JJG99

I sincerely apologise for any hurt that I may have caused to those involved, particularly David’s family and friends, for my mistake in incorrectly recognising the correct CC name. Trust me it was an innocent mistake, one that I will never repeat.

We sailed with David and his parents on the 28 day Pacific Pearl cruise to Tahiti in July 2011. Such fond memories of them on the cruise and especially Patrick’s Tour out of Bora Bora that his Dad organised on the CC roll call. We often used to chat with David during the cruise. The whole family were passionate cruises. Our thoughts are with his family and friends, Vale David- you were a cruising legend.

Jenny and Mark

Those kangaroos and koalas will be a bit hard to spot also 🤣🤣🤣

UPDATE

Spoke to Princess Australia and our sail by date was pushed back to 31st December 2022.

I have been able to booked 2 extended cruises (35n and 28n) on the 2022-2023 Coral Princess Aust./NZ launch and was able to apply the FCC's as the deposit on both cruises- so no actual cash was tied up.

A win/win outcome!!

Thanks for your advise,

Jenny

Thanks to everyone who replied with helpful information.

I will be on the phone to Princess first thing Monday morning.

Will let you know how I go 🤞🤞

Our FCC from a cruise cancelled by Princess in March 2020, says that we have to apply it and sail by 1st May 2022. We are wanting to book a couple of Princess cruises from the 2022-2023 Australia/NZ itineraries being released on Tuesday for Elite members. The cruises we are interested in are for September and October 2022.

Has anyone tried to/or had success at extending the sail by date, and if so how did you do it??

Thanks for your insight, in advance.

Jenny

Long cruise itineraries are what HAL does best, IMO.

We have sailed the 38n Voyage of the Vikings, the 50n Amazon and RIO Carnivale cruise, the 32n Circumnavigation of Australia, the 31n South Pacific Explorer, a 33n Mediterranean cruise, the 28n Norwegian Fjords and Baltic cruise and the 53n Tales of the South Pacific from Seattle to San Diego. All of these cruises were outstanding.

The Tales of the South Pacific was absolutely fabulous, so many wonderful ports that you can rarely get to on a cruise. We would do that cruise again in a heart beat and coming from Australia- we have done a lot of cruises around the South Pacific and Tahitian islands. Even though returning to San Diego after the last port was 7 days, it wasn't a trial at all. We embraced the ship board life with both hands.

I say, give it a go- you will not regret it.

The choice of ship for this World Cruise could come back to bite Princess, if these comments on the Island Princess are anything to go by.

Thought that Princess should be trying a bit harder to entice us to book by offering a ship with much better facilities, it is a long time to be on a ship will poor amenities.

We send our request to head office in Seattle, as per the instructions. Have never even thought to send the request to HAL Aus. I will phone HAL Aus. office and ask.

Thanks for the hint.

Thanks Kirk, I was hoping you would reply. 😀

I was wondering if someone could tell me where on my booking does it show that my OBC from my CCL shares has been added?  We applied for it a couple of weeks ago. I have read previously on these forums that people have received their benefits in a couple of days, as they have seen it on their booking.

Does CCL send you an acknowledgement that they have added it to your booking?

Thanks,

Jenny

Thank you Kirk and a few others for pointing out to Tampa Girl that the large land mass between New Zealand and Africa is actually the continent of Australia and I can tell you that the 6 ports that they have scheduled for Australia are pretty amazing to visit.

The itinerary from FL to Mauritius/Reunion Island is wonderful, but I wish that they had headed north through the Suez, into the Med., out past Gibraltar, then continued with the remainder of the itinerary back to FL.  We would have booked in a heart beat.

We are both Elite on Princess and 4 star Mariners on HAL, so have travelled extensively on both.

We tend to choose cruises for their itineraries, not the cruise line, it just happens that HAL and Princess usually fits that bill. HAL is a more "sedate" line and often we feel that we are the youngest on the ship, whereas Princess seems "livelier" to us, which is very appealing to us

We prefer mid size ships and the HAL longer itineraries, for example Voyage of the Vikings (38days),Tales of the South Pacific (42days) Amazon and RIO for Carnivale (50days), Circumnavigation of Australia (32days) have been amazing cruises for us. The cabins on HAL seem larger and the sofa in each cabin is a bonus.Entertainment on HAL is now very disappointing and the poor Cruise Director is usually run of their feet. One of the most annoying things for us is the Dinner buffet on HAL. Not everyone wants to eat in the MDR every night and we certainly don't want to eat at 5pm when the food appears to be cooked (and often just sits there for hours). At 5 pm they open up both side of the Buffet, but by 7pm one side is closed down and by 7:30pm they are packing everything away. We have even resorted to ordering a Pizza and adding a side salad if we wander up there at 7:30pm.  The buffet seating area is deserted by 8pm, except for the dire hard card players and the crew who are wanting to clean up and reset the tables for the next morning. Princess on the other hand have their buffet open until at least 9:30, which is great for us and it seems more sociable as people tend to sit and chat. We enjoy the Cruise Entertainment crew on Princess and there is always something going on somewhere on the ship. We wish that Princess would bring back the wine packages as we find buying by the bottle is expensive. Being 4 star Mariners we get a 50% discount on all the wine packages and 50% off speciality dining. But on Princess we get the minibar setup and 100 minutes of free Internet, so they are both pretty good perks for travelling many nights on both lines.

