losfp

Yeah I think it was pretty much "win the game, and look to next week". Some junk time goals to North and plenty of shots butchered. Oh well.

I have done the nerdly maths so you don't have to. If we let North Melbourne score 30, we need to score 72 (win by 42) If we let North Melbourne score 50, we need to score 98 (win by 48) If we let North Melbourne score 70, we need to score 124 (win by 54)

Our first 4 quarter effort in a while. Very pleasing intensity and effort. Big few weeks coming up, a top 4 finish is in reach.

It's an unusually tight ladder this year. Geelong the clear standout, and there's 5-6 teams who could finish anywhere from 2nd to 7th depending on results. Then 3 teams - St Kilda, Richmond, Bulldogs - to fight out for 8th spot. Then finals is a whole different ballgame. Who even knows.

Very impressive win and superb coaching. The Dockers burst out of the blocks and kicked the first three goals, but the Swans regained some control after that and in fact probably were the better team in the last 3 quarters. It was some sloppy goalkicking that held us back and in fact I was pretty worried that we would pay for it like we did in the Essendon game. The coaching staff had figured out the Dockers' zone defence and instructed the team to play a short chipping game. Just short little kicks to a free man and being patient and controlling the ball. Very reminiscent of the powerful Collingwood team of 2010/11, you just couldn't get it back off them with their patience. Of course the crowd didn't like that, but I was astounded that Fremantle didn't adapt at all over 3 quarters. Baffling. Super important win in the context of the season, and we've now beaten 3 of the top 4 teams. Now if we can figure out how to beat a bottom 4 team.......

Good luck with your decision. I agree with most other posters that it really has to be an individual decision and up to you as to the level of risk you take. COVID is out there. And it's going to be present on ships too. With 3000+ people, it's statistically inevitable unfortunately. All you can do is decide on your own personal comfort level, and take precautions for yourself. I'm pretty much back to normal activities, but will put a mask on if I have to be in close quarters indoors - like movies, theatre etc. I'm not too bothered outdoors or if there's space to mantain distance indoors. Our first cruise in 3 years is coming up in January.. and I'll be keeping a close eye on what happens between now and then. I'm happy to be extra careful on-board, it's not a huge deal to mask up, maintain distance and wash/sanitise etc. We're not really into dancing or socialising so I'm hoping some of the risk is taken away.

If you're short on time, I would honestly just fly to NZ, drive one of the islands and fly home. There's no cruise that will just do NZ, from what I can tell. If you're driving the south island, it's really easy to book a Milford sound cruise - it'll be a smaller vessel and a day trip, but very worthwhile - it's the best way to see the sounds tbh.

Thanks for the reports!! Looking forward to our January trip. I hope all the teething issues after restarting are smoothed out by then 😄 😄

Just one of those days. Swans take their opportunities, we win by a solid 30 points. But missing a lot of gettable shots cost us big time, and Essendon grew in confidence and were able to snag a vital win. Oh well. Onto next week.

Much of the game was pretty ugly to watch. Overly defensive and scrappy with lots of turnovers and errors. Swans had a 15 minute burst in the 3rd quarter though, which was pretty great to watch and put the match beyond doubt. But I'll take the win!

Yep I think what happened was they needed to sort out and confirm the sailing that was split up, and froze existing sales until they did so. Fingers crossed I'm just worrying over nothing, and all the later sailings will be fine.

I suspect you're right, and that's annoying. If your cruise gets radically altered or cancelled, it might be too late to organise an alternative cruise at the same price 😞

That would normally be the case, but as far as I can tell, Coral and Majestic are both showing unavailable all the way, through mid 2024. No way known they are both sold out. So my guess is that they're trying to work something out with deployments, and not selling anything on those ships until they figure it out.

Looking at the recent tweaks to some of the upcoming cruises, I went looking on the Princess website. I'm not sure if I'm reading too much into it, but right now, basically every Coral Princess and Majestic Princess cruise out of AU/NZ in the next few months is showing as Unavailable. Could this be a precursor to more cancellations or possible redeployments? Or maybe they're offline briefly for no apparent reason and I'm panicking over nothing 🙂 We have our long awaiting Jan 2023 NZ cruise on Majestic, it would be great if we didn't have to scramble to make alternative plans......

