OzKiwiJJ

Given there is a huge glut of wine in Australia those suppliers would have been rubbing their hands together in glee at the thought of big orders from the cruise lines. Sorry, but we're going to have to butt heads over that issue! And it doesn't excuse the very limited selection and the horrendeous markup Princess is charging on some of them. This is how the De Bortoli Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is normally sold: If you buy three casks you get it for $20 per cask. At 150ml per glass that's around 26 glasses per cask, which works out at 75 cents a glass retail. Princess are selling it for $14 a glass. That over 1,700% markup! 😡

Be wary of using a debit card onboard. Princess puts daily holds on your funds in your bank, in the same manner that hotels etc do. Those holds aren't released by Princess until the final account is debited but it can take days, if not a few weeks, for your bank to release the holds. If you do want to use a debit card make sure you have funds that are 2-3 times what you expect to spend. I would rather put a credit card on the booking than a debit card as a) I think the credit card companies handle fraud better and b) any charges go onto the credit card account not straight out of your bank.

This is the Princess wines by the glass list from March 2018 when we did a repositioning cruise from Sydney to Tokyo on Diamond Princess. It was AUD onboard.

No, they are NOT doing a reasonable job. They are not providing what they promise. 9 wines by the glass is a long way from the promised 25, and they aren't providing an adequate variety of wines to suit modern Australian tastes. Their Plus wine list reads like some from the late 20th century ans with a slant that is more towards American wine tastes than current Australian ones. Even simple licenced cafes in Australia have better wine lists than the current Princess Australian one.

Yes, I believe the Australian wines by the glass lists now differ from those on ships operating in USD. I'm doing a cruise out of Japan in a couple of months so will get to see what those ones are like. From the odd muttering I've seen during my infrequent forays into the main Princess boards I'm expecting the American version of Willowglen wines! Of course I could be wrong and they might surprise me but I've budgeted for buying some bottled wines as well. On some of the earlier cruises we did pre-2019 they used to just add an extra Australian wine list to the regular US one, which had some wines by the glass. I can't recall when they stopped doing that though.

I've never seen a French champagne by the glass in Premier, the only sparkling has been the Pirie.

I couldn't move, she was blocking me in. We were sitting next to the window.

Plastic glasses poolside for safety. I didn't notice them used anywhere else. Did you say you had booked a Club Class cabin? If so you should get the good wine glasses there - we did on Coral.

These were the wines available by the glass everywhere on Grand except possibly Vines. We tend to prefer a pre-dinner cocktail and have wine with our meal so I forgot all about Vines. De Bortoli Willowglen Brut is an inoffensive sparkling wine. We preferred to pay the extra for the Pirie Vintage Brut from the Premier list. De Bortoli Willowglen Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is a basic dry white. Brown Brothers Moscato is a classic moscato which suits those who like that style of wine. I'd pair it with a creamy dessert. De Bortoli Willowglen Chardonnay is too oaky for our tastes. We tend to drink unoaked or lightly oaked chardonnays these days. Masterpeace Rose. A very pleasant rose and the only "white" we found enjoyable without buying a bottle. Lock and Key Pinot Noir is reasonable. We preferred the one they used to have on the Premier list, Devil's Corner, but it's no longer available. De Bortoli Willowglen Shiraz Cabernet. De Bortoli Willowglen Cabernet Merlot. I can't drink Cabernet Sauvignon as it gives me headaches so I didn't try either of these. Masterpeace Merlot. A lovely soft merlot with chocolate raspberry notes. Great with the Princess Love Boat dream dessert. Note: most of the Willowglen wines are more commonly seen in 4 litre casks! Pirie Vintage Brut. A pleasant sparkling wine. Framingham Sauvignon Blanc. I can't drink this variety either so didn't try it. Leasingham Bin 7 Reisling. When we tried it it was from the 2017 vintage and was starting to go a bit flabby. It didn't really go with seafood. However there is now a 2021 vintage but I don't know whether Princess has that one. If they do it should be good. Shaw & Smith M3 Chardonnay. Another chardonnay with too much oak for my taste. Eddystone Point Pinot Noir. I didn't get around to trying this unfortunately. Katnook Cabernet Sauvignon. Untried but Katnook wines are usually very nice. Henschke 'Henry's Seven' GSM. One of the nicest reds available by the glass. A classic GSM. Famille Perrin Cote du Rhone Rouge. A very enjoyable Cote du Rhone. A bit lighter than the Henschke so suits lamb rather than beef. De Bortoli Noble One. Always a good drop when you want a sticky. Unfortunately when they upped the prices of the wines by the glass the difference between the Plus limit and the Henschke and Cote du Rhone became larger. 😪

We were doing that too, only taking our masks off when sitting in a bar with a drink or when dining. But I still caught Covid because, despite choosing seats away from others, some stupid woman stood right over me while talking to her friends seated behind me and she had a very bad cough. Go figure!