Actually,  we enjoy both Princess and HAL for different reasons- so give it a go and see how you feel.

To us, ANY cruise is a GREAT cruise.

Jenny

Thanks SinbadThe Porter, I just had a look at the Bus timetable for the 303 and I see what you mean.

We are hoping that we will still be able to organise our own private tours and that tour companies will be willing to drive the 20 km to the new Terminal.

Tours may have to be customised to allow for the additional travelling time, but they would be foolish to reject bookings because of the distance. It could be a goldmine to them if they start offering private tours from the new Terminal, but of course we will have to wait and see what the Cruise companies decide regarding Tours.

Sorry, just noticed that this had been discussed on Page 1

Did anyone else notice on the portbris.com.au FAQ's that "Currently no local or State Government plans to link the BICT to public transport options", just like White Bay Terminal in Sydney. Grrrrrr

Thank you everyone for your replies.

I will definitely try to book within the 3 days from departure.

Cheers,

Jenny

I thought that I had read somewhere on this board that you are able to use your OBC to book shore excursions before you get onboard.

We have booked a 15 night cruise for January 2022 to use up our substantial FCC from 2B2B cancelled cruises in March 2020. HAL also gave us $1000 OBC for our inconvenience. The trouble is we booked the View and Verandah promotion-so have drinks, gratuities, 10% discount on shore tours and a dinner included. We are not gamblers and the shops on HAL leave me cold  If the prediction is true that you will have to take ship booked tours to disembark- then it looks like shore excursions is the way to go for us to use our OBC. I phoned HAL Australia office and the lady there said that I will have to wait until I get onboard and head to the shore excursion desk to book tours or book and pay for the excursions now, which still leaves me with the $1000 OBC.

Does anyone have any experience with this?? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Jenny

Hi,

Just have a look at my CC cover photo and it might help you decide!!  I took this photo with my phone as we sailed past the Opera House. We have sailed many times into and out of Sydney at various times of the day and the year. Sailing under the Harbour Bridge is pretty special also. IMHO it is one of the most magnificent Harbours in the World- but then again I could be slightly biased 😉😉

I am sure you would not be disappointed with your decision to cruise to or from Sydney.

Jenny

If you log in to Princess.com, it will recognise which Captains Circle status you are. The prices and cabins are there for me to book today, being Elite.

When I searched for World Cruises from Sydney - 6 cruises pop up and when you scroll through it says Sydney to New York- this date is Sold Out. Maybe if you book through a 3rd party agency then you might be lucky if Princess has allocated a certain number of cabins to them.

Since this pandemic, we have sworn NEVER to book through a 3rd party again for cruises,airfares,hotel accommodation etc. We are still waiting for about $30,000 to be returned to us and we are starting to wonder if we will ever see any of it!! We cannot even phone many of these agencies because they are only "accepting" email enquiries, which we have sent repeatedly, and have never heard anything back from them.  Not looking good for us 😱😱

Good luck with that. 

I was just logged on as an Elite to have a look.

I didn't check all of the cruises available but-

Sydney to New York- saying SOLD OUT

On the World Cruise Syd-Syd all insides and suites are booked out. Only one oceanview was available and Balcony was only on a guarantee.😱

Of course things may free up in the future., so hang in there.   I think there are a lot of people wanting to allocate their FCC's from cancelled cruises.

Wow KirkNC, just taking a peek at your future cruises, tends to make you the eternal optimist. Seven cruises booked for 2021, I hope they all come to fruition for you.  We have one booked for December 2021 return Sydney, and two booked from the US in Jan./Feb. 2022 and I thought I was an optimist.  You are an inspiration.

Jenny

We sailed the Veendam on the 52n Amazon and RIO Carnivale cruise in January 2019. Wonderful cruise that ticked a lot of boxes.  So glad that we did it because in today's Corona world, we would not even consider it now .   We have missed out on the Westerdam's South America/Antarctica/Solar Eclipse cruise in November, so it looks as though that part of the world is out of our reach also.

Very sad 😥

Thanks for the recent information on this thread.

We had to cancel our PE seats to the USA with AirNZ in March when our 3 B2B cruises were cancelled on us- with only 24 hours notice. Air NZ would only give us a credit for the $6600 after some haggling because we were due to fly out of Australia that very morning that Princess had informed us that our cruise was cancelled and initially they said that we would lose all of the money!! We had to rebook with AirNZ by March 2021. We just didn't know what to do or where to go on AirNZ's very limited flights.

The good news is that we phoned AirNZ (after I read this thread) and they said that we can now get a refund. An excellent outcome for us.

The annoying thing is that AirNZ did not get in touch with us to tell us that we could now get a refund. I wonder how many other people with large amounts of credit with AirNZ are unaware of this new information and will be scrambling to find some way to use this air credit by March 2021.

Thanks again,

Jenny

Thanks, I will give them a call