I've been on Majestic a couple of years ago, and again this coming January. From memory there were NO dining venues that regularly served sushi. The Asian cuisine options are the Harmony specialty restaurant and the noodle bar on the pool deck. Diamond has a sushi restaurant and I really wish we'd tried it out on our cruise in Jan 2020, our last cruise before all of this *gestures at everything* happened.

I think for the foreseeable future, it would be wise to have ALL the documentation and paperwork for everything when you turn up lol. I'm not discounting the rules changing at the last minute (or indeed.. on the way to the port!!) so I'm not leaving anything to chance. Ours is January though so hopefully they've worked out the kinks by then. I can dream, right?

There's a webapp version of the app that they can use. Alternatively they do it old school and turn up and do the paperwork upon check in like they've always done. You'd want to make sure you've got all the right paperwork, especially as it pertains to vaccinations, covid test etc.. but my understanding is that you can always turn up and check in like normal.

Curious to see how our January cruise on Majestic goes. My understanding is that the medallion itself is fine, but the companion app is buggy and flaky, which is a shame. I like it when companies innovate, but putting something out when it's not ready can really erode confidence in the whole platform. Oh well, we'll see how it goes. I've been mostly been able to fill out the required documentation so far using a combination of the app and the browser based site, but honestly it's not as user friendly as it should be.

We are usually terrible after the bye. Don't know why. You would think they would work on it after being terrible after the bye for years! I didn't watch the game as I was at another event. Guess I won't be watching the replay or highlights, by the sound of it, it won't be worth it! There's always next week.

For those playing along... an update 🙂 We had a big win today. Originally we booked the cruise at $9618 AUD for our family of four - they wouldn't apply the 30% off promo for us even though it appeared that our cruise qualified for it in the terms and conditions. We booked it anyway because we really wanted to do it. So of course, a few weeks later, they've finally applied the promo to this cruise. When I spotted the discrepancy, I asked our agent to rebook it, understanding that we would probably lose our non refundable deposit. She called them up and harrassed them into honouring the new price AND keeping our original deposit as well, so now we will be saving around $3300 AUD. Not a bad outcome, and a perfect example of the benefits of having a good travel agent in your corner!! To be fair, RCI are going to get that extra money in the form of dining and excursions that we might have skipped with the original pricing! We are also sailing on Explorer of the Seas beforehand, a 7n cruise to the Greek Isles, then 5 days for us to get to Rome to sail on Odyssey.

I've done New Zealand twice, once was an 11 day self-drive tour of the South Island which was amazing. Beautiful scenery and we still felt like we could have spent a few more days just in the South Island. The second time we went was a 13 night cruise roundtrip from Sydney. It was a more relaxing trip but you don't feel like you experienced a lot of the destination, which comes with the territory of a cruise I suppose. If I was planning my first or only trip to New Zealand, I would try and combine the two by booking a one-way cruise and then spending a few days inland (you wouldn't be able to do a LOT in just a few days, but you would IMO get more out of those few days on land). But I totally get that a cruise is the easiest way to get a sampler of some destinations. We are doing much the same late in 2023 with our first trip to Europe. We would get a better experience travelling by land but we have booked two cruises to give us a taster of some of the towns and culture while giving us the relaxation and predictability of a cruise with our kids. We will tackle it differently when we go back later on when the kids have grown up.

To be fair, that was our 2015 All Disney All the Time trip - Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise, Disneyland, Aulani Disney resort in Hawaii. So we had to do the matchy-matchy shirts 😄 Now it's a bit different, the older girl is a grumpy teen

That's the beauty of the bye week 😄 😄

I mean... I can admire the dedication of something who wants to get their pier-runner commitments over and done with early, even before the cruise begins! 😄😄

I'm definitely a fan of early boarding. Get in there, get a quick meal and then start wandering. But then again I'm used to carting around two small children and preparing for delay contingencies 😄