Cruise_me_Crazy

I like the idea of a multi trip policy, but when I read the cruise insurance policies they are more suited to what we want insurance for.

Is anyone aware of companies offering multi cruise insurance policies?? :)

If you can be bothered, this is worth a read.

http://www.canstar.com.au/travel-insurance/

:)

I did however take the opportunity to buy a bit more OBC for our Nov Solstice trip. They are offering it at parity. I have seen this on other Celebrity threads and it seems a very good deal, you buy $25 OBC for $25 aussie. We will be trying this for the first time ourselves, but others say you get $25 US for your $25 Aus.

Hmmmmm. Worth looking into. Great pick up :). Thanks.

WOW....do people still use travellers cheques?

They were tha bomb in the old days!!! :D

:D I just think orange (preferably brown;) ) dimples looks better than white dimples!!! Of cause not having dimples at all would be better again, but if enjoy my meals too much for that to be a reality!!:p

i think i know who the op (troll) is.

 

He is wayne kerr.

:d lol!

idiot!

Now I am agreeing with you ;)

:D Yes I know what you mean! We only seem to have wine with lunch when on holidays..... :rolleyes:. Funnily enough a toasted ham n cheese toastie with a yoghurt doesn't cut it!!!! although the budget would approve!!!

But those prices were available for Aussies, just through a US TA and in USD. If you can wait for last minute sales, there are some great bargains to be had. We recently sailed for $68 AUD per night per person (taxes, fees and gratuities included) out of Sydney.

Righto, that's a challenge. Gotta find me one of these bargains! :)

Also. We shop predominately at woollies. Buy our grog here at Dans. Seriously looking at a woolworths credit card that will give us 2x points (qantas) per dollar spend. We would average $250 pw, so that's 500 points pw towards airfares. We currently pay via eftpos, no biggie to pay on CC then transfer $ across. Apart from anual fee, we will get some serious free flights from this change of habit.

Are you able to explore this type of "savings" as an option? :)

We are planning on a big one that will require us to save. I am not sure what to set my saving goal as so I thought i'd ask around here. There will be three of us, two adults and one child travelling.

 

 

The cruise is in Europe so we want to fly to London have three nights in London, four nights in Paris, three nights in Barcelona then get on the cruise which is 24 nights on a Holland America ship (The cruise itself is priced at around $11,000 for all of us but I am hoping the price will drop and we may get it for around $9,500) Then when we disembark in Venice we want to head to Florence for three nights with a visit to Cinque Terre then Rome for five nights before heading home.

 

This is the itinerary:

 

Sun Sep 13 Barcelona, Spain 4:00pm

Mon Sep 14 St. Tropez, France Noon 11:00pm

Tue Sep 15 Monte Carlo, Monaco 8:00am 6:00pm

Wed Sep 16 Florence / Pisa (Livorno), Italy 7:00am 7:00pm

Thu Sep 17 Rome (Civitavecchia), Italy 7:00am 7:00pm

Fri Sep 18 Naples (Capri), Italy 8:00am 6:00pm

Sat Sep 19 Strait Of Messina (Cruising)

Sat Sep 19 Taormina (Giardini Naxos), Sicily, Italy 10:00am 11:00pm

Sun Sep 20 At Sea

Mon Sep 21 Corfu, Greece 8:00am 5:00pm

Tue Sep 22 Dubrovnik, Croatia 9:00am 11:59pm

Wed Sep 23 Kotor, Montenegro 8:00am 2:00pm

Thu Sep 24 Venice, Italy 1:00pm

Fri Sep 25 Venice, Italy 4:00pm

Sat Sep 26 At Sea

Sun Sep 27 Olympia (Katakolon), Greece 8:00am 3:00pm

Mon Sep 28 Athens (Piraeus), Greece 8:00am 5:00pm

Tue Sep 29 The Dardanelles (Cruising)

Tue Sep 29 Istanbul, Turkey 4:00pm

Wed Sep 30 Istanbul, Turkey 4:00pm

Thu Oct 1 Lesbos (Mytilene), Greece 11:00am 6:00pm

Fri Oct 2 Ephesus / Kusadasi, Turkey 7:00am 7:00pm

Sat Oct 3 Santorini, Greece 7:00am 4:00pm

Sun Oct 4 Argostoli, Greece Noon 6:00pm

Mon Oct 5 At Sea

Tue Oct 6 Venice, Italy 1:00pm

Wed Oct 7 Venice, Italy Disembark

 

We haven't been to Europe so we are not sure what the costs of things will be and I guess we have to consider costs of tours, flights, transfers, hotels and food. My best guess at this stage would be around $30,000. What do you think?