Wines under the package, or by the bottle?

You'd think that people would have learnt from the pandemic about how to reduce the spread of respiratory illnesses.🙄 🙄

The main issue was that it was badly organised. If there had been a way of getting rid of our baggage immediately we arrived at the end of the queue it would have been much easier. Luckily we'd had a very nice lunch at a restaurant near our apartment hotel before heading off to the port. At least that time there was a genuine excuse for the delay. When we did the Hawaii/Tahiti cruise out of Sydney in 2019 we had a similar delay. Border Force would not let anyone enter the terminal until they reached zero count and four idiots decided that they didn't have to leave the ship, which had just come from Auckland. It took an hour before they tracked them down. Luckily said idiots decided to order drinks from one of the bars and that triggered an alert! Of course it rained then too but we were just undercover at the OPT. In both cases there was no information passed down to the passengers waiting to board and that was really annoying.

However it would be so easy to fake a RAT if people were determined enough to cruise regardless. And even with PCR tests you can be negative one day and positive the next, which is what happened to me when I caught Covid on a cruise last year. And RATs aren't as sensitive as PCRs. What annoy the heck out of me was people who were coughing all the time who wandered around the ship without wearing a mask, and who made no effort to distance themselves from other passengers let alone get tested. But it's always been like that, even before Covid.

Is that P&O? It's completely gone from Princess. There is no mention of Covid anywhere so I doubt they'll be offering the FCCs any more.

I can't find that section any more. How did you get to it?

The scheduled Group A arrival time for the cruise I mentioned was 2pm so not necessarily Border Force. As it turned out the ship was late arriving due to a medical emergency and a rescue at sea so it was chaos. We turned up just before 2pm and the queue was back to the carpark entrance and starting to loop back through the car park. For some odd reason they wouldn't let anyone onto the pier until they were cleared for check-ins which was over an hour after we arrived. We had to schlep our bags the length of the car park to drop them off, and it poured with rain. If they had at least let people through the pier gates we would have been able to drop off our luggage and shelter undercover. On another cruise where the ship was just visiting for a port stop so no disembarkations our arrival was delayed by fog then it took another couple of hours or more before we could leave the ship.

Fingers crossed for you for Easter Island!

If your cruise stops in Broome there are shuttle buses into the town, and it's worth wandering around the old part of it as it has a fascinating history. Then you can catch a local bus to and from the famous Cable Beach. You can self-explore in Geraldton as well. The locals offered a HoHo service when we were there some years ago. What other ports are you going to?

Lyle, I've been comparing your comments with our experience on Westerdam last Christmas. We had similar issues with MDR dining although we chose late fixed dining. We did have great table companions which made up for the shortfalls in service. The evening meals were reasonable, some dishes being very similar to ones we'd had on Princess, but breakfast and lunch weren't great so we stopping going there for those meals. BTW the most memorable MDR main course I've ever had was actually on Carnival. It was a spicy pork dish that was very different to most cruise ship fare and it had amazing flavours.

Probably because 80% of the passengers will drink any old wine. It's not bad wine if you just want a white wine or a red wine but if you know your wine varieties then it's pathetic and very limited.

I doubt they'd ever remove drinks from the Plus and Premier fares. There would be no point. But if you want good quality drinks i.e. wine then it's a different story.

Hopefully you'll make to the MDR before 1:30pm. They should really extend that to 2pm or 2:30pm if they're not starting boarding until 1pm. I get quite grumpy if I don't get my MDR embarkation day lunch!

Sometimes they have to start boarding later than usual in Melbourne. It depends how late the ship docks and on the Border Force people. On the cruise we did in March out of Melbourne, still under the boarding group system, Group A boarding wasn't until 2pm. Boarding appears to have gone back to the old style, turn up when you like but at least they're giving you a start time now - in the past it was just assumed to be around 11:30. There are no slots any more. I suggest turning up about half an hour early, you never know they might start check-ins early even if you have to wait in the terminal for a bit before getting on to the ship.

400 Gradi is a Melbourne restaurant / pizza group, one of the first true Neopolitan pizzerias in Australia. In Sydney we have Via Napoli instead. 400 Gradi (400 degrees Celsius) refers to the temperature the woodfired ovens have to reach to cook the pizzas in 90 seconds. Unfortunately I don't think cruise ship pizza ovens operate at this temperature which is why cruise ship pizza never comes out as good as a true Neopolitan pizza - they have to cook it much longer so it dries out more.