OzKiwiJJ

Luckily I'm one of those people who is equally happy drinking short blacks or lattes because I can't stand steamed long life milk, so once I'm onboard I only drink short blacks. Luckily Princess usually has reasonable baristas, unlike HAL, so I usually don't have much trouble getting a decent espresso. Getting a decent cup of tea is a different story these days. I think I'm going to start taking my own supply of teabags as they always seem to run out of English Breakfast ones, and even those aren't quite what I prefer - at home I use Dilmah Ceylon Supreme which is stronger and "brighter" than regular Dilmah or English Breakfast.

You might want to check your booking confirmation. The Oct 2024 cruise is on Crown Princess departing 26th October. The Oct 2023 cruise is on Coral departing 25th October. I'd hate for you to miss your cruise by a year!

It was "interesting" last year going west to east - we missed slipping between two storms due to a medical emergency so had to out run one, but we caught the edge of the other. Not too bad, just a bit bouncy but we missed Albany and it took us an extra day to go across. I think east to west would have been rather uncomfortable.

Most luggage should fit under the bed(s).

Yes, only the aft Dolphin minisuites are covered but there is a known noise issue aft on Coral at the moment, although it only affects the starboard side. But it's a moot point at the moment as the only minisuites available are 2 mid-aft on Dolphin (uncovered), 1 midships on Aloha (covered), and a mid-forward guarantee on the October cruise, and none on the one in February next year.

I feel your pain. We've done it the other way a few times. Try to arrive a few days earlier just in case of flight delays, and also plan a night or two in your embarkation port after the cruise. If you choose a Sydney roundtrip the cruise terminal Coral uses is right in the city, at Circular Quay, so easy to get to and from. Cheers, Julie

We were on a HAL cruise last Christmas. There were a few kids on board. I can't say if they did anything special for the kids though as we dined late and didn't hang around the pool much.

That part of Wales is indeed lovely. We went through there on a land trip about ten years ago. We stayed at Caernarfon overnight after coming across from Dublin by ferry, then did the heritage train trips through Snowdonia, staying overnight between them at Porthmadog.

I live in Sydney so no flights required for that cruise, and we booked the cruise last year six days before it departed while we were on Coral on another cruise. We went home for three days then reboarded. 😊 However we usually book directly through Princess for our cruises. As far as flights go we shop around on the rare occasion we need to - if Princess or another cruise line has better deals we book through the cruise line otherwise we choose whatever fits our budget at the time. Princess is our favourite cruise line but their newer ships are too big for us and even some of the older Grand class ships are too big as they added an extra deck of cabins.to four of them without adding any extra public space.

I just checked and there are Oceanview, Balcony and Minisuites available. I recommend a mid-aft minisuite if it fits your budget. You get a bit more space which is nice on a long cruise, and the shower is over the bath which is better than the tiny showers Coral has in balcony cabins. Coral has great entertainment and is a really nice ship to cruise on. It has both an outdoor pool and an indoor pool, and if you want to spend a bit extra on the peace and quiet of the Sanctuary it has it's own small pool as well - just right to cool off in on hot days.

Princess is the only cruise line that does the Round Australia cruise in spring and autumn, other cruise lines do it in our peak summer cruise season when it's very humid and rainy up north. And Princess is a good cruise line to do it on. You can usually do Sydney round trip or Brisbane round trip. My recommendation would be to look for a last minute cabin on the cruise later this year as that will be on Coral Princess. The next cruise, in the autumn of 2024, has a shorter itinerary I think. After that those cruises will be done on Crown Princess which holds 1000 more passengers than Coral. We did it last year and loved it.

Thanks. That helps with my budgeting.

Although I haven't done this as an excursion I have driven that route privately. The scenery is stunning. You will probably get a chance to take some photos of Milford Sound on the way in and from where the tender drops you off. And you'll probably get plenty of photo opportunities along the way. Queenstown is a lovely lakeside town and a trip on the Earnslaw is always fun. The drive from Queenstown to Dunedin is also lovely. It's an expensive excursion but do it if you can, you'll see much more of the beautiful NZ countryside that you would on the scenic cruising.

I'm not worried about payment "shock", just trying to work out which financial year the transaction payments will fall into. Unfortunately it's not a good idea to attach a debit card to your onboard account unless you are prepared to have twice the expected expenditure in funds, due to the annoying holds they put on the cards. We usually use a credit card with a very decent credit limit which means those holds don't affect us but we have to "eat" the blasted credit card surcharge of 1.1%.

