OzKiwiJJ

We'll enjoy it whatever happens. I'd like to visit Mauritius, Capetown and Santa Cruz de Tenerife - they were very low on my priority list so this may give me an opportunity to go there. The Baltics and Northern Europe part of the itinerary should stay the same and that's the other bit we really want (apart from Suez). We're thinking about the Med. for next year, two cruises and some land travel, plus we did a Med. cruise in 2017 so I'm not too fussed about missing those ports. I just want to get on a ship in Sydney then get off it again a few months later having gone around the world on it!

I agree. The Brisbane before Sydney is more logical but given a higher percentage of passengers board in Sydney that change ain't gonna happen. Island is overnighting in Capetown, which I can't see Coral doing. Island will still be able to do most of its Med ports but in a different order. Coral's itinerary has a serious focus on Northern Europe so as long as she can get to Cork on schedule there should be no issues with the rest of of the original itinerary ... unless some #%&%#$^& decides to start another war up that way.

We had free laundry as Elites on Diamond last November. We always mark "Elite" on the form.

Get to the Queens Room very early for afternoon tea or you might miss out. We didn't get there in the end. The one day we tried the queue was huge.

I don't like Tim Tams enough to ruin a good cup of tea or coffee doing the slam! 🤣

The danger zones are not only the lifts or theatre. You can be happily sitting in one of bars or dining areas, enjoying a drink or meal, when one selfish passengers with a bad cough stops right next to you to talk to their friends. 🤬 However we trade off that risk against the convenience of enjoying our meal or drink unmasked.

Remember it is magnetic so check items that it might have stuck to.

Sometimes the worst noise-makers are passengers themselves. We were on a Coral cruise in 2022. Crooners was always packed after dinners so we usually went to Good Spirits for a nightcap. That was great until a large group of up to 12 people took over one section of that small bar. Usually from early afternoon until late evening. Because of the type of seating there their group went from one side to the other of the seating area and shouted conversations with someone furtherest away from them were common.

But if they went Auckland, Bay of Islands, Brisbane then Sydney Coral would have a more direct route. 😊

Have a great cruise! QE is gorgeous! Make sure you check out the pub and the library, as well as the gorgeous Queens Room. The Commodore Club is the perfect place for sailaways.

I think the highest percentage of passengers board in Sydney, then Brisbane, then Auckland but I don't know the exact percentages. I very much doubt they would use Melbourne as a alternative. Island did have changes to its Australian itinerary. I think they lost Adelaide and Port Lincoln but gained Melbourne. Something like that anyway.

Princess has both options as well but I don't recall seeing that for the Cunard cruise.

I can't see the currency details online but just checking the US amount from the cruise statement, and the AUD amount on our 28 Degrees account, from our recent Cunard cruise it looks very much like it was charged in USD and converted to AUD by 28 Degrees. I don't recall setting this up on My Cunard so it must be the default, which is what I'd expect for a cruise line operating in USD.

I doubt we'll have many stops in Africa as the ship has to travel a much greater distance to get us up to Europe. Island Princess is going Fremantle, St Louis (Mauritius), Capetown, Walvis Bay (Namibia) and Santa Cruz de Tenerife. I'm expecting our route to be very similar after a quick run across the bottom of Australia to Fremantle.

I know you don't work for Princess. I just wondered if similar things were happening with the lines you do work for. We did have slow immigration processing once in Hobart, arriving from NZ on a Celebrity cruise. 2019, I think. The ABF people seemed swamped and the queues were long even late in the morning when we went ashore. So it does happen sometimes.

No one specifically said there were issues just that embarkation is delayed because of immigration. So that could mean slow processing, or ABF not supplying enough staff due to, say, illness (Covid is still doing the rounds and is still very virulent) or whatever. I just wanted to know if you folk had experienced any immigration "issues" with your cruises that would result in later than usual embarkation times.

We do that too even though we live quite close to the OPT. 🤣

I've been having fun calculating some possibilities for the itinerary change. I posted them on the roll call. Yes, we'll definitely lose Asia and the Med as far as I can work out.

Princess have stated that a revised itinerary for Coral should be released Friday, which would be US time so Saturday our time. It's probably a 100% certainty we won't be going through the Red Sea / Suez.

I buy the Camilla brand, usually when they have sales as they are quite expensive. They are beautiful quality, silk georgette so very, very light, with beautiful crystal embellishments. I'm not a fashionista so don't care if I'm wearing styles from several years ago, I just wear the styles I'm in the mood for from my very small collection. They are so light that all my kaftans together would barely take up the same amount of space as one of Rolf's dinner jackets, plus they don't crease. https://au.camilla.com/

It wouldn't surprise me but there also could be some truth in the immigration reasons. I guess the cruise lines are at the mercy of the Border Force as if they provide fewer immigration officers than needed then processing will take longer. Maybe @gbenjo can give us some insight as to how it works with with the RCI lines. Are they having issues as well?

No, we didn't spend much time there other than to have a good look around it. We read on Kindles these days and both our Kindles are well-stocked on cruises. It was certainly the best library I've ever seen on a cruise ship. For a start it was a real library - hard back books that you had to check out and return. It wasn't just a multi-purpose room with a bookself or two containing a few tatty paperbacks. The selections were obviously carefully chosen - fiction, travel books, non-fiction. A varied selection. My only quibble was that there didn't appear to be much contemporary women's fiction compared with the usual suspense/thriller genres. Plus it was just gorgeous, especially the spiral staircase.

Also bear in mind that the slots for booking are 20 minutes apart - ie 6pm, 6:20pm, 6:40pm and so on. So getting there half way between those slots means shorter queue. Opting for a share table may get you seated quicker as well.

With whatever is happening in Melbourne to cause the cruise lines to stop homeporting there, plus the limited capacity in Sydney, it's not surprising.

The change happened after the wharf was affected by an earthquake in November 2016. We visited Wellington in December 2015 on a different cruise line but I can't recall whether we had to buy the shuttle ticket onboard or from the bus driver. I have a feeling it might have been the latter. In February 2017 the docking position had changed and the shuttle was free.