OzKiwiJJ

So sorry to hear the sad news about Lynn's mother. My condolences to you both.

I just look at the cruise on the Princess website. By starting a dummy booking you can easily see what is sold out, what is guarantee and, if you're lucky, some cabins that are available to select.

I don't think you'll get great views from the White Bay wharf. I think there is usually one or two firework barges on the western side of the harbour bridge but the view may be partially blocked, plus you won't see the bridge special effects which I think are only visible from vantage points on the eastern side of the bridge. I would be somewhat surprised if Azamara hadn't organized something for NYE if they are in Sydney that night.

They usually block cruise ships from docking at the OPT on NYE, and also possibly from anchoring at Athol Buoy. Essentially the Sydney fireworks display operates from barges in several places within the harbour so they keep ships well away from them.

If you don't find anything at Victoria Market you should be able find something in either David Jones, Myer or Strandbags in Bourke St Mall in Melbourne. In Auckland I suggest going to the 277 Mall in Newmarket. You can get the train to Newmarket from Britomart station - it's the next stop I think. 277 is a fairly big mall so you should find something there. Otherwise there are probably shops in Queen St that will have tote bags.

She might have to see a local GP to get an insulin script filled here. If that's the case I suggest she gets a letter from her GP that she can give to a Sydney GP.

Congratulations. Keep your fingers crossed for me. I put in a bid for an upgrade to a mini-suite for our upcoming world cruise. 🤞

As long as their system is working! We got caught last November when they were having system issues. We were in the queue for at least an hour, with two system reboots, before we both got through! We were flying business class but they gave up trying to prioritise business class passengers in the end. Luckily we'd arrived at the airport fairly early as we just had enough time to duck into the lounge for a comfort stop and a drink of water before we had to board our flight.

Even on Princess it can vary. We've had at least one Princess cruise, maybe two or three (I've lost count), where the cabin decks were closed off at the lift foyers until at least 1pm. On all the rest of our Princess cruises we were able to drop our carry-ons in our cabin as soon as we boarded.

Unless disembarkation of the previous cruise was delayed for any reason then turning up around 11 - 11:30am usually works well. The medallion check-ins are very quick and the OPT staff are very efficient. Have a great cruise.

We've stayed in the apartments opposite the Hilton. No cruise ships on one side. We were very lucky one year. Although we hadn't realised it when we booked one of the days we were there was the start of the next leg of the round the world yacht race. We had prime positions for the start! They are very nice 1br apartments. We were very sad they were fully booked last time we were in Auckland.

If you ever stay in the Hilton in Auckland that's something you have to be careful of if your room faces to the east. That side of Princes Wharf is the second cruise terminal.

🙄🙄🙄

But if you booked after Dec 2022 you would have been booking under the new conditions so wouldn't be eligible for the OBC surely?

I gently push the crouton down into the soup until it softens, then it's easy to eat.

In some parts of the world things like rubbish bins, sheds, and rail lines, and many other commonplace things that you might class as boring, add to overall effect of the photo. I have no objection to people using stock photos but only if they are of places they have been to.

It really depends on what other drinks you have ie coffee, bottled water, cocktails, beers, spirits or liqueurs. Also remember the Plus package also includes internet which has just gone up in price. Sorry but I'm not sure what the new price is but that reduces the drinks daily value of the package. Since the package gives you 25% off the price of wines by the bottle we've just budgeted to buy a bottle of wine per day for our upcoming world cruise. There are some very interesting wines on the bottle list that are reasonably priced after the discount - compared to restaurant wine prices not bottle store prices. So do the sums and work out what would give you the best deal.

But more commonly found in cask form at $20-22 for four litres. They usually only bottle those wines to sell to function centres and (now) cruise lines.

There might still be an NZ Sauvignon Blanc on the Premium list but my photos are from last year. There are some NZ wines by the bottle and you do get 25% off bottle purchases if you have Plus or Premium.

That wouldn't surprise me. I think the way Virgin promoted itself probably put a lot of people off, thinking yhey would just be party cruises. We wouldn't have bothered going on one if it hadn't been for the Velocity Points deal. I'm really glad we took that deal, it was a fun cruise.

Lots of possible reasons: a medical emergency (which happened on our recent Virgin cruise; a delay in delivering supplies (which happened on a Majestic cruise in 2018); a possible delay in passengers arriving by plane who were booked through eZair - it doesn't make much difference to their itinerary timing if the ship leaves during the later timeslot or the earlier one.

Go into the Personalizer and have a look under Flights. They often have some very good deals especially for one way flights. Pre-Covid I had a repositioning cruise up to Japan booked and was able to get a one way business class fare for under $700 with China Airlines via Taiwan. I think the Qantas fare was well over $2000. Unfortunately Covid cancelled that trip. However I used the HAL equivalent to book a one way business class fare to NZ in December 2022 for just under $1000pp. Qantas wanted over $1000 for a one way economy class fare! Same plane, same flight, operated by LATAM. We had a great flight.

If only they had the common sense to check Mic's signature before starting their little rants. We had similar issues on the Westerdam cruise we did over Christmas 2022, except we were doing traditional dining. We were lucky to have table companions who were very interesting otherwise we would have been even more annoyed than we were, It was very obvious after a couple of days that our waiters had too many people to serve - three tables of six and one table of at least eight. They just couldn't cope. Every second day they would mix up the orders. Also it took a few days for us to train them about serving wines by the glass - we want it with our food not ten minutes after that course has arrived. The others on our table had bottled wine packages so it was easier for them.

I saw elsewhere that she missed her early departure time, but I'm not sure why, so had to wait until 6:45pm. That happens quite a bit in Sydney.

Sorry to disagree, @qbay46, but the original concept of this, way back when I started it, was to respond to guesses individually as soon as possible so that the location could be narrowed down. If you had responded to Yaya-in-Oz's post immediately after responding to to Mic's five guesses it would have been fair enough but the gap between those posts meant your response to Mic's post's was meaningless and unhelpful.