OzKiwiJJ

We're making very good progress towards Fremantle. We're about halfway across the Great Australian Bight, cruising through relatively benign seas. We had our first formal night last night. Most people made an effort to dress up but there were a few exceptions. We were going to go to the show (Encore) but dinner service was a bit slow so we decided not to bother. The change to 9pm for the second show is just a bit too early for us.

The sake museum in Kobe has a wonderful Yuzu sake. It goes really well with fish - we brought a bottle home with us last year.

How close to the sail date was she trying to book? Some itineraries book out well in advance and then there may only be guarantee cabins available. Or if she clicked the wrong button at the start of the booking ie "Allow Princess to choose" rather than "Choose my own cabin" she wouldn't have been given the option to choose a cabin.

I wish they'd put it on the Australian Plus list. There is no straight Shiraz at all on that list. They have it on board Coral at the moment but only by the bottle.

On the Australian Plus wine list four of those wines are normally sold in retail outlets in 4 litre casks(boxes) for aroun AU$20 per cask. The winery usually only sells the bottled version, under the Willowglen label, to function centres and (now) cruise lines.

True in that respect. Something has changed in the editor used here and it keeps changing words on me. It's annoying.

Why would I ruin a good creme brulee with ice cream? Especially Princess ice cream which is very ordinary.

Exactly! So far the meals have been very good. I had one of the best cream brulees ever last night. Coconut flavoured, which made it a bit more interesting, and the brulee topping was perfect - dark and super-crunchy

We're noticing some slight motion - just enough to let us know we're on a ship. Hopefully it will stay that way. 😊

Yes, every sea day but I think they are breaking it into sectors so after Dover it starts from scratch again. At the moment it's at 12:15 but for some of the days it will be mid-afternoon so we won't go to those as we'll be basking in the Sanctuary. However if they have Dover to NY as a sector we'll go to all of those as we're not planning to go to the Sanctuary much on that part of the cruise.

What they've done is actually illegal - increasing the price after something has been paid for.

Other than the excursion price hassle and the crappy tea we've had a good day. We did well in morning trivia, not so well in progressive trivia but the question were harder. I was relieved to discover that Coral hasn't, so far, switched to the new style lunch menu currently in use on Majestic. That one is more American Diner than Luncheon in the MDR, which would have become very boring on a cruise of this length. Today it was the traditional style lunch menu with plenty of choices.

I am NOT HAPPY again! We just spent the whole afternoon trying to sort out the expected discrepancy in the shore excursion prices charges to our folio. The person we spoke to, after waiting 45 minutes in a queue, told us we had to provide copies of the emails Princess sent us confirming our excursion bookings but the only emails we received at that time showed only confirmation of the credit card payment, not the actual excursion bookings. However I had noted the price of each excursion as we booked it in my spreadsheet. I tried to forward the payment confirmation email to Princess with some added information but the email isn't going through. Grrrr! Edit: the problem appears to be with Optus! I managed to send it via my gmail account. I guess we'll end up spending more time sorting it out. The overall discrepancy is $840! Not peanuts!!!

Why? I already have 250 teabags with me. At two a day that should last the whole cruise, with a few extra for days when we have lunch in the buffet and I want a cup of tea there. However if I have been drinking more tea than expected then I can decide whether to buy more.

I have 250 teabags of my favourite Dilmah Ceylon Supreme tea with me. Based on our Japan cruise on Diamond last November I was prepared for a shortage of Twinings E.B. but I didn't expect them to replace it with rubbish tea. If it looks like I'm using more than expected of my Dilmah I'll buy some Twinings in Dover.

Possibly but the Hawaii/Tahiti cruise just before the world cruise had the later times and the demographic isn't much different on that one.

I haven't checked the buffet but they usually have the best tea in the MDRs so I doubt there will be any Twinings English Breakfast tea on the ship at all. I think Princess have been having supply issues with Twinings as the buffet ran out on Diamond in Japan last year, and Holland America had low supplies Xmas 2022.

Good morning all. The seas calmed down after a couple of hours so we had a comfortable night. As usual I didn't sleep well as it always takes me a night or two to get used to the Princess bed. It's very comfortable but has a totally different feel to our bed at home. But I am NOT HAPPY! I asked for English Breakfast tea in the MDR at breakfast. What came was Pickwicks English tea which is actually worse than Lipton's. It was very bland with a strange backtaste. Thank Goodness I packed a good supply of my favourite Dilmah tea. On the bright side Good Spirits has excellent espresso still so we're happy with that. Trivia is next on our schedule, at 10am. They seem to be running things a bit earlier than on previous cruises - 10am instead of 10:30am for morning trivia, 7pm and 9pm for theatre shows instead of 7:30pm and 9:30pm. We're also going to see what the progressive trivia is all about. That's at 12:15 so we'll be having a late lunch

Late harvest is different to a true ice wine. Both are "stickies" but the sugar levels are different. Ice wines aren't common in Australia but you get the odd one in NZ, mainly from Central Otago.

Princess have Live Chat and I can't see why you couldn't book a cruise through that. It's not much different than phoning Princess to book.

What type of cabin did you book? The lead in fares are always the lowest category of cabin ie inside cabins and increase for each cabin class, quite significantly in some cases

We missed sailaway - we were so tired we just went straight into dinner. Apparently we're going to be going through 5-6 metre seas tonight. It's definitely getting a bit bouncy. Hopefully it will rock me to sleep.

Most cruise lines quote their fares per person. Usually there is a notation close to the fare stating it is per person, and for Australian cruise that it has port fees and taxes included in the quoted fare e.g. How did you find out about the cruise?

We put on a lowish bid for an upgrade to a mini-suite and were lucky. 😊 Just as well - we've got far too much stuff with us. We've just had a coffee in Good Spirits, they've got nice new chairs there.

The only "household" chores we'll be doing is keeping our cabin tidy and putting out our laundry each night. 😊