arxcards

Thanks. Good to hear.

24/25 Australian itineraries have now been on hold for 3 weeks. Gonski for sure.

For all the talk of not having bottled water aboard, due to making a stand on single-use plastics, please tell me those aren't pre-packaged meals being served in single-use plastics.

Love the pics. Glad you had a great time.

Not so much. You can't have a meal of I Scream, so I don't know why they count that in their numbers. As far as restaurants go, is it 7 or 8, all in demand and mostly booked out prior to boarding. A week or two back, a friend spent three nights out of four dining in the buffet/pantry/food court/Galley. She would rather have dined in one of the restaurants but wasn't quick enough. Sure, nobody will starve on a cruise, but you are paying for all of these inclusive "free specialty" restaurants and it is a shame if they are all sold-out already.

It is a weird thing they do and really hard to explain. P&O has no loyalty program, but they have plenty of loyal passengers because they are reliable and predicable. Shortsighted, yes, but nothing to do with a lack of loyalty. The same dumb rules apply whether you are booking your 1st or 100th cruise with them. In the same sort of predicament, they now want to charge me $10 for eggs benny at breakfast, despite the number of cruises I have done with them. It is my choice whether to remain loyal with them, and we have decided to abandon ship on P&O.

The older version of plus is entitled to the same drinks as the current version and the same capping. The wine by the glass was capped, per the menus above, at $12 last year. I believe they are pretty much the same wines but have gone up to $14 per glass and cap raised to $14 as well.

Alfredo's pop-up sea day lunch in Sabatinis and free Ocean Now delivery via the app. Yes, pretty lame, especially if you like pizza.

Plus package doesn't favour wine drinkers. That is just the by the glass stuff - cheap & cheerful. There is more choice by the bottle, but you are paying for that. I also have no recollection as to what regions are represented. There is a thread from a year or so back with the full wine list of the day. You can also bring your finest from home - 2 bottles for cabin consumption, then as many as you like for dinner with corkage paid per bottle. Dinner martinis for us.

All good. I just didn't connect the dots.

yes

I am not sure why I read GBR as Great Britain. 🤣 Enjoy. A week today till we fly to Brisbane for our only planned cruise in 2023. Won't be excited until we get to the cruise terminal, but can't wait for a break.

Even return airfares from Newcastle to Brisbane last year were going to be more expensive than 7 nights solo on Luminosa. I guess that by the time airfares have normalised that the prices of relocation cruises will shoot-up to match. Oh well.

Wow, just 50 more days to get excited and find it is same-o. 😁

Found a new artist rendering of Metropolis of the Seas.

I always seemed to score "bird strike during previous take-off". Twice I had that when flying same day for a cruise ship tour & lunch at Portside.

I wouldn't risk it Phil. Spend a night in Brisbane so you don't need to rush to the airport. . . . 🤣 Just taking inspiration from the Sydney airport threads. But do consider you are arriving from an overseas port, and some delays are likely.

There are no cyclones Chez. In cruising terms, a storm in a teacup. Lincoln wasn't going to affect any cruising, and was barely a cat 1 for around 6hrs before it turned back over the NT coast. Likely a rough night for those on Pellew Islands and some flooding in the Gulf country, but no threat to Luminosa. The next few days look rather calm. Have a great cruise.

Yes, me too. They just have a thing where something a bit like that was the answer last time, and until they see something specific, they will cling to thinking they have given good advice for something irrelevant. Just curious. You used OBC to book tours, and what happened to you may well have occurred to others using OBC. Could also be a mistake that when they cancelled a tour for one of the skipped ports, they cancelled them all. Those using credit cards to book might be different again. Tours could be cancelled from head office, leaving the Aussie call centre with no valid explanation. Good luck getting this all sorted.

They have no idea either. It is the fault of the system that the call centre only work off scripts, and until an official response has been considered by higher authorities, they will only guess at an answer to end the call - they can't just hang-up. You can only hope to talk to a supervisor, but they are not necessarily sages of the unknown either. You can only hope that someone is following-up on your problem.

Yes indeed. Anywhere in the world a 32km taxi ride from one side of a city to the other would be expensive. An Uber will be less, but still expensive. I am not big on bus travel, but it is only for transit. We sussed out the same tour for late 2022, but met up with friends for lunch instead. Taxi is around $80 each way, Uber around $60 each way. Add your Sanctuary ticket prices of $54 each, and for 2 people in $AU, and for a rough comparison: Ship tour (also includes Mt Cootha lookout): $300 Return ship transfers to city plus ferry and admission: $280 Taxi and admission: $268 (variable) Uber and admission: $228 (variable). I would suggest pre-booking your Uber for both trips anyway. Not so much for the price, but to ensure availability. Going independent is more flexible, and I get that you are not tied to a rigid itinerary. I am not a fan of inflated priced ship bus tours either and tend to avoid them. Personally though, for a days experience in a foreign port, there isn't enough of a price difference for me to overlook the easy option and use up some OBC. We have spent quite a few hours on tour buses in Hawaii, and had lots of fun. Maholo.

Lucky the ship in Brisbane today was only a day visitor, Brilliance of the Seas. For at least part of the day, water was covering the access road. Would have made for an interesting day had it been a turnaround day.

Tears?

There is not great value in wine, as all the ones included in the package are cheap & cheerful. Very generic & easy to drink, but pretty boring. There are dozens more. Rather than post now, I will get some up to date ones. The packages cater for martinis much better than wine, so that keeps us happy.

It would still end in tears.