colourbird

These must be the balconies we always look down on!

I understand what you are saying, but it still doesn't make sense to me. If we want one of those cabins for the 11 nighter all they have to do is let us select one and it becomes unavailable for the shorter cruises.

Then why not let us select a cabin? It makes no sense that passengers on the shorter legs can book cabins, but we can't. It could even get to the stage where we end up having to change cabins during the cruise depending on which ones are sold to the passengers on the shorter cruises.

We tried the TA contacting Princess method, but with no luck. The class of cabin made no difference as we could have selected our own cabin if booking the shorter segments. Maybe Princess was hoping we'd book the two separate legs individually in order to get more money out of us.

We were trying to get balcony cabins near the front of the ship on one of the higher levels.

We booked two cabins when they went on sale, so by the time they are allocated we will probably end up with two reject cabins that are nowhere near each other.

We have a Princess cruise in February 2025. We weren't able to select a balcony cabin, however if we were doing a shorter leg of the cruise, we would have been able to select a cabin at the time of booking.

If that's true, why wouldn't they have mentioned it during last month's big publicity campaign for Voyager and Anthem? It would have made a greater impact if they had included all the ships being deployed in Australia for the season (assuming more are being deployed here).

With recent cruise cancellations on Radiance, I'm sure they are working on plans to replace her. It will likely take several years until replacements for that class are in service. I doubt they will want to keep her going for 30 years.

For the small amount of money you save, it's not worth the hassle getting your own visas. When we obtained visas onboard previously, the process was quick and simple.

We have a Japan cruise coming up in 2026 so this is very interesting. We were last there over 25 years ago on a land based tour. We used a lot of public transport (trains) then and are planning to do the same this time. We haven't thought about a hotel yet, but it will be near a station and we will most likely catch a train to the cruise port.

Going by previous years, the city will be absolutely packed with shoppers.

Doesn't explain why they aren't selling the repositioning cruise for Anthem then.

It's possible Anthem will stay in Sydney all year round in a couple of years time as her last scheduled cruise isn't the usual repositioning cruise, but a return to Sydney in April 2026.

Catch-22!

A lot of Aussies cruise, but many of us go to warmer climates in the northern hemisphere during our off season.

See you on the Diamond, I'll keep away till after breakfast though. We'll have to have a meet and greet.

I hated maths at school, but ended up studying statistics at university as part of a major. I couldn't see why I'd ever need statistics in real life and thought it was a waste of time, but I ended up collecting, compiling, analysing, comparing and reporting on statistics at work for over 30 years.

Actually the way classes are segregated nowadays, it is quite likely suite guests will be ushered into to lifeboats first, whilst others have to wait in their respective lounges / muster stations till they are called.

Icon of the Seas would be unsinkable, rendering any lifeboats or rafts necessary only to comply with current laws.

Pretty sure she didn't have life rafts.

We were on Edge last year and the captain said there aren't enough lifeboats for the number of people on board, but with the addition of rafts, there's plenty of space. He said it is the same for most ships nowadays.

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.