arxcards

In the main, those cruising in suites or with elevated tier status are very discrete. At the breakfast table, over time I have found it is those with 10 to 15 cruises or those in a balcony for the first time are most prone to talk up their importance. If you have cruised long enough they will identify themselves at breakfast, with an opening line - Is this your first cruise? Usually fun to play along. We really don't care, having cruised inside, outside, upside down - and a few nice suites to boot. Suites are not allocated on merit to those most deserving, but those who paid a premium for some extra real estate and a few perks.

The final Freo to Freo cruise for Coral. It is a little on the dear side, but it has sold out and you are aboard and I hope you get to enjoy her us much as we did. There is N/C soft serve at the solarium pool and different ice creams in the dining room each night, so maybe a little more value for you. I would certainly be paying the premium to cruise from home too. At this stage, we have only been tempted to fly across the country for a Freo cruise once, and that was when airfares were more reasonable. I hope you can get some more ships based in Freo in the years ahead.

In a balanced world, everyone is entitled to an opinion, but those pages are far from balanced or democratic. Sadly these non-affiliated social media pages are just a fan club, often moderated by people that will prevent contrary opinion. In the case of most unofficial P&O pages, it is only OK to negatively critique other cruise lines. To become part of the collective, resistance is futile. So, a contrary opinion is shouted down. Even facts are dismissed if they don't fit the agenda of the group, and once again, everyone nods in agreement.

Yes, Barb has a crook shoulder, so I become the mule and prefer not to be muscling around two heavy cases if I can avoid it. There will come a time when that will no longer be possible.

Two weeks would usually be 1 x 23kg case between us, plus a carry-on each. If we are travelling with winter clothes we will go with 2 x cases, but heaps of weight to spare. As a packing guide: a) Get out all of your clothes ready for packing b) Pack half of those clothes c) Grab your wallet and take double the cash

Yes, a limitation with the way their data reports to the app. As a $US cruise, it presumes plus was purchased as the US version.

You say pages. P&O has one page, and I have not known them to ban anyone. If tagged, they will try to engage you with a "Sorry you are disappointed, please direct message us the details" kind of effort. These other pages have nothing to do with P&O, and are run by cruisers for a group of like minded passengers - a fan club. There is a varying degree of over-moderation by page admins with a hive mentality who just want agreeable members. Those pages are not a great place for rocking the boat. I agree, I don't partake in FB cruise passenger groups for those and other reasons. I learn more here, and enjoy contrary discussion, but at times I miss out on connecting with groups of fans on our cruises. This is much more than just about cruising.

I don't know. It wasn't by design. Perhaps by upsetting someone at Princess.

Yes, that is easy to confirm - after booking. By the general rule, a ship coming or going between an Aussie season & Asia is $AU, with a fare that has absorbed any daily gratuities. Princess literature confuses this more than we do.

For P&O Edge, it would be a $50pp charge.

Genius

And that's why we have a local office to dot the T's 😉

Getting in early for the cancellation credits? 😉

For those looking forward to sliding down a chute into a raft, it would only be in a dire emergency mostly when not all the life boats could be used. Correct, there isn't enough life boats for everyone aboard, but on most ships there are enough for every passenger plus assigned crew manning each lifeboat. Most of the crew get to practice drills getting into life rafts, as that is where most of them will be huddled if the ship has to be abandoned. For the newer ships, you will see a letter like this in your cabin: You would think bigger ships would need to provide more lifeboats, but it becomes an issue of how quickly you can get passengers into all of them. The life raft system allows for a more rapid evacuation of the ship. In the event of an evacuation at sea, I would be following this bloke to find the quickest way off the ship.

I have a fair bit of a family trace from Northumberland, but definitely not the Campbell clan. By some connection, I live in Northumberland County (the early pre-council pastoral & parish boundaries). Have a fair bit of my ancestry from around Hadrian's Wall

Yes, I always believed that was how it should be too. Just noting how confusing it can be when the Princess brochure doesn't match reality.

The pre-assign happens on embarkation morning. They will look at their bookings and adjust if required prior to sending to vouchers to cabin. Until then, unless pre-paid, it is just a reservation. A pre-assign can include changing an existing booking. It has happened to us, per my previous post. By the time the suite vouchers and premier vouchers are assigned, particularly on short cruises, these restaurants are already oversold prior to embarkation. This is certainly true for Coral Princess in Australia, where the ship only has Bayou and Sabatini's. If you are on a newer ship for 7 nights or longer, you are not likely to have any bookings changed. There will be heaps of capacity over 7 nights to satisfy everyone's dining credits.

