colourbird

These must be the balconies we always look down on!

1 hour ago, arxcards said:

You could select a cabin, but not the ones you wanted. Your comment holds the answer - it isn't possible to sell the same cabins on the 7 & 4 night individual cruises and also sell them on the 11 night combo cruise. I think it holds true that of those cruises on offer, that the 7 night Brisbane to Brisbane cruise will be the most popular, it made sense that more cabins were allocated to that option.

 

We did consider booking the 7 and the 4 night cruises separately. There wasn't a big difference in pricing, and it is still an option to anyone wanting to book a b2b specific cabin. 

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. 

Just now, arxcards said:

If they wanted that, they wouldn't be offering a combined 11 night cruise option at all.

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.

15 minutes ago, arxcards said:

BA & BB balconies will normally have selectable cabins. They are midship, upper balconies. They are also more expensive. BD, BE, BF are more likely to be guarantee, but are less expensive. All the same, if you tell an agent you will only book if you can get specific cabin numbers, they can usually shake one out of the booking system.

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.

8 minutes ago, arxcards said:

We are on the same cruise. I booked later than you, but booked a specific cabin. The last I looked, there was still a handful of specific cabins available, but maybe not in the grade you want.

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

4 minutes ago, arxcards said:

If you book early enough, you can book a specific cabin, although not in all grades. Once those allocated cabins are filled, they will default to guarantees so they can be more flexible in how they sell the remaining cabins. Even then, get your T/A or PCP to shake the tree for you.

 

No big deal. If you book late, all of the preferred cabins are already taken, so you may as well settle for pot luck anyway. Be wary though. Most T/As will pitch you their best price, and those will be on bookings with non-refundable deposits for guarantee cabins. There will often be specific cabins, but at a price.

 

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.

1 hour ago, Chiliburn said:

There seems to be a big hole in our 25-26 season,there’s just about no southern Australian cruises. Anthem does one night in Hobart and that’s it.

I reckon we can expect Serenade doing southern Australia.

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.

46 minutes ago, yarramar said:

On Boxing Day, the shops will be packed with bargain hunters, I would be heading for David Jones in Elizabeth St for a traditional Australian shopping experience

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

51 minutes ago, MicCanberra said:

You may be right, especially as tendering will be needed for the ports (south pacific) over winter.

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

6 hours ago, Sparky74 said:

If Australia is a lucrative cruise market, why aren’t there more ships based here year round?

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.

3 hours ago, MicCanberra said:

Because there are not many ships here all year round sailing to warmer climates (south Pacific, PNG, top end, etc, )

Catch-22!

3 minutes ago, Sparky74 said:

If Australia is a lucrative cruise market, why aren’t there more ships based here year round?

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

7 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

And that is exactly why I want a table for two for breakfast! I am not civilized until I've had a pot of strong tea. Even Rolf knows not to ask me anything serious before I've had some food and my tea!

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.

2 minutes ago, cruiser3775 said:

Undoubtedly not. Having a sense of entitlement because you paid more than the peasants in steerage is unlikely to be the criteria used in evacuating people in a major emergency.

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.

5 minutes ago, Yaya_in_Oz said:

Seriously, I just think the bigger the ship the more life rafts they probably have and there would be almighty chaos on the Icon if passengers did have to abandon ship in any sort of hurry. if you are in a suite to do get first choice of life boat?

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

21 minutes ago, Ondine said:

Why does the name Titanic come to mind???

Pretty sure she didn't have life rafts.

16 hours ago, Yaya_in_Oz said:

Interesting video, although I agree you can probably get anything out of statistics that you want.

So if the Aus market is growing very slowly why are ships disappearing from the market? Being replaced by bigger ships and less of them?

I don't think much of that Icon of the Seas full stop but now this bloke reckons they don't have enough lifeboats, just life rafts?? Accident waiting to happen. 🙄

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.

12 minutes ago, Chiliburn said:

@springaussie
A local big  cruise specialist has just overhauled its website and now lists Enchantment of the seas in its search engine for Australia.

Its got all of Anthems and Voyager but when you select Enchantment ?

 

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. 

6 hours ago, arxcards said:

In comparison, we are not so different either. You mention Icon. Over the next two years, it visits only 11 ports and every cruise is a 7-nighter and only one cruise skips Coco Cay. It is a defined offering, and designed to generate maximum profit.

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.