OzKiwiJJ

Think about what you like best about Royal Caribbean. Do you want all those things on a different cruise line or do you want a totally different experience? Do you always cruise as a family or are your kids starting to want to go their own way? Royal Caribbean has very large ships with lots of onboard stuff. Will you and your family be happy on smaller ships with less diversity of onboard activities? Australia and NZ have limited ports but it sounds like you haven't explored all the Australian options: - South Australia? Port Lincoln is a fascinating place to visit, as is Kangaroo Island - Tasmania? If the ship stops at Burnie then a day trip to Cradle Mountain allows you to see a diverse range of the Northern Tasmania scenery. Hobart has plenty of scope for interesting excursions. Even just going up Mt Wellington is interesting (and cold) - a mountain that height (above the snow line) right next to a major port city is unique in Australia. - Queensland? Airlie Beach, Cairns and Port Douglas are the main port stops, plus you get a decent number of sea days if cruising from Sydney or Melbourne. Each cruise line has it's own ambience. Some are floating amusement parks, others are more traditional and thosectend to attractcan older demographic. We're retired. We've enjoyed all the cruises we've done but some more than others. We prefer Princess and also enjoyed Celebrity, but did not like Holland America as much. Carnival and Royal Caribbean aren't a good match for us.

Princess used to do that when we first started cruising end of 2014. They did Top End cruises Sydney/Brisbane to Fremantle and vice-versa (we did one of those in 2015 on Dawn) and the occasional PNG cruise (we did one Sept 2016 on Sun). They were very popular. However they stopped doing that in 2017, I think. Such a shame.

I'd certainly be interested in that. It would probably take three weeks or so, with quite a few sea days so perfect in my eyes. But... It's mostly us retirees who can do the longer cruises. Seven day cruises are very popular because they don't use up too much of people's holiday time. 12-14 day cruises are also popular and you really can't do NZ properly in less. But longer than 14 days and the market lessens. Many of us retirees have already done all the usual itineraries, often more than once. Now I don't mind the ship as the destination as long as a) the weather is good and warm and b) it's a Princess ship with the Sanctuary and I manage to get a booking there.

Diamond moves up to Brisbane in early December 2024. It has to have something to do with the availability of Station Pier to do embarkations from December 3024 onwards. I don't think it's because Melbourne is out of favour. Whatever is going to be happening there probably puts the terminal building out of action so embarkations and disembarkations can't be handled. Day stops are probably still possible as there is no need for a terminal for those.

Personally I don't want to see cruising become too popular here. Although we had a wonderful Mediterranean cruise in 2017 one thing that was disappointing was having to battle with hordes of other passengers from other cruise ships in port, especially when most of those other ships were huge. Of course it depends on the port. Two cruise ships in Tauranga meant that Mount Maunganui was heaving but two in Port Chalmers had little effect as most people vanished on excursions or into Dunedin. We've been in Auckland when four ships were in port and the Auckland waterfront was getting to saturation point. We haven't had a problem so far in Australia though as the smaller ports seem to only handle one ship at a time and the cities easily handle the crowds. It will be interesting to see where we experience crowds on our world cruise next year. We don't have too many Mediterranean port but there may be other places that get congested.

If your cruise includes the scenic cruising through Fiordland it can be surprising cool during the morning - a warm jacket, hat, gloves and scarf might be needed if you are out on deck - and that is the best place to be. By mid afternoon it can get quite pleasant especially if you're doing Milford Sound last when the ship pauses for a while at the head of the fiord.

The fact that three of our regular cruise lines - Princess, Carnival, and Royal Caribbean are now operating much larger ships than they did a few years ago, and that more cruise lines are coming here for at least a short time during our season, points to it being very successful.

I wouldn't say it was unsuccessful at all. More that it is limited - by population, by distance for overseas travellers to come to cruise here, by limited port options for shorter cruises due to the size of Australia, and by Australia's main ports being a long way from international ports.

Maybe for the same reason Princess isn't homeporting in Melbourne after a certain date.

Not just Princess, Cunard have cut their Melbourne season short/totally as well - I'm not sure which. I'm fairly sure the port schedule I saw was for early 2025 and most of the ships listed were the smaller lines, mostly luxury, that blow through Australia during our season - Seabourn, Silversea, Azamara, Oceania etc. Plus they would probably have been day visits not embarkations.

Interesting. I would have expected it to be stern loading as having opening doors in the bow is a bit riskier than stern ones especially given the ship was crossing Bass Strait. I'm fairly certainly the NZ Cook Strait ferries are stern loading, as are the Kangaroo Island ones.

You can see it quite clearly on Google Maps. The Tassie ferry would have been stern in alongside the first terminal so the ramp would have connected nicely with the ship's vehicle entrance. Actually I can't see how removal of that could affect the Pier itself so there must be something else that needs doing.

