benjoon

It's great reading through your review. We board on Friday. I've just got to get through the next two days at work. See everyone soon.

We canceled our October transit and they charged us $200 Australian dollars. We were just glad to get out of it and start planning another cruise. Not sure we will book with Azamara again. We were also booked on a Black Sea cruise. We only got a FCC when they canceled it. 

1 hour ago, Kayena Kevin said:

Did not find today's communication from Azamara to be very useful. Whilst I can understand their desire to try to stick to the current itinerary, today's attacks make this even more unlikely. Let us be honest, it would be totally irresponsible to choose to take a cruise ship through the Red Sea at the moment. Passengers need to know more than 2 months in advance if the cruise is to be cancelled, rerouted via Africa or abbreviated. We have flights, visas, accommodation etc that will be extremely expensive to reorganise at late notice. Most other cruise lines have made the call. 

What sort of communication did you get. Just out of interest as we are booked on the October transit through the Red Sea.

This was the one we got at the start of January.

5 hours ago, Reina del Mar said:

Just to update anyone who is interested in Rydges Hotel, The Rocks, Sydney. They are now offering rooms for Feb and March 2024,

We have booked two nights there before out cruise in Feb 2024. We didn't bother with harbour view as we will be seeing the ocean 16 nights once on the ship. 

We have stayed at the Shangri La before a cruise. It has spectacular views but it's a little too far to walk the cases down to the terminal. 

We booked the category we wanted. The cabin they allocated was a bit too far forward so I gave a selection of cabin numbers that were more suited to my husband. He rang Azamara and they moved us into one of the cabins I had selected. Not an ideal way to do it as I didn’t know if any of the cabins I selected were available. Lucky for me they were. Hopefully when things are running more smoothly we will be able to see the available cabins when booking.  🤞 

We had a great day yesterday in Jakarta. Some people didn’t even bother getting off as they were worried about getting stuck in traffic. We did the full day tour. We got around easily as we had two police escorts. At times they were stopping traffic so the convoy of 5 buses could go through a red light. Except for our guide talking way too much we had a great time. If it was a maiden port then everything went very smoothly. 

We booked our transfer via the P&O website. I wouldn’t do it again. It was expensive in the first place but it cost us more on top of that. We were dumped at a bus stop outside the Marriot hotel. We didn’t have roaming on our phones so weren’t able to call for a cab. We then dragged our cases into the hotel. Our only option was as to ask the hotel to call a cab. They must have a deal with a cab company as when it came it cost us 25 pounds to go 5 minutes down the road. We didn’t have any chose but to pay this. As you can imagine it wasn’t the best way to end our cruise.

Stromboli and leaving Rome

We have had to use a travel agent to book P&O UK. I'm not sure if there is another way. Once we had a booking number we were able to do all our own excursions through the UK site.

Here are a few photos taken on Norfolk Island. It's a very interesting place. Well worth a visit but not in winter.

We have bought insurance through Covermore for our Europe cruises in October. My husband is 71. The policy covers cruising and Covid.

3 hours ago, MMDown Under said:

Have a wonderful holiday on Norfolk Island.  I hope your flight doesn't get cancelled.

So far so good. Our flight to Brisbane seems to be going on time. Checked in at a Perth airport and it’s very quiet.

It's wonderful reading all about Norfolk Island as we fly into Brisbane tonight (if Qantas doesn't cancel us) and fly to Norfolk tomorrow.

We are really looking forward to our time there. We have a few activities organised as we are the for Christmas in July.

We will have a car to explore as much as we can in 7 days.

We are heading there for a week in July. We are really looking forward to our trip to Norfolk Island. I'm sure we will find loads of things to keep us busy. For me it's a break from work and getting on a plane.

We have a few tours and dinners to do as it's Christmas in July themed.

I hope it is a Yay because we have booked Sydney to Perth. A bucket list item of arriving in our home port. 

Very surprised how quick the balconies went. I know there aren't the usual amount of balconies on this ship.

Thank you for all the advice. It’s been years since we sailed out of Fort Lauderdale and that day was pouring with rain you couldn’t see anything.

This has probably been asked before but I couldn’t find anything.
 

We are doing a transatlantic cruise next October on the Silhouette. We are coming from Australia and have decided to book the Reflection the day we finish the transatlantic. What is the best way to get from one ship to the next? 
 

We were thinking out best bet was a taxi from pier to pier.
 

Has anyone done this before? 
 

We have a terrible long flight to get home from the US as we live on the West coast of Australia. This is why we are trying to make the most of our time in the US.

Appreciate the help.

Thanks

On 3/13/2022 at 4:09 PM, MicCanberra said:

I have found many similar Cruisers, stay on for multiple cruises (B2b2b2b2), getting the same questions in multiple trivias and get perfect scores day after day. I haven't seen them replace the tips with the prizes though, normally they just give them to whoever came second.

We had the same thing on the Azamara B2B Tokyo to Vancouver. Some people who had also been on the two previous cruise so B2B2B2B in the most expensive suite brought their answers with them. Especially when it came to naming faces, places etc. They would win most games of trivia. We did our best to beat them. All this for drink bottles etc.

768 days ago off the Ovation of the seas Jan 2020

On 2/19/2022 at 9:28 AM, Cruisers47 said:

We are booked on RCL in October from Rome.   We are going to Israel.

 

where are you going?
 

Eileen

We are going to Israel as well. I think we are on the same cruise. October 7th Odyssey of the seas

Finally. Our cruise from Rome in October  is one hurdle closer.

We were lucky to travel on a B2B cruise to Alaska. It was the first one of this destination and there were a few hiccups. Captain Magnus handled everything very professionally and kept a smile on his face. I remember the second half of the cruise we had a very small cruise critic gathering. Captain Magnus came and kept us amused. It was because of him and Ernest the cruise director we were hooked unfortunately COVID stepped in to ruin our chance of another cruise with Azamara in the near future. I don’t stop looking and will find the next perfect cruise  to sail with them again soon.

On 1/22/2021 at 2:56 PM, NSWP said:

What I liked about PP was that being a former Renaissance ship the cabins had sofas to sit on and nicely furnished as was all the ship very classy. She will be missed, word in the industry is PP is going to new owners of Azamara.

That’s a definite. Notification from Azamara by email today.

We are going to cancel but had plans to before this happened. We are due to do the Black Sea cruise in June and we are sure we can’t travel from here. We cancelled our flights only yesterday before this announcement. So sad as booked onboard at a great price for a suite.