Great question.

We in Europe Oct / Nov this year. I think it depends on a few things.

Apartments can work out cheaper, allow you to do laundry, meals etc at home.

Private transfers v shuttles / public transport. I have been told that train travel in Europe is very economical & cheaper than flying...

How extravagant are you?? ie wine with lunch, cooked v light snacks for some meals?

Sometimes Seniors get better rate. I dunno why they should do.

*snorts*

It's them oldies AGAIN icat, getting all the bargains, infiltrating Carnival, taking over the cruises, raising the medium cruising age and making carny workers a living misery..... ;) :rolleyes: it's just so unfair!!:D

Why is it for a different demographic?:confused:

I meant region. Ie US. :). They regularly talk about cruising for $50 pp pday.....

Guessing you mean flight map?

 

There's nothing given to show your planned route publically, it's only internal to the airline.

 

However, you can check past routes of that flight by some tracking sites. But only where there is tracking information e.g. some land and over large sea areas typically won't be covered. For example, http://www.flightradar24.com/

Yes yes. Shikes to auto correct! :) thanks for the link!

Are you a journalist per chance?:rolleyes:

Journo, pollie, public servant..... Depends which voice you are talking to!! :D:p!

Not long until the 20th!

:) have a great time!

Using lies and statistics are you a pollie.:eek:

Close..... A public servant like your good self ;) :p

We did a canary island land cruise where Lazorte (spelling?) Was our stop. The two cruises prior couldn't port due to wind so the evening before we were notified that we would port somewhere else-Tenerife also in the Canary islands. Subsequent cruises had the ports changed on their itinerary. They had three tours listed available with very brief information on a one page list. I had assumed the port would be cancelled so the change was a nice surprise though the tour time was very short, I think 8am-2pm.

 

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We have a stop in Teneriffe. Any advise? It is our last before the 6 sea days so do not want anything too adventurous! :)

What ship are you on?

 

There is a city glider that zips about the city, but not really what I would recommend.

 

here is a link to translink, that runs the public transport in Brissy. This includes, buses, trains and the ferrys (river cats etc)

 

http://translink.com.au/

 

I live in brissy, happy to help with any suggestions.

 

Cheers Kate

Free bus link as referred to above:

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-transport/public-transport/buses/city-centre-free-loops

Free ferry info:

http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-transport/public-transport/citycat-ferry-services/cityhopper

Hope this helps :)

Our thoughts on booking our upcoming first cruise were that we want to cruise, the ports are secondary, which is why we chose a South Pacific cruise over a NZ cruise - more sea days.

 

We've both been to Fiji before, and I've been to Noumea, so it wouldn't bother us if the itinerary was changed. I might feel differently if it was a Mediterranean cruise though.

 

However my feelings are that if you want to really see a place, it's better to travel there separately from a cruise, or perhaps just prior to or after a cruise, just in case the itinerary is changed. It's just too hard to get a feel for a city or region from just a few hours.

 

We've done a few luxury rail trips, essentially rail "cruising", and a Rhine cruise, so have had experience of excursions similar to those provided by the cruise lines. Those excursions just whet the appetite.

Apart from getting spray tan advise :p would love to hear more about your Rhine cruise!! Which means btw, YOU HAVE cruised before!! OMG you are "qualified" to discuss spray tanning n rub in fake tans :eek: ;) !!!!

Seriously though, a European river cruise us on our bucket list!:)

Thanks for all the replies! Okay, now it makes sense - I was worried that we might be ripped off a whole day!:eek:

 

 

"We did a dodgy little bus tour. $25 au p.p. Fantastic. Loved it. Totally got to see the church, caves, prison some beaches and beautiful graves areas as well as local sports fields n schools / villages etc. it was the only one to catch and left about midday. Recommend it!"

