Mobi Cruiser

It is truly ridiculous that P & O still has no loyalty scheme of any kind. Carnival is trying to position P & O as the short break specialists, albeit a bit more upmarket than in the past, but whilst they seem to be trying to improve standards on board they are doing little to change their passenger demographics. As a travel agent, when they had their last brochure launch I received my invitation and enquired where was the meeting for north of the (Sydney) harbour agents and was told that the only meetings were at Parramatta and Liverpool because that was where P & O passengers came from. No meetings for agents in the city, Eastern Suburbs, The Shire, Inner West, Northern Beaches, North Shore, etc. So it seems P & O is still only aiming at a western suburbs clientele who they apparently don't think want or deserve a loyalty scheme.

Surely nobody from 'The Shire' would lower their standards to take a P&O cruise!

As a matter of interest, do they put the 15% gratuity on top of the daily charge or is it already included? $64.95 can then become $74.35.

P&O Australia getting its usual hand me down ships with much hoopla and cheering. Perhaps the name Pacific Sunset would be appropriate! The spin doctors will work overtime blabbing on about the 'new' 20 year old addition to the fleet.

A good ship though and just the right size, we did Hawaii in 2010 on her and will be on-board in Feb 2016 for Fiji but with Princess, not P&O.

Go back to the cruise control page where you check in and it had a button to press which once done asks for card details.:D

I went to the Cruise Control and put in our details and booking number and it is possible to only book shore excursions. Whilst moving around the site up pops the 'chat to a specialist' section, so I ask the questions there. Reply comes back no to booking transfers and no to registering credit card details, they can be done when you are on the ship. So I ask the question can it be done by phone prior to cruise? No it must be done on-board.

If this is correct I will probably be condemned to standing in two long queues for ages to do a couple of simple tasks that should be possible to pre-arrange.

They may have made the cruise brochure and web site more jazzy but they haven't improved it!

What are the MDR options for free dining? Is there an 'anytime free dining' option or is it 'set time tradional dining'?

I have used the transfer from Central to White bay, it was $15 per person. The return trip from Port to Central was $42 in a cab (we had four of us). The P&O website has the prices and you can pre-book the transfers, we did, it may be through the Cruise personaliser/planner page.:D

Thanks to all for the info. They do not have the most user friendly web site. There is mention of booking transfers and registering one's credit card details through 'Cruise Control' but I'm buggered if I can find it, even using their search tool brings up nothing. When I initially booked the cruise I was bombarded with 'live chat' popups if I needed any help but now I need some help I can't find anyone to talk to.

Maybe I'm getting old and cranky but their web site seems to be similar to their latest cruise brochure (P&O Cruises- Like no Place on Earth). Lots of flashy pictures with froth and bubbles but a pain to get any useful info out of. This may be deserving of another thread to see what other cruisers think.

What is the damage from P&O for a transfer from the White Bay Terminal to Sydney Airport at the end of a cruise?

A quick question for anyone just off, or still on, Dawn Sea or Sun Princess. What is the seating capacity of the specialty restaurant/s on these ships? A group cruise is being looked at and this restaurant is being looked at for a formal dinner.

If all goes as planned, you should be able to make this, HOWEVER - I notice that the Oosterdam is coming in directly from Hawaii, so it is possible that it could be late into Vancouver, which could really mess up your plans. Personally, I would not chance it.

 

One more thing - did you check with Quick Shuttle as to when their 2015 Summer schedule starts? For 2014 it started May 9, so you are cutting it close. Better be safe than sorry.

I've looked at the Quick Shuttle website and they don't have the Summer 2015 schedule out yet. Looking at both HAL and Princess sites things heat up for Alaska cruise season at the start of May so they should cover it then. I'm not too worried about the days at sea prior to our arrival as I'm sure the voyage will be adjusted to get around any weather. According to Ports.com the ship will have to average about 21-22 kts to arrive on schedule. We previously got caught by bad weather coming out of San Diego for Seattle on Celebrity Infinity and there is nowhere to go to avoid anything on a coastal run. It slowed our arrival by about 4 hours but made for a great arrival as we went down the Strait of Juan de Fuca. I am going to keep looking at all the transfer options.

Keep in mind that the ships usually tie up at 7am at Canada Place, and are cleared to start discharging guests at 8am. The Quick shuttle coach is in the bus bays at the terminal, the same ones used for the HAL transfers. The Early Quickshuttle departure is designed specifically for guests coming off the ship, and HAL doesn't let Quick or others use the bus bays until their own transfers have loaded. Quickshuttle maintains a manifest to send ahead to US customs, and will wait for reasonable delays coming off the ship.

Thank you all for the replies. I'm usually pretty conservative with transfers and connections. A couple of years ago we missed a flight from Seattle to San Fran because of poor weather coming up the west coast and a delayed arrival. Given we have 5 sea days before our Vancouver arrival there should be ample time to alter course/speed etc to compensate. Also if we are delayed there is a reasonable chance the conditions would also affect the arrival of Ruby Princess into Seattle, it's only a left or right turn at Vancouver Island.

