Booking a pre- or post- Australia tour

Hello,

Since it looks like Royal Caribbean doesn't have Cruise tours in Australia, can anyone tell me who they use for a tour company for a few days in Australia just to get a feel for Australia before leaving for a New Zealand cruise on the Ovation of the Seas?

Thank you.

Yes I would be interested in this as well...

I've always done Australia on my own finding private guides and small groups online or via hotel concierge. I'm not sure where your cruise leaves from (I've written many posts about Australia on PhilaTravelGirl blog)

Sydney - you can book tour of opera house online, take local ferry to Manly beach to get Harbour views on way to/from, BridgeClimb requires advanced booking (twilight is great time), the Hunter Valley is wine country and The Blue Mountains with Taronga Wildlife Park both has various vendors check out TripAdvisor or ask hotel concierge. Bondi Beach you can do hop on/hop off bus or local transit. Dinner at Park Hyatt has great views at night of Opera House.

if Melbourne, let me know or check out blog posts for a list of what to do/see

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Australia is a very big and spread out country so there isn't a lot of all over tour companies like you would find in say Europe. They do exist, but many are quite expensive and with many hours in a bus too. You could do a search for bus tours or multi day tours. It's probably easier though if you buy individual flights between the major cities and do shorter day trips from there. For eg if you stuck with the east coast, you could say fly into Melbourne (great cosmopolitan city), spend a couple of nights there, then jump on a flight up to cairns (great barrier reef), then down to Brisbane (Great river city and an hour from the Gold and Sunshine coasts for great beaches, Australia zoo and theme parks, etc) and then into Sydney. You could also start in Brisbane and do this in reverse still finishing in syd prior to the cruise. Gold and sunshine coasts also have their own airports linking to syd and melb, and many more from the Gold coast.

Guess we are really looking for a tour that would include a couple of days in the area of the Great Barrier Reef and another couple of days in the Ayers Rock area, before returning to Sydney before the cruise. Princess Cruises has these types of cruise tours, but we are trying to do the Royal Caribbean cruise and need the land portion.

Thank you.

The Great Barrier Reef is a long distance from Ayers Rock. Maybe choose one location and then enjoy time relaxing and exploring that region. Australia is a very large country.

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We noticed that Princess Cruises has this sort of pre-cruise tour, and now we're looking for something similar to do for 5 or 6 days prior to our cruise on Royal Caribbean. Royal Caribbean doesn't have cruise tours to offer, but we would like to see a bit of Australia as long as we're traveling this far for this trip.

There must be other companies that would do such a trip.

Thank you.

I think the issue is that they're so spread out that the market for that specific sort of tour is quite limited. And then from that small market, many just interested in those will piece it together themselves and may or may not book individual tours at each destination. Which means there likely isn't a market to operate it regularly.

So I'd suggest you have three choices:

- Full DIY

- Custom tour operators, who will be happy to do something like this, but will have a significant cost due to big distance and different locations

- As above, organise your own travel and then just book tours that appeal to your preferences at each location

Guess we are really looking for a tour that would include a couple of days in the area of the Great Barrier Reef and another couple of days in the Ayers Rock area, before returning to Sydney before the cruise. Princess Cruises has these types of cruise tours, but we are trying to do the Royal Caribbean cruise and need the land portion.

 

Thank you.

The two places you are wanting to see are not possible within 4 -5 days by land tour. They are thousands of klms apart. You would have to organise your own flights and hotels and then do small tours of Uluru and GBR. I think you can get direct flights from cairns to Alice springs (still a fair way from Uluru) but not sure about direct to a smaller airport near ayers rock itself. From Sydney you can fly to/from any of these airports.

Unless you really want to see ayers rock/Uluru, I wouldn't be too disappointed as most of us Australians have never seen it either for the simple fact it is hard and expensive to get to. Sure we all want to see it, but there are plenty of other special places to see too.

The best one I've found to see Australia in a short amount of time is via cruise ship. If you are interested you could do an Australian cruise prior to your New Zealand cruise.

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I've been to Ayers Rock and to the Great Barrier Reef and to be honest Ayers Rock and other areas near there are very good to see but if I had the opportunity I would choose to fly to Hamilton island. Spend 5 nights there and do tours out from there. Beautiful place but recently cyclone damaged (hope they have done their repairs)

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