Balsam12

Our first time with P&O as well. Not sure about WA being open to large ships yet. There are definitely small ship cruises happening up in the Kimberley. The first ship due into Fremantle (as far as I can find) is Coral Princess on 28 October.

Not until 14 October...

We are sailing on Encounter. I have the Verifly app, but I'm looking at the P&O website where it doesn't say....

Hi Folks, Does anyone know about wearing glasses and uploading your pics to P&O... should you take the pics with our without your glasses? Cheers

As Adventure has not sailed with P&O yet, nobody will be able to answer that question. When her sister ship Encounter starts sailing next month, people will be able to let you know what happens there.

Encounter on the move....

Always good to read a review from a first time cruiser. We are not first time cruisers, but have booked the Alaska cruise on Koningsdam for next year, and it will be our first HAL experience. My concern here is that the OP is comparing Club Orange to specialty dining, and from what I read, never actually dined in the MDR, so basically all dining was at an extra cost. I was hoping that there would be a comparison to the MDR in the review, as we have generally enjoyed MDRs on other cruise lines.

....and she has made it to Singapore 🙂

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I can't think of any other reason for them to go to the trouble and expense of shortening the smokestack other than going under the Sydney Harbour bridge....

I would agree with your observations on funnels... nothing seems to have been done to Encounter in that area.

Explorer sailed from Singapore on the 6th, and arrived in Sydney on the 18th, so 12 days. I double checked before posting this time 😁

I would suggest more in Singapore if they had to have a layover for any length of time. The costs to be tied up alongside vs at anchor would say they would be at anchor. I'm not overly familiar with Brisbane, but would think Singapore would be better water for that? My memory must be going with old age... you are 100% correct with the one day in Singapore for Explorer 😀

From memory, Explorer spent about a week in Singapore before heading to Australia.... One would think that they will pick up the rest of the crew there, and would not want them arriving in Singapore before the ship arrives so they don't need to pay for accommodation on land. Personal experience has been fly to Singapore, get picked up at Changi and taken directly to the ship. Admittedly that was a few years ago and on a different cruise line, but it would still make sense.

Well that's an easy decision to make.... 🍻

Two reasons to give passengers the option to cancel.... Firstly if they are concerned about catching Covid, but also because if a higher number of crew have it, the service standard would have to suffer...

With 53 B2B cruises, you would want to hope you get the same cabin throughout... packing everything up once a week would get annoying very quickly 🤪

My issue is not paying the gratuities, more with just wanting to know if it was already included in the fare, or if it was to be added at a later point... For those lines that don't add them, you can bet they have already increased the fare to cover them.

Things may have changed over the last couple of years, but the last cruise we did pre covid was RC Singapore to Hong Kong, and gratuities were included in the base fare.

Thanks for that. Not a big issue, just wanted to know in advance. Royal Caribbean also do not charge gratuities when you book cruises through their Australian website. Cheers

Just on a slight tangent, and not trying to hijack a thread.... We have booked an Alaska Cruise with HAL from Vancouver. Booked and paid for in AUD. From what I can see, we will be charged the daily gratuities on top of our fare. Can anyone confirm this?