Isn't the ferry car ramp outside of the Pier itself? It comes in from the main road to alongside what was the ferry terminal building. There must be something going to happen to cause all of the bigger ships to disappear early in 2025. Melbourne has been a popular embarkation port for several of the Carnival Corp lines for a few years now. Given both Sydney and Brisbane have limited capacity for the larger ships I can't understand why those cruise lines wouldn't be operating out of Melbourne during that time unless the Pier is going to have very restricted capacity for a while.

They may have decided to remove the vehicle ramps that were used for the Tassie ferry, which would be a major deconstruction job. Possibly (hopefully) they might improve vehicle access to the Pier and refurbish the interiors of the terminal buildings. I don't think they can alter the buildings themselves - isn't Station Pier heritage listed?

There seems like there might be some sort of upgrade happening to Station Pier that season as there are very few cruises operating out of Melbourne then. I saw a list of port bookings a couple of weeks ago and the only ships booked after a certain date were the small luxury ships.

Yes, the Retreat Pool is adults only and open to everyone. It's a weird pool design - the steps come down into the middle of the pool and it's surprisingly deep at that point. So people move to the sides to hang on to the edge, thus crowding the two "lanes", one each side, that lap swimmers use, or people sit on the bottom steps making it hard for other people to get in and out of the pool.

You're welcome. 😊

No, Royal does not have an enclosed forward viewing area like the Hollywood Conservatory. Yes, the Sanctuary costs extra, $40pp per day for a full day, $20pp per day for a half day, plus there are some cabanas which are more expensive. There aren't many shaded spots though so if you do decide to book some time there go up as soon as you embark. We think it's worth it on warm weather cruises. It can get chilly in cooler climes but they provide rugs if you need them.

It's more accurate to say that Sabatinis turns into Alfredo's for those pizza lunches as that's how it's listed in the Patter (or whatever they're calling it now). It can be confusing for some. On one of the cruises we did last year we were chatting to a couple who were very disappointed that they couldn't find Alfredo's. They were very happy when I told them it was actually held in Sabatinis.

The mid-ships MDRs are bigger on the Royal Class ships than on the Grand Class. They are designed for the number of passengers they were built for, not for a few hundred more than the original design. Plus Ruby had a surprisingly small number of tables for two compared with other Princess ships we've been on so to get one you had to get in early. The main problem is that the MDRs are designed for probably a maximum of 3000 passengers on that ship (2670 plus upper berths) so over 3500 was stretching things just a bit too far. We had no problems at all on Grand in March. Yes, the app bookings work well but even without booking we had no problems getting a table very quickly on Coral, even after they closed one of the MDRs during the Covud outbreak on the Round Australia cruise. I will not cruise on any of the extended Grand Class ships ever again so Crown is not a good addition to the Australian fleet in my opinion, and certainly not a good ship for the longer cruises.

Possibly. I tried using it as a hotspot last year and it politely told me I couldn't do that with WiFi on. It's a Note 9 so very old in mobile phone terms but it does everything I want except hotspot through WiFi so not worth buying a new one yet.

Yes, that's true and it's fine if the ships are designed for those extra numbers. The original Grand class ships are rated at 2670 lower berths. Crown, Ruby, Emerald and one other (Caribbean?) were built with an extra deck of cabins, giving them a lower berth capacity of 3080, without any additional public spaces. I had the misfortune to cruise on Ruby in December 2019 with just over 3500 passengers onboard. It was appalling! To get a table for two for breakfast you had to queue up half an hour before the MDR opened. Dinner service was chaotic, and queues to get into the MDRs were long even if, like us, you chose to dine late. Finding a table in the buffet was almost impossible. The bars were overcrowded and we often waited over half an hour just to get a drink. Luckily we'd managed to get into the Sanctuary so spent most of our time there.

That explains it. Mine is a Galaxy Note so I guess it doesn't have the dual WiFi capability. It's about five years old. I don't think the S series was available then. It would be very useful for connecting my Kindle to though.

Yes, the Sun class ships had the wrap around promenade deck and were a similar size - 2000 passengers. Coral seems more spacious though, and has an extra lounge (Explorers) plus two permanent speciality restaurants. The Sun class ships only had a pop-up Sterling Steakhouse in part of the buffet area each night - zero ambience. And the lounges/bars are a decent size on Coral. OK Crooners doesn't go right around the atrium as it did on the Sun class ships as Coral has the cIgar lounge on one side but it's still seems bigger than Crooners on the Grand and Royal class ships. Coral's Wheelhouse Bar is big and, as mentioned earlier, it also has an Explorers Lounge. The theatre is similar to the Sun class theater, and the Universe Lounge is similar to the Sun Vista Lounges. However the Universe lounge has revolving stages so Coral is the only ship that can stage the wonderful On The Bayou production show. The downside to Coral is the really tiny showers in most cabins but at least the positioning of the dispenser bottles and grab rail are positioned better than Golden's were.

Happy birthday, Les.😘 My first thought after having a bone density scan some years ago was "now I know what a piece of paper feels like in a photocopier!" 🤣🤣🤣