OzKiwiJJ

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

Yes, onboard with a VIP check-in - don't ask, it was just luck. We've had the traditional embarkation lunch with some very nice pinot noir. Now we're in our cabin waiting for our luggage to arrive.

We've planned for a minimum of four days but could handle longer. I think the trick will be to put a small bag load in every day rather than sending in bigger lots less often.

Yes, that one is shockingly small but the one that was on the old Golden Princess, although a tad larger, was actually worse due to the placement of taps, dispenser bottles and the grab handle. It was difficult to wash without banging an elbow on something. At least the Coral shower had better placement of those items so my elbows remained unscathed.

We've stayed in the Park Hotel Shiodome a couple of times. The rooms are a reasonable size for Tokyo. We had a huge room (by Japanese standards) at the Yokohama Royal Park Hotel. Even the bathroom was very big. If my memory is correct the Westin in Kyoto also had very decent sized rooms but it was a long time ago when we stayed there.

For some ports there isn't an alternative - that's the only port there is.

We've stayed at the Auckland Waterfront Serviced Apartments a couple of times. They are on Princes Wharf, direct opposite the Hilton - really great if your ship docks at Princes Wharf instead on Queens Wharf. They are lovely one bedroom apartments with great views over the harbour towards the Harbour Bridge. Full kitchen plus a washing machine and dryer in the smallish bathroom.

It's not just the hardness of the seats, it's that you have to lie in an odd position when trying to sleep. I tweaked a muscle in my back trying to get comfortable on one of the flights which annoyed me for days. It didn't really go away until I forked out for a very expensive massage on the Regent cruise. I'd rather have the older style seats where your legs fitted straight in front of you, even if the seat didn't go entirely flat. But I think they get more seats in each cabin in the current configuration. I'll be posting in the Bon Voyage Coral Princess World Cruisers 2024 thread here.

Princess cabins aren't the best of the mass market lines, especially since they removed those chairs from the balcony cabins. However I think they have some of the best storage, especially for clothes in that walk-in wardrobe area, but not in the bathrooms - I really liked Celebrity Solstice for bathroom storage as everything except what you left on the counter was in drawers or in a narrow cupboard which seemed much more secure in high seas.

At the moment the cruise lines need every dollar they can reasonably get to help offset the cost of the pandemic. Note: I do not include outrageous (1000%+) mark-ups on wines as reasonable.

But if you book in Australia with an Australian priced Plus or Premier fare the gratuities aren't included. The only way you could get the gratuities included would be if you booked a standard fare, then upgraded to Plus/Premier onboard in USD and, by the way, it works out about the same give or take a dollar or two.

Possibly. Though I tend to want to get the air travel part of trips over as quickly as possible.

The thing I hated most about the Dreamliner, other than uncomfortable seats and cramped legroom, was the shape of the seat backs. They are more curved at the sides so don't block views of the TVs in the row in front, so you get this constant light flickering at the corner of your eyes all the time. It made me feel nauseous. It was a day time flight so I wanted to read otherwise I would have had my sleep mask on. So annoying.

I couldn't see any obstructed mini-suites either. If anything there might be a view of the one edge of the top of one of the tenders if looking straight down the side of the ship but that's not really what counts as obstructed.

Only if you don't know the good places to eat in China - it helps to have local contacts there. A lot of Chinese food in Australia is westernised versions of Cantonese dishes. Many years ago we had a favourite restaurant in Sydney's Chinatown. They would offer the tourist menu but we always asked for the "real" menu which had much more interesting dishes, although some of them were a bit too weird for us.

It depends on the original itinerary. Our upcoming cruise is focused on the Baltics so ports between Sydney and Tangier, where we hook back into our original itinerary, were probably the minimum needed to avoid too many sea days but still hit refueling stops as needed. So we get the fast run to Capetown. If the original itinerary is more focused on Asian ports then HAL did the right thing. But our cruise originates in Australia and Asia wasn't a focus on our itinerary so I think Princess have done the best they could to ensure the port stops later in the cruise aren't affected by delays getting there I noticed the changed itinerary for 2025 Australian cruise has more ports on the changed itinerary (especially in the Med) than we have but I guess that was the focus on the original itinerary for that cruise. I'm very happy with our new itinerary especially after doing some research into the extra distance the ship has to travel to go around the Cape of Good Hope.

As long as you have travel insurance the best place to come down with Covid is on a cruise. We've done ten cruises since the restart and I've had Covid on two of them. One was on Coral Princess in 2022 when all treatment was free. Princess were amazing. The second time was on another cruise line late last year, also amazing care but very expensive - thank goodness for travel insurance. That one had me fooled as the symptoms were totally different to the first time - I thought it was a sinus issue, possibly triggered by something onboard the ship (perfume?). It was only when I started to cough that I did a RAT and discovered it was Covid.

Wait until you get older and creakier, Mic. Then you might find business class more viable. We're reach the stage where long haul economy is impossible, and even for domestic travel we try to get business class or extra legroom seats on points.

Who wants to eat pizza or Calzone in Japan? And NYC "Neopolitan" pizza isn't a patch on the real thing from Naples, or anywhere else where the pizziolo was trained in Naples. But NYC pizza is pretty good for American pizza.

Apparently it's been a bit bouncy today. I saw a video of the water sloshing around in the main pool. There were some spectacular splashes. The pool was netted of course.

I find it easier to get around than some places in the US, like New York where the subway is horrible, and the food in Japan is better.

I have no idea why Princess operates in AUD here. It may have something to do with the fact that Carnival Corporation also owns P&O Australia which only cruises in our region and, I'm guessing, was always AUD. Perhaps there was some pressure put on Carnival Corp for Princess and Carnival to also operate in AUD. They are the only cruise lines that do. It must be very annoying the way Princess handles OBC especially as they seem to be pricing a lot of things on the Australian ships in USD then converting the prices to AUD instead of using realistic pricing for our region.

Your friends won't be able to join you in the Club Class dining area. If you want to dine with them you would have to join them in the regular sections of the MDRs. So either take the risk and go for the regular minisuite upgrade or don't bother bidding. Check if/what minisuites are still available to book - if none of those are obstructed the risk might be less.

There isn't much they can do. It's a very long way around via the Cape of Good Hope with not many viable ports. Presumably they can only go a certain distance between refueling stops which is why they go via Mauritius- otherwise there is just too much empty ocean between Fremantle and Cape Town. We're just about to embark on this year's Coral Princess world cruise. I'm just thankful there is an option to replace the Red Sea transit even though it means we lose a number of ports we wanted to go to. However we get to go to some new ports that we didn't ever expect to get to so I'm sure we'll enjoy those. Plus we love sea days and having so many at the beginning of our itinerary will leave us relaxed and refreshed, ready for the more port intensive part of the itinerary.

Essentially the medallion is like an Apple Airtag - it just identifies you, by a code unique to you, to the ship's systems. All the "smarts" are in the ship's systems. It's essentially an electronic name badge but much more useful as you don't have to do anything more than carry it with you.