OzKiwiJJ

Interesting. We have Group B for our 3rd Sept cruise and it's 11:30 to 12:00. I wonder why your one is different, a later expected arrival time maybe?

Boarding group D will probably be 12:30pm to 1pm. You can find it in Travel Checklist -> Personal Information, then Arrival and Departure Groupsvis under the Suggested section. Select your cruise and it will show the time as well as the group.

Every ship seems to have a weakness in the cuisine, just one or two items that are usually wonderful on other ships. When we were on Diamond the souffles were terrible - heavy and undercooked. On another ship it was the escargots. It sounds like onion soup might be Coral's weak spot. 😪

If you buy wine by the bottle you can share it with your mum. Buy the soft drink packages onboard, it will only take a few minutes.

True. I was disappointed with the onion soup when we went there. It was too heavy on the cheese topping, which made it taste greasy. The soup itself was nowhere near as good as it used to be, it seemed to be lacking in flavour although it had plenty of onions in it. Perhaps underseasoned.

I think it's slightly better than the old Sterling Steakhouse menu. There is more choice of appetisers, they don't charge extra for the steak tartare any more, and there is excellent lobster on the menu without a surcharge. Better desserts as well. I guess they decided that Australians wouldn't be interested in Creole and Cajun cuisine at all whereas I think some of the original menu items would have gone down well here. We are so used to cuisines from all over the world in our multicultural society and many people would happily try something different.

I think it's a shame they didn't leave a couple of the original menu items on the Coral menu - perhaps the Gumbo or the Jambalaya - to fit the theme of the restaurant. It's very much just a steakhouse menu. One other thing I noticed is they have structured the menu as a three course menu. The original Bayou menu is four course, and the Crown Grill / Sterling Steakhouse menus are also four course menus. It's a bit disappointing that they have downgraded the Australian experience. Thank goodness they haven't done something similar to Sabatinis, it's better than ever.

There are two Bayou Cafe menus on the Princess website. The one you looked at is the Island Princess one. This is the Coral Princess one:

Princess could still be restricting numbers on cruises. If they are operating to a capacity count they will still offer cabins in all categories so people have a choice of what cabin they want but once the capacity is filled the cruise will no longer show any cabins available. Plus I think there were a lot of cancellations (including us) after they cancelled the original 22nd August Queensland itinerary out of Sydney and replaced it with NSW coastal cruising. We're now doing the slightly shorter 3rd Sept cruise B2B with the 13th Sept cruise.

Since you're in Sydney for a few days I recommend going to Manly by ferry mid or late afternoon (depending on how much time you have) so you can enjoy the sights of the harbour by day, explore Manly and have dinner at one of the many restaurants. Head back on the ferry once it gets dark to enjoy the harbour at night. Do something similar for Watson's Bay as if you time it right you will be able to watch the sunset over the harbour while dining at Doyles or the pub.

The one I was thinking of, to the lighthouse, is about 1.5km each way from the ferry terminal via Camp Cove beach. There is a much longer walk in the other direction which MMDown Under mentioned.

Manly. It's an easy walk from the harbourside wharf and beach to the ocean beach.Also there is a lovely walk from the southern side of the ocean beach around to Shelly Beach. There are plenty of shops for browsing, plus a wide range of cafes and restaurants to suit all tastes and budgets. Watsons Bay has a nice clifftop walk but is very limited apart from that.

You're welcome. 😊

@Jean C Type @ then start typing the name. It will start to show a list of members with starting with the first letter(s) and refining the list as you add more letters. When you find the right one click on it. For your forum name I had to type it in full.

It looks like it's about a four minute walk to Great Adventures.

She's docking at the Cairns cruise terminal. I looked it up on the ports schedule. https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/os-data-2/portsnorth-com-au/listingforms/page612/cruise_schedule_-_2022.pdf

Or a cruise from Brisbane to Airlie Beach. The distances between popular ports in Australia are so big that short cruises don't offer much, especially ones that start and finish at the same port.

At the OPT it was situated just after the security screening. I'll check if it's still there on the 3rd Sept.

We'll probably do share tables most nights on our 3rd Sept cruise as we don't have Club Class for that one. But it depends on our mood, sometimes we just want a quiet dinner for two. That's the beauty of non-traditional dining, you have that choice.

We've been trying to do Round Australia for a while. We had a couple cancelled on us, then a move-over to the early 2024 one but that didn't suit us so we switched to the October 2023 one, so we embark when you disembark from your Hawaii/Tahiti cruise.

Sorry, Jean, we'd love to cruise with you but we did Hawaii/Tahiti in 2019 so have to tick off a couple more big cruises, including a world cruise, before we do Hawaii/Tahiti again. We're doing the Round Australia cruise in Oct 2023 so might cross paths with Irene & Frank as they disembark.

Yes but you have to carry the carton onboard and will get charged corkage on all bottles except two.

According to Google Maps Vintage Cellars is across the road (York St) and half a block south.

Yes, that will do as an cheap option! 🤣🤣🤣

Once there are more apartments in that area the bottle stores will appear.