colourbird

We have a Japan cruise coming up in 699 days (but who is counting?) and have a balcony as we only do balcony cabins and haven't had any bad experiences with them (except on Celebrity Edge where the infinite balcony window was locked a couple of times. We haven't worked out tours yet, but for a previous cancelled cruise we had purchased non-ship tours for each city. I hadn't thought about walking around, but if we are dropped off at stations, a 10km walk is only 2 hours each way so probably worth doing as we'd experience a lot of Japan along the way.

Enchantment is doing almost exclusively Western Caribbean cruises from now till the end of April 2026, so not sure how they can sell Aussie cruises on her.

Must be boring for the captain. When we were on Edge on her first trip around New Zealand, the crew were really excited to be going somewhere new from them. Oceania tries to never repeat an itinerary which is good. So not every cruise line is scared to do something different. Maybe when they get more ships, they will homeport from Sydney.

When we did the 17 night Northern explorer on Coral Princess last year, there were only a handful of non-retired passengers on board so there is a market for longer cruises.

I'm on that 11 night Diamond Princess cruise from Brisbane to Sydney. A friend has also booked on this cruise. We haven't been allocated cabins yet. Hope they are near each other. He's been on Diamond before and really liked her. This will be my first time aboard.

I don't mind sea days, but there's nothing stopping them adding ports up the Aussie coast. We're stopping in Brisbane and Newcastle on the way back down the coast next year.

I wouldn't mind this one, but i'm not back in time from my Icon of the Seas cruises. I need a cruise for the 2nd half of 2026 so this is a possibility if it repeated.

Yes we went on Adventure when she was pretty much brand new in 2022!

Why can't we have cruises to PNG from Sydney for something a bit different? Not sure why they always start in Brisbane.

They could have sent a Quantum ultra class ship to Sydney instead of an older ship. Virgin sent their newest ship to Australia. Other lines don't seem to be able to do that.

This is such big news, it must be quite rare for passengers to miss their ship.

Actually, if the ship has to leave they will, even if their tours haven't returned. Weather or tides may require a ship to leave before all the passengers return. If you are on a ship tour, they will assist you to get back to the ship. If you are on a private tour, you are on your own.

We got to explore the ship and have a meal on her in Sydney one night back in December. I can understand why you had a great time. We have enough cruises booked till the next Virgin ship arrives in Australia. Unfortunately Valiant Lady is in Sydney overnight 4-5 December 2025 and we arrive on Discovery Princess the next day so will miss out if Virgin repeats the open day on her.

I booked Discovery's repositioning cruise to Sydney. We had a great time doing a similar cruise on Majestic several years ago. It's good when they swap ships like this (unlike RCI sending us Ovation each year) as I like to try out different ships rather than ones i've been on before.

She's a beautiful ship. I'm looking forward to sailing on her sometime or maybe Valiant Lady who is due here for the 2025 to 2026 season.