OzKiwiJJ

You can still get them, about $20 for four litres. Princess is charging $16 for a 150ml glass. 🤬

It's not just the quality of the wines by the glass that annoy me, it's the very limited selection. I can't drink most sauvignon blancs as they affect my reflux problem. I dislike young oaky chardonnays. I can't drink most cabernet sauvignons either, as that grape variety gives me headaches. That doesn't leave me much to choose from on the Plus list which is why we now budget for bottles of wine. We still get good value from Plus as we enjoy cocktails, after dinner drinks, coffees and bottled water, plus the internet of course - must have my daily Wordle fix!

A lot depends on how full the ship is. We didn't manage to get any restaurant bookings before boarding and although they state there will be more bookings available after boarding the only ones we saw were at 5:30pm or 9:30pm. The did say they allowed spaces for walk-ins but in reality you had to be lucky to get a walk-in table. Thankfully we were. On the first night we were having a drink in the Dock House, right next to the entrance to The Wake, so decided to ask there and we were able to get a table immediately which was around 6pm. After dinner we checked a couple more restaurants and was able to book the Test Kitchen for the following night at 6pm (I think this may have been a walk-in slot). Next day we were having coffee and chatting to a couple of guys sitting next to us. They had managed to get a booking to Another Rose which is a show that includes dinner and therefore had a 7pm booking at Razzle Dazzle the following night (our third night) they were about to cancel. They kindly transferred the booking to us. And then I spotted a 6:15 slot at the Korean restaurant for our last night so booked that. There is always space at The Gallery which is the food court and there are some very interesting choices at the various stands there but it's not the nicest setting at night. They really need at least one more restaurant on their ships, IMHO, as when the ship is full there is not enough restaurant space for all guests.

That's just one bar, and there were plenty of different bars. We didn't look at the wines available in the bars we went to but there were definitely gin-based cocktails in some of them and we had G&Ts at the Dock House. Each restaurant had its own wine list, chosen to complement the food in that restaurant. We were very happy with the wines we chose at two of the restaurants, The Wake and Razzle Dazzle, and the wine matches in the Test Kitchen were excellent. We had a very nice sake at the Korean restaurant and there was a small selection of wines available there.

We've resorted to buying wine by the bottle with the Plus 25% discount. At least that way we get wines we like. There is a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc on the Premier list and it's only $1 over the Plus limit so that's all you pay extra per glass.

Every bar has a different cocktail list. Unfortunately I forgot to take photos but we found some very nice cocktails on our four night cruise to Hobart last week.

When I first saw the ads for Virgin showing the hammocks I thought I'd never be able to get in one of those but the way they have them set up makes it as easy as sitting in a chair. I found it a bit trickier stretching it our to make the footrest though but with a bit of help from Rolf I got there. It was so comfortable!

We found it a tad noisy for us but that was our only negative. It would have been nice to have one bar that was a quiet zone with just gentle background music. But other than that we loved our four night cruise on Resilient Lady. It was fun, the food was amazing, and the hammock was very comfortable and easy to get in and out of. Having so many included items was a big plus and we were able to status-match our Princess status so had the Deep Blue extras. We'd cruise Virgin again however the itineraries out of Australia are fairly limited.

I guess so. I live in Australia so aren't sure what your diner hash browns are like. They were a small patty, nice and crispy.

But they didn't force you to pay the extra for the new version of the package and, in fact, gave you $25pp OBC to cover one of the changes - the charge for using the app to order food or drinks.

Tell me, when you book a cruise and then the fare goes up do you get charged extra? No, you don't. This is the same. You are worrying unnecessarily.

Actually I am now certain that our excursions are at the price we paid for them originally. All my excursions have reappeared. Some were booked using OBC and the only change to our available OBC is the $750pp we received for the itinerary change. You can't see this easily unless you go to book another excursion. A summary of excursion payments and balance of OBC available to use for new excursions shows on the payments page. The OBC balance available on my account was exactly what I expected it to be therefore previous excursions must have been reinstated at the original prices.

In the past I've often seen prices increase on excursions I've already booked, just as cruise fares may increase after you've booked. I very much doubt that you would have been charged those new prices - Princess did state that excursions would be reinstated at the original price. Note: when you look at your excursions list you see the excursion name and times for each port. When you click on "View Excursion Details" it takes you to the regular excursion booking page and the price shown is what someone booking that excursion that day would pay, not what you paid.

They had real hash browns on Resilient Lady this week but they were the smaller ones (not tater tots though). They were very nice.

Two of our booked excursions have reappeared so hopefully the rest will pop up early next week. I hope they do the refunds for the cancelled ports excursions promptly otherwise we're going to have a problem. I booked some of them using our Citibank debit card and, of course, that has been taken over by NAB and the Citibank account disappears on Feb 24th so if Princess try to refund back to that after that date it probably won't work.

There were a few tables near us playing the drinking games. Yes, they were fairly loud.

That's a shame.

Traditionally in Korea and Japan you do not top up your own glasses. Politeness dictates that the person next to you ensures that your glass is never empty. So ...

No, there was no clapping or drinking games.

Ouch! I feel your pain. Cleaning up a whole broken bottle of oil is a horrible chore. Been there, done that!

There is a lift to get you up to the ticket office level - there is an entrance to it at the Circular Quay corner of the building - then escalators up to the next level. I believe they have made some changes inside the main part to provide easier access to those who need it but I'm not sure what that entails.

Well it all started with dinner at a Korean restaurant in Singapore, hosted by one of Rolf's Korean colleagues. I was there too. Rolf was sitting next to his colleague. Need I say more? 🤣🤣🤣

Almost all the cocktails are covered by the Plus package and if you choose one that is over the Plus limit you just pay the difference, which works out a lot cheaper than getting the more expensive package.

Yeah, but I don't trust Rolf and soju! 🤣🤣🤣 It's a long story ...

I'm sure we missed a few places but we did see the Italian restaurant. Unfortunately we couldn't get a booking there but did score one at the Test Kitchen instead. We went to Gunbae, the Korean restaurant, last night and had an excellent meal. We were at a share table seating six. One of the staff does all the cooking on the table barbecue. We started with a selection of nibbles - kimchi and other pickled veges. Our cook convinced us to all have the everything option, which started with a number of small dishes - glass noodles, pancake, spicy chicken, seafood corn dog, then lots of different stuff cooked on the barbecue - mushrooms of various types, seafood, beef and pork belly. We finished with refreshing matcha and mango ice cream.