapore or Indonesia - again, some World Cruises might have suitable sectors that will allow you to see more of the Australian coast.

Edited by OzKiwiJJ
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Do your tours of Australia and New Zealand have to be by cruise ship? Having traveled to both countries many times (and having lived in Australia for a few years), I would say that a cruise is a poor way to "see" either country. A cruise around Australia and NZ is fine if the purpose is the CRUISE and the sightseeing is secondary. But if the purpose of your trip is to actually see the sights, then you need to stay in the towns for more than a day (or two) and you need to travel away from the coast and into the interior to see some of the best each country has to offer.

 

Perhaps you can fly to Australia, do a guided or, even better, self-guided tour of Australia and New Zealand, and then do a transpacific cruise. It's unclear how much time you have for the Australia and NZ portion of your trip, but if you have 4 weeks, you could see some of the highlights of Australia (Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef area and Uluru are a popular combination) for 2 weeks followed by 2 weeks on the North and South Islands of NZ. If you have more time--all the better.

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You could link these cruises together:

1) Diamond Princess has a cruise around New Zealand leaving Sydney on March 10, 2018 and arriving back in Sydney on March 22, 2018.

2) Sea Princess has a 28 day cruise around Australia on March 24, 2018 and it arrives back in Sydney on April 21, 2018.

3) On April 22, 2018 Royal Caribbean Explorer of the Seas has a Transpacific from Sydney ending in Seattle on May 14, 2018. .

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We did the Celebrity Top End of Australia cruise from Perth to Sydney in 2013. It had an overnight in Bali that was the main draw, however, we lost three hours getting clearance in Bali because the locals wanted more payoffs. We had way too many sea days and the one really key port, Cairns, we missed some hours there due to a med evacuation. I think, if I was touring Australia again, I would skip the around Australia and do a land trip.

 

We are going back to Australia next April and doing a RCI Radiance of the Seas NZ cruise, then back to Sydney and after five days taking a TP from Sydney to Seattle with stops in islands like Fiji and in New Caledonia as well as Hawaii.

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We did the Celebrity Top End of Australia cruise from Perth to Sydney in 2013. It had an overnight in Bali that was the main draw, however, we lost three hours getting clearance in Bali because the locals wanted more payoffs. We had way too many sea days and the one really key port, Cairns, we missed some hours there due to a med evacuation. I think, if I was touring Australia again, I would skip the around Australia and do a land trip.

 

You might like to consider flights around Australia, with day trips (or car hire) from your favourite places. This is a great way to see Australia, without driving the long distances.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Repositioning cruises are the only way for a full TransPacific experience. In Sept 2016 I sailed from Seattle to Sydney & circumnavigated Australia with HAL and it was fantastic! There are loads of opportunities for snorkeling - just book a private tour and research on these boards or tripadvisor. It's true you don't get to "dive deep" into culture but I was able to experience most areas of OZ. Several of us went to Ularu for an additional week. I returned to the US Dec 1.

 

Next January-February I'm doing a reverse Trans-Pacific Sydney-SanDiego possibly departing in HNL and flying home from there.

 

HAL has cruises that are doing the HNL-Sydney route. Princess may be on that route as well.

 

Good luck with your travels and be prepared for major temp changes!

P.

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Before we booked our Royal Caribbean cruises for April 2018 (the first an 11 day NZ cruise and second a 23 day Transpacific from Sydney to Seattle), I researched Princess, NCL, Celebrity and RCI. I did not check HAL, due to their repulsive smoking policy, which HAL has changed.

 

Celebrity's prices were the highest, NCL did not have a transpacific and the NZ cruise just didn't fit my time line. RCI's prices were great. Princess was higher than RCI and closer to Celebrity in price.

 

We are planning several days in Melbourne prior to our first cruise (we have never been to Melbourne.

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Do your tours of Australia and New Zealand have to be by cruise ship? Having traveled to both countries many times (and having lived in Australia for a few years), I would say that a cruise is a poor way to "see" either country. A cruise around Australia and NZ is fine if the purpose is the CRUISE and the sightseeing is secondary. But if the purpose of your trip is to actually see the sights, then you need to stay in the towns for more than a day (or two) and you need to travel away from the coast and into the interior to see some of the best each country has to offer.

 

Perhaps you can fly to Australia, do a guided or, even better, self-guided tour of Australia and New Zealand, and then do a transpacific cruise. It's unclear how much time you have for the Australia and NZ portion of your trip, but if you have 4 weeks, you could see some of the highlights of Australia (Sydney, the Great Barrier Reef area and Uluru are a popular combination) for 2 weeks followed by 2 weeks on the North and South Islands of NZ. If you have more time--all the better.

I agree. The best way to see a new place is not via cruise ship, at least in most cases.

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