Aus Traveller

The title of each document still has the word 'Unavailable' underneath. ☹️

That's what it shows for me also. 🙂

I agree. It is doable. I suggest that the OP should opt for self-disembark (the first passengers off the ship, probably 7.30 to 8am). I suggest getting a taxi from the cruise terminal to the airport. This would take around 30 minutes. Check in for the Uluru flight would probably close at 9.30am.

No. The Pacific Encounter was the Star Princess.🙂

You can take as much wine as you can carry (or wheel on). The cost of corkage was still AUD$15 per bottle a couple of weeks ago. You are allowed one bottle per person without the corkage charge. When you pay the corkage they put a sticker on the bottle. You can then take them to the dining room where they are treated the same as if you bought them on board. 😁 I'm not game to try checking in a case of wine with the checked luggage because Princess' terms state that the wine has to be taken on in hand luggage. I did check on our last cruise if we could take additional wine on at intermediate ports of calls. the answer was "Yes - one free but you have to pay corkage on any more than that".

There are a couple of threads here with up-to-date prices. Unfortunately, Princess prices are high, but not as high as some other cruise lines. P&O Aust has lower prices. We cruise a fair bit on Princess, but we take our own wine and pay the $15 corkage.

Congratulations on your 50th and what a way to celebrate it! We are a few years ahead of you but we didn't celebrate our 50th on a cruise. It was at our daughter's home with all our family.

Ahh yes. You are quite correct. Sorry. However I am sure you looked great for that yearbook photo. 😁

I think you looked better in your white dinner jacket. 😁

Try Carnival to see if they will allow you to make the swap. If not, try another solution. Check with the Aust on-line TA you mention to ensure that you will be allowed to swap to another cruise. If they confirm you can, then switch your booking from Carnival to that TA. After that do the cruise swap you want.

From what I have seen, Princess duty free alcohol prices are not much better than Dan Murphys. With all ships, there is also the issue of a limited range. The couple of times we went to Marlenes, I was quite disappointed. The prices shown on the shelf were OK, but they had hardly any stock. Their excuse was that there had been a couple of ships kin port. Wouldn't that always be the case??? Wouldn't they know ahead what the shipping schedule is???

All I can remember is that you walk up the left-hand side of Coconut Square, past the Town Museum. Turn left into the left street and Marlene's is on the next corner.

We haven't had our passports checked on returning from a cruise for years, but the cruises have all originated in Australia. I can recall one cruise a year or two pre-COVID when we had our passports in hand when we approached the officer who was taking the Incoming Passenger Cards. He said "No. We don't need those. It was all done from the ship." We took that to mean that the ship supplied Aust Border Force with the details of all the passengers on board. No further checking took place. When the Ruby Princess issue blew up, I was surprised that people were implying that the fact they didn't have their passports inspected was suspicious. It wasn't. It was normal procedure and had happened to us two weeks earlier.

Interesting. I am not surprised. The timing of the disembarkation from the Ruby Princess accorded with the usual and actually might have been slower than usual. I seem to recall that one of the guest entertainers said he was one of the last off and it was close to 11am.

Our cruise a few weeks ago was on the Coral Princess to NZ. There was no passport check when we returned to Brisbane. It was the same procedure on several other cruises, even pre-COVID. Our passports were checked before we got on the ship.

As the OP has mentioned a short driving tour in the North Island, I will focus on that. You make a good point that the ship is calling into the important cities in the north. However, with a visit to Hobbiton while you are in Tauranga, you would miss Rorotua and I feel that is very important. To visit it by road before or after you cruise, you would probably need two days whereas visiting while the ship is in Tauranga, would take just one port day. On the internet, I see it is possible to stay overnight at Hobbiton. If you are a fan, you might enjoy this, but obviously it would be something you would do on an independent driving tour. If you are driving presumably after picking a car up from Auckland, you could visit Rotorua, Hobbiton and the glow-worm caves at Waitomo in a three-day car hire. If you planned to do this, you could do something else when the ship calls into Tauranga.

We have been on three Princess and two P&O cruises from the BICT since cruising re-started. It was only on our June cruise that they looked at the screen on our phone to see if we were in the green lane. On the following four cruises, no-one looked at it.

I will check it out. Thanks.

You mention Post #207 on the Roll Call. Presumably you mean the Roll Call for the Pacific Encounter cruise from Singapore. There are only 50-odd posts in that Roll Call. Am I looking in the wrong place?

A few of us on the World Cruise are researching the Indonesian visa issue. Do you know the link you used to get your visa? One Indonesian website I have looked at refers to flying into the country. So far I haven't seen where people on a cruise ship can apply. Maybe you can help.

My comments to the OP. Since cruising restarted there have been changes (another word for cut-backs). They don't now have the little bag of toiletries, pen, paper or tote bag for any passengers. I don't know if this was in your cabin or not, but on our last couple of Princess cruises we have had a sheet on the desk that outlines Elite events (evening drinks event, wine tasting, cocktail party). Because this is usually placed under the sheets that outline safety etc. it would be easy to miss. If your name was on the screen outside your door (and it would have showed elite), I am pretty confident that your room steward would have placed the proper paperwork in your cabin before your arrival. We have received a paper copy of the new version of the Princess Patter every day on each of our recent cruises. BTW, if you have a refundable credit balance on your account at the end of the cruise, you should receive an email notification in a month or so advising you how this can be forwarded to your bank account. This message isn't a scam.

The Italian restaurant on the Coral Princess is called Sabatini's. I have heard good reports, but after the recent price-rise, it mightn't be good value for money. We had a voucher for a specialty dinner on the Coral and chose the Bayou Cafe. The atmosphere was OK, the food was quite good, but the service was abysmal. The restaurant wasn't even a quarter full and our waiter had only six people to serve. Even so, it took two hours for the meal. I have to confess that our main course took so long coming that I asked the head waiter if we should go to the Horizon Court for dinner. The people near us commented that they hoped we would get our meal by midnight. Maybe if I hadn't made my remark to the head waiter we might have been there that long. He brought our food personally. My only excuse is that we had finished a full bottle of wine (more than we usually drink) while waiting for our main course. We had only had a few nibbles of food with all that wine. Our main course was served around 1.5 hours after we arrived. Other people had a similar experience although I don't know if they made any remarks to the head waiter! We certainly wouldn't pay to go to the Bayou after our experience. If we have another voucher, we might try Sabatini's. Otherwise, it's the MDR for us.

If I am looking at the correct cruise (Pacific Explorer on 11th March) your first 'port' in NZ is the Fiordland National Park. On this itinerary the ship usually enters Milford Sound very early in the morning (around 7am). At that time it will be cold so I suggest you have a warm head covering as well as a warm jacket and long pants. For the entry into Milford, I suggest it is worth going to a deck where you have a view forward. It will be breezy, but the views are superb. After the ship enters the Sound, you might prefer to go back to your cabin if you have a balcony. Otherwise, stay on an outside deck on the port side (left-hand side of the ship) for the best views. If your balcony is on the other side, it could still be worth relocating to there because you will see both sides of the fijord anyway. What you don't see on the way in, you will see on the way out! Have a great cruise.

AUD$47 is great. Princess is going to charge us US$60 (AUD$88.63) - nearly double what you were charged.