 

 

Awesome Cruise_me_Crazy!! This is EXACTLY what I want to do!! And you have guessed correctly - it is my first one (well I went on one 22 years ago but that's so long ago, it doesn't count!)

 

iCat2000 - I believe we are on the same cruise. I'm sure we will cross paths at some point, probably the meet & greet.

 

Fingers crossed that we have calm seas and are able to get to all the ports!

Lovely to hear back from you :)

The tour was 4 hours approx. just a walk up deal! No pre bookings. Classic 3rd world operator. But quaint. We loved it. Some of our best photos were from I of P, but I know other travellers didn't think highly of the place. The tour had a big cardboard sheet with photos stuck to it touting the stops!! That was their banner!!

Basically u arrive via tender (ours was pretty rough - peeps banging heads on stuff due to the rolling swell, sea sickness n some sea dogs realising they were not as salty as they thought they were ;)) step onto a pontoon / jetty with a big grassed area full of markets. They all accepted au $. No bargains n crapola you'd expect from our dollar shops:(. I was looking, keen as to get something but just couldn't find anything that I wanted for a reasonable price.

We knew there was a prison ruin to see but it was a hike as was the church. Neither were spectacular, and had we marched about in the hot sun would have been less than impressed for our efforts.

The caves and pretty beach area w graves of 1st European settlers were much better and very photogenic.

We figured $50 to toddle about was worth the money! Only a few cabs on the island & no real private tours. I'd suggest the bus we were on was moonlighting / fundraising and a school bus in it's normal form. :)

Today I was looking at Cruise Critic for information on Dunedin. We are taking the Sea Princess on October 13th and Dunedin is one of the ports.

 

Look at what I stumbled on:

 

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=113316

 

I normally cruise Celebrity and our Princess cruise in October will be our first time on Princess. I will say that we booked her for October 17th out of Sydney and they cancelled that sailing. Their attitude about the inconvenience I experience was poor. We are sailing Century from San Francisco to Sydney and had already made reservations to fly home on October 31st with Qantas. In order to redeem my desire to see NZ for the first time, we now had to fly to Brisbane (extra cost and time). Princess could not care less about this.

Such a shame.

They spend so much in advertising when treating their current customers could reap just as much income long term.

Oooops. Now I need to come back n ask a serious question :o.

If I am flying Bris Dubai Rome, does anyone have any advice where I view a flight nap pre departure??? Are there any websites? :confused:

Some great points being made and some excellent offers of sharing the couch and eating my popcorn.

We should all bring some popcorn, do some people watching and then and conduct straw polls on the ship's demographics when we do our next cruises and have aspreadsheet where we can statistically report that cruiseline A is much older than cruiseline B and cruiseline C is only younger when doing cruises under 7 nights, etc.:D

Oh absolutely.

Put me down as a research assistant. I'll be busy milling about, chatting, drinking & eating with all types whilst on board. I may get a little distracted with the wines & enjoying myself with a cross demographic of pax including age, gender and race, but I will do my best to report accurately.

Of cause if I miss any real data, I can just make it up & return here to cite it as fact! It has worked for the OP, so I'm sure I'll be able to pull it off!!! :D:p

It can change altogether. Our last cruise with Carnival was supposed to be a South Pacific cruise, but due to weather ended up being a Fiji cruise. Some (like us) were happy as we had never been to Fiji, others that had been to Fiji many times and never been to the South Pacific were very upset. One poor couple had their wedding planned in Port Vila and their family had flown there etc, etc. Our only inconvenience was that we had booked and paid for a private car in Port Vila (which we couldn't recoup) and we had changed money that we then couldn't use and had to change back when we got home. In my opinion a cruise with beautiful weather (which we got) is better than any cruise with horrible weather (which we would have had).

Great way to think about it :) makes our complete lack of prior planning (due to disorganisation & procrastination) seem well justified when you raise issues like that!!!:D

It might have been USD pre taxes and fees.:D

Hmmmmm. Still not a bad price. :)

But knowing that there are bigger bargains for a different demographic is pretty frustrating :(.