Relaxing Robbies

I didn’t get an email, but I just booked an excursion in Darwin that I had been thinking about for a while. The price was $229.95 AUD as opposed to $269.95 I saw a few weeks ago. The $40 saving is not 20%, but the banner advertising the sale did say UpTo 20% off in Australia.

4 minutes ago, 2022cruisey said:

There is a huge cruise market in Melbourne and Carnival/Princess have stuffed up royally and misunderstood the market in Australia and NZ.

I agree completely. What were Princess thinking when they decided to have Diamond Princess in Melbourne doing cruises to New Zealand in early October and November when the seas and weather are likely to be bad, and then moving it to Brisbane to do Northern Queensland cruises from mid December just when it is becoming unbearably hot and humid up north? It would have been much better the other way round.

If sales of the Diamond cruises from Melbourne have been okay, it is not because people are happy with the itineraries, but just that we have so few choices and we are desperate.  Personally I have resisted and am hanging out for some bargains, or will just do some land based travel later this year.

We were booked on the 37 night Hawaii loop cruise and are devastated that it has been cancelled. We already have a Freo to Sydney northern route cruise booked for next May, so we are not interested in the replacement Round Australia offering with $250 obc. After spending hours yesterday considering our options, we have opted for the Crown Princess Sydney to Singapore cruise prior to her drydock.

It is getting harder for us Victorians to find suitable cruises. Costs of travelling to Sydney or Brisbane to board soon add up, and make shorter cruises uneconomic. My preference would be cruises to Queensland and the South Pacific in the April to October period when it is cold in Melbourne. I am not interested in cruising to Cairns during the hot humid wet season, and worry about cyclones impacting my cruise. No wonder the cruise lines are having trouble selling their cruises from Brisbane. 

8 hours ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

Which ship? I'm wondering if the variations are by ship.

Royal Princess. Same charge for the same wine at dinner tonight.

On 4/6/2024 at 3:43 PM, OzKiwiJJ said:

I wish they'd make up their mind! In the last couple of weeks I've heard of $22, $20, $18, and the T&Cs for the older packages still show $16. 

 

Definitely a limit of $22 per drink for those of us still on the old plus package. We ordered Katnook Cab Sav last night at dinner. Cost on menu was $23 per glass. Charge to our account was $1 per glass.  Most cocktails are still covered. Just had a 24K Gold Margarita.

We are also in wet Sydney, having caught the train up from Melbourne yesterday. Went to the Australian Museum to see the Ramses and Egyptian Gold exhibition today. At least it was dry in there, even if it was very crowded. Good exhibition.  Spent the late afternoon at the Orient Hotel near the OPT meeting fellow cruisers who are also boarding the Royal Princess tomorrow.  Hopefully the rain will have stopped in time for us to drop off dry suitcases tomorrow morning.

I certainly remember the car stopping and inspections coming into Victoria when I was young.  Obviously they have given up now. I was surprised to find out that fruit fly is in Melbourne.  I spent last week destroying a very abundant crop of mandarins because each ripe mandarin I peeled had several worms crawling through it.  Hours of work harvesting fruit and microwaving kilo after kilo of mandarins to kill the little buggers. Now I know that I need to be vigilant next year and use fly traps and netting etc.😢

Congratulations. Enjoy that extra cabin space and the bath giving you a larger showering zone.

I bought my shares through an Australian broker called Stake. I

 can login and print out a monthly shareholdings report. I receive an email each year encouraging me to vote, but I have never bothered to do so.

6 minutes ago, aussielozzie18 said:

Lunch (at our own cost) was at Windows on Westella cafe on the outskirts of Ulverstone.  The site contains the Broad Acres Vineyard and the manufacturing facility of pickled onions.  I thought I liked pickled onions but I wasn’t keen on these:

 

Apparently their specialty is waffles but we didn’t stay for dessert.

Are they Blue Banner pickled onions? They are my favourites and we used to purchase them every time we visited Tassie.

16 hours ago, aussielozzie18 said:

So plan for lunch on boarding day was to eat at The Dock.  Had heard this recommended in the lead up to the cruise.  The Dock is a “view drenched mezze lounge designed to channel seaside vibes”.  Managed to get an outside table looking at the Sydney Harbour Bridge but service was slow so gave up.  Grabbed some grab & go eats and took them back to cabin for a late lunch (hadnt discovered The Galley at this point).  Never made it back to The Dock (so much to see, not enough time) so no photos.

It is a shame you missed trying the food there. The small prawn skewers and chicken ones were great.

12 minutes ago, windsor26 said:

I  believe coffee is included in that package and if I am correct then it is worth getting   Their free coffee is  Urg................

The Classic Soda package does not include coffee or hot chocolate. They do sell a Zero Alcohol package that also includes coffees but that is ridiculously expensive.

1 hour ago, Reina del Mar said:

 

Relaxing Robbies- do you mean Zero mocktails with Diet Sprite or just non alcoholic cocktails ? Husband is diabetic so we struggled to find Zero sugar mocktails on last Princess cruise- they kept suggesting using soda water which isn’t so tasty. Thanks.

I meant Zero as in non alcoholic. Not sure about anything non sugar.

13 hours ago, Reina del Mar said:

 

Please can anyone share the cost of both fountain and Cans of soft drinks, as well as mock tails ??