I tried getting info about HAL booked transfers but there isn't much detail on their website and I don't want to commit with few details. Obviously 'Quick Shuttle' are a bit flexible with their 9:00am departure time to accommodate glitches that may occur. If we were to miss the 9:00am bus can we use the same tickets on the 9:15am one? I reckon if we make it to the downtown Seattle drop off point around 2:00pm we shouldn't have any worries as it looks pretty close to the Pier 91 and there shouldn't be too much traffic on Sunday arvo.

So today I'll get my travel card and book the Quick Shuttle and on Monday I'll plonk down the deposit for the Princess cruise. We would probably stayed on Oosterdam if it was doing a round trip and avoided the transit packing hassles, but you can't have everything.

From a HAL newbie. We are due to arrive in Vancouver on-board Oosterdam at (scheduled) 8:00am on 10 May 2015. The ship is scheduled out at 5:00pm on the same day on a 7 dayer one way to Alaska. There is a 7 day round trip Princess cruise going out from Seattle at 5:00pm on the same day that looks very tempting for us. My questions are:-

1 Does the ship arrive at the Canada Place Pier?

2 When they state an 8:00am arrival do they mean they start letting passengers disembark at that time, as in our experience most ships are well and truly tied up by that time?

3 Quick Shuttle have a bus scheduled out at 9:00am exclusively for cruise ship passengers. Is there enough time to transit Customs and Immigration and collect bags to make that bus?

I know it looks a bit tight and any help would be appreciated. We have a hold on the Princess cabin until Monday 6th when I will have to shell out some Bugs Bunny to secure it.

Listed below is the information that has been provided by Princess over the past couple of months to boarding and booked passengers as to the ongoing problems that have affected Sea Princess.

Quote:-

My wife was on the ship several months ago and they were fiddling with departure and port times to keep the old girl going. Then there was the patch up in Singapore. As the old saying goes:- 'There is always sufficient time and money to do the job properly the second time!'

In order to fix the problem, Princess will need to find a shipyard and schedule a dry dock. It's not like calling a service station for an appointment since shipyards are generally booked months in advance. Plus, Princess would have to find one within a short sailing distance.

 

Until something can be scheduled and specific plans in place, there's little to say. Unless it's an emergency and the ship is unable to sail, cruise lines almost always try to maintain scheduled itineraries rather than cancel cruises. Princess is not alone with this. There are at least two other ships on other lines experiencing propulsion problems right now. Passengers on those lines and the affected cruises are in the same boat so to speak.

The technical difficulty is not the issue here. Princess knows they have a problem and they know they can't stick to their scheduled itinerary but they still keep selling something they are unable to provide.

What would be the reaction if there was a balcony cabin upgrade campaign in place whilst the ship was in service that wasn't on schedule. Clarrie the Cruiser and his missus are looking forward to their cruise through the Panama Canal viewing the sights whilst sipping on some bubbly on their balcony. Sorry Clarrie, as we have a technical difficulty we have put you in an outside cabin, we will refund the difference and give you some OBCs.

I spent most of my working life in Airline Maintenance and I know airline passengers don't like delays and problems affecting their travel plans due to 'technical issues' with aircraft. But if the 'issue' is explained to them and the steps being taken to alleviate and rectify the issue, they are usually very understanding.

The worst thing you can do to your passengers is treat them like mushrooms, keep them in the dark and feed them ............

There is going to be a quiet news day and this issue is going to make it on to one of the tabloid current affairs TV shows and then we will see a bit of squirming.

Regular Princess cruisers may be interested to switch over and have a look on the Australian & New Zealand Cruising Forum at the Slow Sea Princess thread. It seems the old girl is suffering from some 'technical difficulties' which have slowed her down resulting in early departures, delayed arrivals, changed ports and missed ports. Princess is compensating to some extent with OBCs but a lot of people are getting angry. My wife was on it on a quickie 7 day cruise out of Brisbane in May 2014 and she got $100 OBC but the problem is still continuing with no resolution in sight. Princess are still sticking with their published itineraries which they know they can't keep and do not expand on the nature of the glitch or when it will be fixed. Talk about trashing their own reputation. Just about all the large cruse lines station ships in OZ/NZ during the summer season and the competition is becoming fierce. The World Cup 2014 may be over but Princess are continuing to kick 'own goals'.

From Sydney City to Katoomba is around 100km (60miles). I've just had a look at Google maps and the Sydney City Rail website and the train trip takes about 2 hrs each way and the service is pretty regular and efficient. Google maps puts the road travelling time at about 1hr 45 mins and that time is possible providing you travel between the hours of midnight and 4:00am. In the immortal words of Darryl Kerrigan from The Castle:- "Tell him he's dreaming." Sydney and its suburbs' traffic is horrendous and I would reckon you would struggle to do the drive in under 2 and a half hours on a good day. It is not too bad after Penrith which is the halfway point but if you're travelling on the weekend the traffic gets worse in the mountains and Sunday arvos are a nightmare travelling back to Sydney. Having lived in the Penrith area for 30 years and travelling in both directions regularly I would take the train anytime. Pack a few nibbles, snacks and drinks to enjoy the scenery.

