arxcards

We used to stay at a few of the hotels along Kingsford Smith Drive. Yes, it does get consistently good reviews. They are very much 80's style, and the price reflects that. For a good feed nearby, I can recommend the Hamilton Hotel just under a block away. Woolies isn't as close as it would appear on the map - seven lanes of a busy main road with a skinny median strip and no access into the shopping complex from Kingsford Smith drive.

Alas, they will continue to sell cabins until they are 100% sure those cruises wont be going ahead, as would every other cruise line.

I doubt the call centres will have any information, as nothing has been decided by the powers that be. This may all hinge on the practicality of relocating to Australia if the Red Sea is still unsafe to navigate. Ships of various lines are yet to confirm what they are doing over the next couple of months, let alone November. The relocation of Resilient Lady back to Europe in March/April is likely to face major changes, and I believe that there has been no decision made for that yet.

There may be some adjustments to allow for some cruising royalty to board. I think it really is for the reason cited, but just keep an eye out for cruising royalty after you board tomorrow.

Also in March 2025, according to post #15 on this topic. It is strange, but I have no history with Virgin to know if it is just a mistake or a smoking gun.

Personally, I would look for an airport hotel and get a short stay booking for a room. Relax, use the amenities and chill for the long flight home. Then grab an airport shuttle when you need to be at the airport.

It is pretty common for guarantee cabins not to be allocated until pretty late, even when showing as sold out. With your earlier move-over offer, I figure there was someone in a suite who was happy to take the deal. Even if they were short by a balcony, that could upgrade someone from a balcony into your mini putting you into a suite.

Taxis are OK. They are reluctant to go to the terminal because it is a 5km drive back for their next fare if there is nobody needing a cab at the terminal. Aussie taxis are used to driving on bad roads. I will +1 for Alcyone. We stay at Alcyone Apartments in the Portside complex, pretty much exclusively now. They will arrange for a taxi when you are ready to depart to the terminal. Lots of easy food options, cafes, a small supermarket and just a nice casual vibe. Should you wish to head into the CBD for anything, a walk along the riverfront for a few hundred metres will find you at Brett's Wharf for a cat into the city. We are booked there via booking.com for late February and it is refundable. Usually the non-refundable option is a bit cheaper, but I will take a refundable option, then switch to a non-refundable option a few days out if it is cheaper.

She is a Loyal Royal employee and can't really detail future plans for Ovation until those with affected bookings have been notified, which includes extra time for it to filter to them via travel agents. Hawaii could have been part of their plans for a West Coast to Hawaii run at the time it was listed.

The NSW ones are the original recipe. When Arnott's first started in Morpeth, they predominately baked ship biscuits, hence the hardness. They had talked about "rationalising" and baking in a single location at one stage, so a win for the customer if that has been thwarted.

We have had one, which worked in our favour. It was a full refund plus a free cruise of a similar length within the following 6 months. We had others through covid, where the cancelled cruises allowed you to get a refund, a credit, or a move-over to a sweetened deal for a specific future cruise. We had another that we declined, as it wouldn't have compensated for flights that had already been booked & paid, and also messed-up the leave we had put aside for it. A forced move-over would have been far from lucky.

I wonder what ship is at Circular Quay, and which ship is near Fort Denison?

Salted Caramel is supreme, but when I just have to have some, I will do a 12,000 step walk along the Newcastle beaches for a coffee and one or two of these salted caramel donuts. As sweet things go, this is the best thing I have ever eaten (priced accordingly). https://www.doughheads.com.au/pages/doughnut-menu

And for a ship with 5000 passengers, it would be double trouble.

I don't think that is an issue here. People seek your opinion on these things because you work in the terminals - we proclaim you as the expert on those matters. Wild speculation is met with agreement, but also derision or laughter and rarely taken at face value.

I guess the bigger you get, the smaller the biscuits look. They always seemed bigger when we were kids. They have changed some things over the years, and the gingernuts are a prime example. Depending on your local Arnotts bakery, the hardness of a gingernut varied as well as the flavour. I think they now make them with a single recipe in a single bakery. The pack sizes on Tim Tams shrunk some years back, but the biccies seem to be the same. Arnotts is another of those Aussie companies that started in Morpeth. Lemon Crisp or Shortbread Cream for me.

Good luck. Hard to know what I would do if we were booked, but would consider cancelling the first half and flying to the UK, then doing a British Isles or European cruise prior to boarding in Dover for the cruise home. I am not sure they will make that a possibility anyway. Oops, that sounds a lot like we are hoping to do in 2025. I hope this will still be an awesome cruise for everyone, as long as the ship behaves this time.

Balcony dinner shows as $AU159.50 (for two) on Coral next month and on Crown in 2025. It also shows as $170 on Diamond next Feb 2025. Flip a coin, although you can see that option on the personaliser to confirm. Chef Table Lumiere is more expensive. At last count for me (late last year when Royal arrived) it was $140pp, or $170pp with wine pairings. Lumiere is on the Royal class ships. The older ships with the regular Chef's Table are a bit cheaper - $129 or $149 with wine pairings. Those prices were also from late last year.

It likelyhood, your cruise will not be cancelled, but you will be moved over from Ovation to Quantum to do pretty much the same itinerary. There is currently no transpacific itineraries for April/May 2025 on Royal's site - taken down while this is being worked through. They need to resolve the Quantum itineraries first before they can move anyone over to Quantum

That is part of it. Add-in demand exceeding supply, which drives up the price of commodities, which flows on to everything else. Expectations are just in trying to accurately predict how that sits, already knowing that some of their fixed costs will be more expensive. In my comment from 2 months ago, it was an observation in reverse. When we booked early in 2023, it looked expensive. Several months on after inflation had been occurring, it looks less expensive than it did. By the time we board in mid 2025, the expectation would be that it is probably a fair price. The equivalent cruise in 2026 is more expensive again, so another cycle of the above would appear to be factored in to expectations.

Not sure if it can be done, as it will be absolutely necessary to keep the same 30th April scheduled date for Sydney to keep with flights and accommodation already held by a large number of passengers embarking the world cruise as well as a majority disembark for a shipload at the end of a 35 night cruise around the Pacific. 4 days to go Auckland to Sydney via Brisbane would be more than a challenge, and it also alters the plans of those boarding in Brisbane by 3 to 4 days. I think it is likely they will go to schedule till Brisbane, then head south back past Sydney for a day & service stop in Fremantle, then across the Indian Ocean. It would seem likely that to keep to the date for Dover, Coral will have to have an extra sea day or two in comparison to Island.

Another subtle adjustment to dodge the high seas. Vasco de Gama swapped the order of Melbourne & Hobart, so they are in an out of Tassie ahead of the front, and now heading for Melbourne. Damn clever that they can steer these ships away from bad weather.

Yes, they dropped Burnie & Adelaide. Their advantage is still that they have a much more direct route to Cape Town via Fremantle than Coral has with Brisbane as a key port.

What travel documents are required to board? | Royal Caribbean Cruises

Royal has both options, which you can choose with your online check-in. Unless it has changed since covid, they would default to doing their own conversion, so we always had it confirmed we were paying in $US at check-in.