If booked & pre-paid with credit card, no. With premier package dining credits, yes. They = Princess, and this is listed in the Plus/Premier packages T&C. I wont bother to link the Australian version I have pasted from. Specialty Dining – two Specialty Dining meals are available per each Princess Premier guest. Each specialty dining meal consumed by a guest in a stateroom with this package will have the meal credited against the entire stateroom. It is recommended that guests make the Specialty Dining reservations pre-cruise using Princess® App. Princess Cruises reserves the right to pre-assign Specialty Dining times and location. The Specialty Dining included in Princess Premier does not include items with extra charges on the menus. Availability of Specialty Dining might be limited on certain cruises. Restaurants vary by ship. So, as explained to me, if everyone wants Crown Grill and it is booked out, you will not be guaranteed to be able to use both of your Premier package bookings there just because you got in first.

That is true, but it feels like they are sitting on a street corner with a cardboard sign. Ten years ago, CLIA was respected and constructive as they were lobbying to open-up Australian ports to offer more variety for cruise lines to sell to their overseas markets. As with this past week of Royal's "new" offerings, passenger lament is about the lack of anything new, not the cost of port charges. We will still cruise domestically to keep our toes wet and escape for a few days. As for Australians have not just returned to cruising, they’ve come back with enormous enthusiasm and at a faster pace than in other markets worldwide, it could have something to do with being shut down longer with massive credits in our pockets that needed to be redeemed in 2023. With less ships here next summer, it would seem that we are now losing enthusiasm at just as fast a pace. Not the fault of the cruise lines or CLIA, but we are now in a spend-less economy. Grudgingly, I might accept that booking cruises may not be essential spending.

Nothing seeping from the usual cracks. It must be quiet in PCP land.

We have encountered this issue on short cruises. At one stage, you could pre-book your restaurants via the app with your dining credit, but we have even had those bookings cancelled without notice. Premier seems to be more popular with shorter voyages, as the price premium is not large for the per cruise items such as dining & photos. Princess oversells the premier packages, and there are large numbers of passengers with two specialty dining credits on a 3 or 4 night cruise. They now say they can assign your dining at their discretion for day, time & restaurant. On an occasion we had a booking cancelled due to overbookings, we were given an alternative to use the credit for surf & turf in the MDR. I don't know if this is regularly offered, or was just an on-the-spot solution for us from the maitre D. Since then, I just don't bother with a premier package. Now I will just go with Plus, and use my credit card to pre-book a confirmed specialty restaurant booking at the time and place of our choosing.

Yep, shorter cruises equals more cruises equals more passengers. A couple of extra players in 2023 helped that along a bit too. CLIA are good for a stat. They used to pump the climbing numbers of Aussie passengers, and us being the most cruised per capita in the world. Now they have found a different stat to push, which is great for 2023, but will fall away in 2024. The key reason for pumping a stat is all detailed in the last paragraph - the industry lobby is lobbying for better facilities (I applaud) and cheaper port charges. Costs for all land based tourism in Australia are going through the roof, yet the cruise line association wants to lower costs for cruise lines.

I still see $100pp per night inside as a line in the sand. For insides on Luminosa, I am seeing 3 & 4 night cruises for around $150pp per night, but that is offset by $500 of OBC (VIFP offer) which looks like it gives a nice discount, but OBC is money spent, not a cheaper fare. P&O is also around $150pp per night for non-refundable deposit fares. No OBC. They have more consistent prices with their balconies, but they are still not offering bargain basement pricing. I went looking for some cheap pricing that was around for Pacific Explorer departing Cairns to PNG, as well as end of season relocations back to Brisbane & Sydney. No bargains to be found, as it looks like P&O has pulled the pin on them sometime in the past couple of weeks and added some Explorer cruises into Brisbane. Brisbane to Sydney 2 nights on Explorer in July is $198pp, so you can get a sub $100pp per night domestic cruise, albeit in winter, coming up to final payment, on the oldest ship, it is P&O, and an airfare to be added.

It is an altered one way itinerary that sails in less than two weeks. It is an anomaly that you won't get within double that price on any other Princess cruise.

Kookaburra swims in an old chip fryer, Flapping up and down with his butt on fire. Laugh, Kookaburra, laugh. How hot your beak must be.