In line with the P&O policy of extracting as much money as possible whilst cutting back on various services what about Pacific Gouge and Pacific Chisel.

We have come across a HAL re-positioning cruise on Oosterdam from Sydney to Vancouver in Apr '15. The price is pretty good so we went down to the TA for one of their current 'cattledogs' to get some more info. Now this is a very impressive tome of 185 pages with lots of fantastic pictures but it is a little bit light on handy information. The closest we have been to a HAL ship was when we were chasing it, or it was chasing us, on a cruise through the Panama Canal between FLL and SEA. We didn't know which ship it was but we christened it the John Claude Van Dam.

Now the important questions are:-

1. Do they have passenger laundries (ala Princess) or ship's pay per item (ala Celebrity)?

2. Do they have a 'pedestrian' beer list (ala Princess) or an interesting one (ala Celebrity)?

3. Can one walk on with a 6 pack of local beer or the local wine at ports without it being confiscated?

4. Should I pack some safety shoes to protect my toes from mobility scooters?

5. Is the standard USA power point socket the only one in the cabin?

Thanks for any reply in advance and Q.4 is a bit tongue in cheek.

When spoken by the Japanese the 'Cherry Blossom' comes out slightly different to how it is written. We did this cruise with P&O on Pacific Sun departing Sydney on March 8th and getting back on April 19th. The cruise was basically the same as what Sun Princess will do in April 2015 with a couple of port changes. Ours was 42 nights Sydney-Airlie Beach-Darwin-Brunei-Sabah-Hong Kong-Busan-Hiroshima-Osaka-Yokohama-Iwo Jima (scenic cruising)-Saipan-Guam-Chuuk-Rabaul-Brisbane-Sydney.

Great cruise on a good ship with great crew and passengers. This was before P&O started to go down the scrape, chisel and gouge road. It was the recommencement of cruise itinerary that had been overlooked for a lot of years, probably back to the Fairstar era. They even gave every passenger high quality cruise map as a gift and a letter of thanks for participating in this new experience for P&O.

There was some worries we may miss the blossoming because we may arrive too early in their spring and when they do come is out is variable due to weather conditions, all was OK though and it was quite spectacular in Osaka.

We paid nearly $7K each for an outside cabin then so the price is still pretty reasonable on a better ship and an immensely better cruise line. Do it and you won't regret it.

If you are still looking at the flying options take Brindabella Airlines out of the equation, they went broke a couple of months ago and don't exist anymore.

I had my first (and last) root beer in the Cozy Dog Drive In in Springfield IL some years back as it was the touristy thing to do. The Cozy Dog was OK but I only got half way through the root beer before pouring the rest into the gutter, kept the bottle though. As to 'floats', the old joke goes:- How do you make a dead rat float? Answer. You get two scoops of ice cream and a dead rat .......

Some time ago my son put me on to a little shop in Penrith (suburb of Sydney) that sells all manner of diverse drinks, sauces, lollies, etc that are imported from around the world. I get my bottles of 'Stubbs Rubs' from there. They have a web site 'Sweet Surprises' which lists the products they have on sale. I noticed there is an English drink made by Coke called 'Lilt' which has a grapefruit flavour, maybe it is similar. It is a great little shop and they seem to do good business, they even sell Root Beer but why anyone would want to drink that is beyond me!

I had a look on Wikipedia and there was a mention of grapefruit flavour. There is also a list of countries where it is available and Dunnunda & Godzone aren't mentioned.

What flavour/taste is Fresca?

As I said I don't want the thread to go off on a tangent with the tipping issue and I will answer on how we book and pay. We use a local TA who is very good and people that have cruised with us, relo's and friends, have also used the same agency. We recently did Singapore to Sydney on Diamond Princess, on-board currency US$, and the gratuities were added to our shipboard account. In these circumstances we leave the gratuities on one person's account and remove them from the second person's account and use those monies to distribute to staff as we see fit. We think it is the best of both worlds. In the new year we did NZ on Sun Princess, on-board currency AU$, and there were no gratuities added so we did our sums and gave them to the cabin steward, waiters and some others towards the end of the cruise.

I checked the Princess web site and a couple of printed cattle dogs about gratuities and there is a subtle difference in the wording between the two.

On the web site under FAQs, On Board Experience, then Hotel and Bar Charges 'Gratuities' paragraph 2 states:- "For our Australian passengers when sailing on cruises departing from Australia on ................" blah blah blah, no gratuities added. Note the 'our Australian'.

In their cattle dog under 'Tips for your trip' page's paragraphs titled 'What is Gratuities (tipping)?' paragraph 2 states:- "Tipping is not required or charged to your on-board account.............. departing from and returning to Australia."

In both cases the Australian based ships of Dawn, Sea and Sun are where this applies. As the old saying goes, the devil is in the detail.

We don't use an overseas TA as I think there may be some issues that could arise if something went pear shaped with the booking. It was my impression that one had to be a resident or have an OS address to use the services of a TA in that country.