It's mentioned under the Payments section of a cruise booking if you select to pay by credit card.. "If payment is made by credit card, you will be subject to an additional charge dependent on the card type. Visa and MasterCard will be 1.1%, American Express 2.75%, Diner's Club 2.3%, PayPal will be 1%. Debit cards incur no fees."

Thanks. I thought I recalled something like that from a past world cruise post but want to make sure. I'm trying to do some budgeting for next year.

I've heard that if you contact Princess by phone they can allow one person in a cabin to have the Plus package and the other to just pay the Standard fare. I've heard of 3-4 people getting that over the past year. However if your wife drinks speciality coffees, bottled water, sodas and mocktails it may still be worth her having Plus, especially if you both want internet.

There is one big difference - Princess offers very, very well priced fare add-ons, the Plus and Premier fares. So those people who have those deals don't care what the bottle prices are, as they get their wine by the glass but if they do decide to get a bottle of a wine they get it at a 25% discount. Unfortunately most of the wines by the glass under the Plus package are rubbish. If they had decent wines, and honoured their claim to offer 25 wines by the glass (currently there are 9 on offer) then it would truly be a great deal. I just can't figure out what Princess is up to. They seem to be trying to change to much in ways that don't make sense. I realize Princess has to make a profit but they have to balance that with what is realistic in the markets they are operating in. They have chosen to operate in Australia in a different manner to the rest of the world which is great for us but they can't just think everything through in USD then convert it to AUD as that leads to overpricing in some areas e g. the new corkage fees. And then there are the new items they added to the Plus fare. Did anyone think what effect rough seas would have on a ship load of people who had each consumed two of those revolting "special dessert" ice cream concoctions a day?

@Tranquility Base a quick question if you don't mind. Are onboard accounts charged to your credit card at the end of each sector or at the end of the full cruise?

We still have a cheque book somewhere but haven't used it in a couple of years at least.

There are three wines I can drink on the Plus wine list - the rose, the pinot noir, and the merlot. There is no way I'm an doing a 110 night cruise with just those wines to choose from. I put up with them last year but struggled to enjoy them on the cruise we did in March. I want decent white wines, more variety in reds and a reasonable sparkling. OK, we got the Plus package for $40pp per day for that cruise so that at least covers all our non-wine drinks but we booked that cruise in good faith expecting a decent selection of wines by the glass as per the 2019 wine list. To get reasonable wines we will have to buy wines by the bottle and/or bring some of our own wines onboard and pay the outrageous $30 per bottle corkage. That is going to add another $5000+ to the cost of that cruise. NOT HAPPY!!! 🤬 Our budget is very tight for that cruise. If anything else goes up in price we might reach the last straw!

Princess doesn't have four digit cabin numbers so did they offer you B714 which would be aft, or B147 which would be forward?

HAL has nicer cabins, Princess is nicer overall. We did a cruise on HAL last year and would never cruise on them again. The food was very average, service was poor except in one bar, entertainment was very limited and/or repetitive. However our Signature Suite cabin was really lovely. We are regular cruisers on Princess. The minisuites and suites are nice. Service is always good with rare exceptions. The food quality has slipped slightly since Covid but is still very good and there is plenty of variety. Entertainment is excellent with great production shows in the theatre and music to suit most tastes in the various bars.

Oddly enough the markup isn't so high on one of the more expensive wines. The Henschke Henry's Seven GSM on the Premier wine list only has around 400% markup on the retail price.

Very, very, very over-priced! And that's the old wine list. These ones have the new prices: I have no objection to a reasonable mark-up on wines. After all they have to get the wine delivered, load it onboard, store it, ensure the various bars have supplies, chill the white wines, provide glasses, and serve it. Not much different to land-based restaurants and bars. However the Princess mark-ups are obscenely high. The Willowglen Semillion/Sauvignon is occasionally found in bottle form at just under $6 a bottle. It's normally sold in casks for around $20-22 for four litres. At five 150ml glasses to a bottle that makes it a $1.20 a glass retail price, and Princess would get it at much less than retail price. Princess are charging $14 for a glass. That's 11.6 times the retail price so roughly 1160% markup. Normal restaurant markups are around 300% , high end restaurants may be up to 500% - 600%. 🤬🤬🤬