OzKiwiJJ

Yes, that one is a reasonably good one but doesn't show all cruise lines.

The bathroom was the smallest I've ever seen on a cruise ship but still managed to have a decent-sized shower cubicle. I hated the rain shower fitting - I always get water and/or shampoo in my eyes with those. The alternative spray fitting was at chest level so could only be used as a hand-held spray. Weird!

We went there one evening before dinner. It was a very pleasant place to sit and have a drink. Yes, service was very slow there. Rolf ended up going up to the bar to order our drinks.

It did seem a bit crowded at times on our cruise. I think the width of the interior of the ship is narrower than most. The lifeboats are on deck 7, with some lovely wide deck space between the two lifeboat clusters, but instead of the decks going up partly over the lifeboat infrastructure, they were set back. And, of course, the interior of deck 7 was narrower as well so there were traffic jams at times moving forward or aft through deck 7. This is looking forward from our aft cabin on deck 10. You can just see the cluster of deck furniture in the middle after the white oblongs.

You could request sparkling water. They certainly had it in the restaurants. The lids were a different colour.

In that case we were very lucky to get into The Wake and Test Kitchen. They must have taken pity on us cos we're oldies! But I don't recall any of the restaurant except perhaps Test Kitchen being chocka while we were there. There seemed to be a few empty tables, and some turnover was very quick. In two cases a table next to us came in after us, ate quickly, and left while we were still having our main. However I guess it's hard to plan for those situations. Yes, short cruises seem to be a problem, especially where you've prepaid for restaurants either as part of your fare or as part of a promo. Virgin was the only cruise line where it was an issue for us, on any other lines we just don't bother, we just go to the MDR.

These are the "new" prices introduced when they whacked the prices of Plus & Premium up. The lists are from March last year but I don't believe they've changed since unless some of the wines have changed.

Even some of the cruise line ones aren't the best. Princess is actually the best one I've found so far. Some of the TAs seem to limit what they offer either in terms of region or cruise lines. I wish there was one global one, with good search criteria and filters, that was worldwide and covered all cruise lines.

The reason for the longer route to the Overseas Passenger Terminal is that on weekends there is a market in the street that you would normally drive down. It's a pain but it only takes a few minutes longer plus you get a nice view of the harbour when driving under the bridge. Smaller "Metro" supermarkets may not have the packs of bottled water but if they do they may just be in a different place.

The low unit definitely was annoying but I coped with it better than expected. Putting a pillow down against it at night saved my legs from bruises. I don't think anyone would step on it to get into bed, that would be much more awkward than just sitting on the bed and wiggling up a bit. There were bedlamps above the bed but they were annoyingly high so we never used them. We both have Kindles with built-in lights.

That's on the USD cruises. The Australian price limits are now $22 for Plus (regardless of which version of plus you have) and $30 for Premier I think.

Although the cabin was very comfortable, as was the bed, the design which theoretically allowed the bed to be converted into a sofa was actually annoying. One of my pet peeves is cruise ships and hotels that don't have bedside units (often called night stands) with drawers and sometimes a shelf. I like a drawer to put my medications, lip balm, hand lotion etc in, somewhere to put my nightwear during the day, and somewhere to puty warer bottle, tissue box and Kindle. Princess have excellent bedside units. Celebrity Solstice had ones that were only shelves so at our first port stop on our first NZ cruise I had to buy some baskets to keep all our stuff in one place in case of high seas. Those baskets came in useful on this cruise. On the side of the bed I slept on there was a huge low unit which extended alongside the bed further than any normal bedside unit would. When I first saw it I envisaged a few bruises from accidentally hitting the edge of it getting in or out of bed but I managed to avoid that. It did have a tray on it so I used that to keep my stuff in one place. On the other side there was a weird high thing - maybe an armrest for the sofa? Rolf needed one of our baskets for his stuff.

Did your friend actually go to any of the restaurants to see if they had walk-in space or if she could make a booking for another night? That worked for us. We got into The Wake at around 6pm on the first night, and by visiting a couple of the restaurants later that night we were able to make a 6pm booking for Test Kitchen the next night.

I never even got around to ice cream. 😪

We needed longer onboard as well. Did you ask a waiter for the french toast or go to the station serving it? If the former it may very well have been a misunderstanding. One stand had berries, other fruit, overnight oats and so on. That one was at the right hand end, to the left was pastries, and and french toast and pancakes were more to the left again. There was also a stand that had bagels and stuff, and which I think did toast, and that might have had berries as well.

This was the first course at Virgin's Test Kitchen last week. The courses are only listed by one word each. This was Corn, but that is not a cooked piece of corn on the cob. It is a very delicious corn custard which came, naturally, with corn bread and some corn kernals as a garnish. I was very impressed by the mould they used as it looked very natural ie not too regular, just like a real piece of corn. It was a wonderful start to a very interesting menu.

5. You can make an educated guess from the following rules: - it will never be on the last night of your cruise. - usually they are on sea days. - if day 2 of your cruise is a sea day there is a high probability it will be a formal night. - Princess usually tries to space them out ie if you are going to have 2 formal nights one will usually be near the beginning of the cruise and the other will be near the end.

4. At some stage the sun may shine directly onto your balcony. Keep the curtains closed to help keep the cabin cool. Needless to say wear a hat and sunscreen if sitting out on your balcony.

3. When you go into the app to book your dining it should show all four of you. You can select/deselect everyone but yourself I think.

I had the spicy ramen one day for lunch. It was very good although the soup wasn't quite as full flavoured as from my regular ramen restaurant. Definitely a big notch above any I've had on other cruises though. Resilient Lady has an excellent pastry chef. The croissants, danishes and pain au chocolates were very, very good.

Look online for stores that sell genuine Venetian masks. I don't know about the UK but there are some in Australia that import the masks from Venice.

I found the mattress very comfortable. I didn't have any of the joint issues I sometimes get at home.

We're in our early 70s and didn't feel out of place. We've done a few Celebrity cruises, which have a younger demographic than most of the longer Princess cruises we've been on, and felt just as comfortable on Virgin as we did on Celebrity.

I wondered about that. We kept meaning to go there but never quite made it. That's the disadvantage of a short cruise - never enough time to see everything.

No, it's not just an American thing but trying to match a description to an American restaurant/diner isn't easy if you're not American. 😄 Most cruise lines have hash browns, and I've had the same type cruising down under, in Asia, and in the Mediterranean. I'm fairly sure they are the American-style ones you are talking about. However they seem to come in two sizes - smaller round patties and larger sort of triangle shaped ones. Both are yummy but you get more crunch on the smaller ones. One cruise I went on only offered breakfast potatoes which, IMHO, aren't as nice as hash browns.