Matamanoa2

We did it a few years ago in March and it was very rocky. We just completed that passage again and it was very smooth. You can't really count on it to be one way or the other. Mother Nature always calls the shots.

We just recently did a tour to Hobbiton with Viator out of Tauranga and it was the best tour of our cruise. Amazing place to visit and shouldn't be missed.

We can attest to that as we just got off the Coral which went around Australia for 26 days. Very disappointed in how things were handled in Darwin as we went to an industrial dock and the drive from there into Darwin via buses was 45 minutes each way. There were not enough buses for everyone and we had to get a shuttle ticket and then wait for our number to be called to get on a bus. Our ticket number was 11 but by two o'clock we still had not been called and so we gave up and gave our tickets to someone else. We heard the last shuttle ticket number called at 4:00 p.m. and found out that not only were not a lot of stores open in town but that most museums and attractions closed at 5:00 p.m. What a waste of a day! It seems that Princess is using quite a few out of the way piers for docking as they don't want to pay higher docking fees. The passengers are the ones paying for Princess's stubborness. In San Francisco where we ended our trans-Pacific, we were docked at Pier 80, an industrial port miles from downtown or the Embarcadero. Princess once again arranged for buses, free of charge, for transportation to Union Square or Pier 27 on the Embarcadero and once again it was a disaster. We stood in long lines in the parking lot with our luggage, waiting for the few buses that were ferrying passengers to this destinations and we stood for over an hour because there were so few buses and the traffic was bad in SF that day. Thankfully it was a sunny day and I can't imagine what that wait would have been like in the rain. Shame on Princess!