 

Many thanks.

Mocktails like Zero Pina Colada and Zero Mohitos cost $10.50.

We boarded Resilient Lady today and so far we are very happy.  Boarding in Melbourne was our easiest boarding at this port ever. The staff actually strictly enforced the boarding times, so boarding was very smooth. Had 3 free glasses of bubbly at the sailaway party and it was actually drinkable! We ate at  The Wake tonight and were very impressed with the food and service. Saw a show tonight that was so full of energy it was great. Only downside was that we had to stand for the whole hour performance because there was only very limited seating provided and it was only on the upper level.

We did purchase our cruise with Velocity points and it was a real bargain.

3 hours ago, arxcards said:

The only pre-communication I have seen is in US dollars, which tells me that the Australian office sat on their hands with this.

I phoned my Princess cruise planner on Monday morning to add wifi and she had not heard anything about the price increases. She thought I had read incorrect information, but I did manage to convince her that I needed to organise it right then before prices went through the roof.  She seemed genuinely blindsided and wanted to know where I found out about the increase.  

29 minutes ago, aussielozzie18 said:

Bugger!  - I missed this post.  3 x 20yo on board for our Alaska cruise.  Just checked - yep $38aud pp, per day for our upcoming cruise.  Ouch!  
 

Weird that the price in the app comes up in AUD but the excursions are in USD.

Check the price for the 4 device plan. I think they have adjusted that so it is now cheaper to buy than several individuals buying a 1 device plan.

21 minutes ago, sewgood said:

I jumped in and purchased wifi for my next Princess cruise today before the price rise tomorrow.

Since it is a long cruise it was worth prepaying.

I rang my PVP and added wifi for a long cruise in October 2025. I don ‘t have to pay for it until final payment.

I really think Princess are just using the increase in port fees as an excuse. Apparently they hadn’t increased for 3 years or so, so the increase was not much compared to inflation over that time. I’m sure Princess wouldn’t freeze their charges for 3 years!  If that was the real reason, then Princess could increase the port charges they oncharge to cruisers. I would much rather pay an extra $3.50 than the cost of flights and overnight accommodation in Sydney. It really adds to the cost and makes short cruises uneconomic for Melbourne residents.

Thanks for the recommendation. That was a good laugh.

We have taken the overnight train from Melbourne to Sydney several times before a cruise. We buy a first class ticket, as the seats recline more than the seats in economy, so we get a bit more sleep. The first class checked luggage allowance is 2 x 20 kg + hand luggage.  We have found the service reasonably reliable,although on one occasion the train was replaced by buses from Albury to Sydney (we did have advance notice).

We cruised on Coral Princess in March and boarded with 12 bottles of wine. The alcohol table was quite busy with several passengers carrying wine aboard.  On that occasion they actually recorded the details of each bottle of wine, including the year before applying the corkage stickers. Somehow the charge never appeared on our account!

@Aus Traveller

I did not see any bottles with stickers, but very few passengers actually had bottles of wine. When we boarded early we were told that the alcohol table collecting corkage was not ready yet but would be set up soon. We just stated that we knew about corkage and would pay it when we took the bottles to the dining room.

At each port of call there was a manned table when we reboarded. Official policy is that alcohol is taken and stored until the end of the cruise. In practice the crew manning the xray scanners ignore one bottle per person.

33 minutes ago, Aus Traveller said:

Someone posted that corkage was charged in the dining room on the Grand. I am hoping that it will be done that way on the Coral also.🙂

Corkage is normally charged on excess bottles when boarding. We boarded the Grand very early and they had not yet set up the table where they record and charge the corkage and put stickers on the paid bottles. That is why we were charged the corkage in the dining room.  This also applied to us last month on Majestic Princess.

The other times you may be charged corkage in the dining room are when you take your one permitted boarding bottle to the dining room, or when you take a bottle that you have brought aboard at one of the ports.

Princess does still have guest lecturers speaking about various enrichment topics, which may or may not be of interest to you.  The lectures are also recorded and are available on the tv to be viewed in your cabin if you miss the live lecture.

On Grand Princess this month to New Zealand there were lectures about Ancient Egypt -

-  Ramses The Great

-  The Trial of Akhenaton

-  Tutankhamen

-  Female Pharaohs

There was also ANZAC Story with Jessica Potter, and Navigation From The Bridge.

There were Maori ambassadors onboard and they conducted several New Zealand related classes and dance workshops.

The destination expert presented lectures about the various ports before we visited them, providing information about history, culture, and practical information about how to get around independently etc.

On the followingGrand Princess South Australia cruise there were destination lectures and Enrichment Lectures were:

-  Captain Cook Setting Standards for Travellers

-  Famous People’s Illness Changed The World

On Majestic Princess to Fiji in November there were destination lectures, navigation lectures and a guest lecturer presented 8 lectures about aviation. The topics were:

-  Adrenalin Rush - Training Jet Fighter Pilots

-  Top Gun For Real?

-  Amelia Earhart - Facts, Theories, Stories

-  WW1 Biplanes and the Brave Young Pilots

-  Antarctic Flying Heroes and Rescues

-  Air Show Jet Pilot

- Trouble at 39000 Feet: When Planes Crash

-  Business Jets: Glamour and Glitches