Porky55

32 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

They sometimes put on recorded music when entertainers are taking a break in the various venues in the evenings but it's usually fairly quiet. I don't whether that's from something that is playing ship-wide or just something setup for each particular venue.

Agree -  Perhaps it’s so low key its unnoticeable 😁

4 hours ago, cruisermsoon said:

There  may be some areas where Princess have downgraded the experience a little, however my main gripe with Coral is the dawn to midnight incessant American-sourced "upbeat" music piped thoughout the ship. 

Not classy, tiresome, and very "Carnival" !!!

We were on coral for 7 days and can’t recall hearing any piped music either 🤔

18 minutes ago, arxcards said:

While we are happy to cruise on pretty much any ship, I do feel at home on Princess as soon as we get out of the embarking throng around the atrium. Coral and Royal class will offer us something a little bit different in layout, but I expect we will know it is signature Princess within minutes of being aboard.

That you will 👍

Have done this one and highly recommend it. The one we did in 2015 had overnight at Queenstown first night with a Steamship on Lake Wakatipu out of Queenstown to Walter Peak Farm tour (bbq lunch included) which was fabulous, then day two on bus to Arrowtown overnight - with included a stop at a bungy jump tower, was amazed with the amount of passengers (and their ages) who actually made the jump 😳 

Arrowtown is an old gold mining town and was very interesting too - then next day on to Dunedin to reboard the ship - was fabulous. We have been to NZ a few times before so this was something new for us.

This was actually off a Celebrity cruise, so not positive the stops will be the same, but this was our experience. 
Edit: just checked and it is this one we did!!
 

We have booked the 2 night Overland Hobbit tour - Trilogy of the North in December on Majestic - because, why not 😁

Below is Walter Peak Farm - just stunning 🥂

11 minutes ago, MMDown Under said:

I have been in London during a heatwave and it was very unpleasant.  Buildings aren't built for heat.

Agree with this fact, however, the heat in the UK will have passed by Monday.
 

Actually, heat gone tomorrow 🙄

1 minute ago, arxcards said:

.

guess we will cross that bridge when we need to

When …… don’t you mean IF ? 😳

2 hours ago, arxcards said:

The HEPA filters are a work in progress, and as mentioned there, are fitted in key areas of the medical centre and isolation rooms. That works great until passengers are told to isolate in their cabins, as was the case last week when the isolation rooms were full of crew members.

Perhaps you are right, but if only 4(four) or 10(ten) passengers are currently infected than something is working, don’t you think? 😄

4 hours ago, arxcards said:

In the sequence tracing aboard Diamond Princess, the HVAC system was found to be the weak link that bypassed all the cleaning and sanitation efforts. The genome tracing found it spreading through blocks of cabins that shared the same air. You can sanitise your hands, but not so easy to sanitise the air.

Agreed about this pre Covid.

But Princess have advised that the HVAC system aboard their ships have been upgraded to HEPA filters, akin to an aeroplanes and have increased the volume of fresh air circulating though out the essential areas, or so I read.

Will try and find the article for you.

1 minute ago, Pobman said:

 

Credits for isolation period. They return onboard purchases to the debit/credit card and return isolation days as a future cruise credit. No idea how long it takes, did ask while on the ship and they couldn't say.

So, you had Covid and were isolated on a recent cruise?? How long did you isolate?

Credits don’t generally take very long, as a rule. 

2 minutes ago, Pobman said:

All good... hope they do the credits soon, itching to book for November!

So, you actually cancelled a cruise? Or got Covid on a recent cruise to get credits?
That is where you are waiting for credits from??

1 minute ago, Pobman said:

I do wonder about that number... as I could say who at least 6 of those 24 were from my tiny experience getting off the ship and that was just one part of a corridor on Emerald deck.

If true and our one section really did have 25% of all cases on the cruise that would really make me wonder if it was the HVAC system.

I guess it is what it is.

I’m sure I read somewhere that a sector of Emerald was the quarantine sector?
 

And why wonder about the HVAC instead of careless, thoughtless passengers? More likely to be an unwashed/unsanitised passenger passing by, wiping their hands on stairway bannisters than the AC.

17 minutes ago, Tikibird said:

I would assume mild cases being they are vaxxed and a younger demographic.

You would assume wrong I think ……… all crew are vaxed, so just like on land, some will succumb, some won’t. Those still testing neg are working one would assume.
 

And I think you would find that the ship Drs do a PCR not RAT test, much more precise.

8 minutes ago, mum and son said:

I don't disagree with you at all about personal responsibility. As I was saying, my concern is that cruising will be shut down again because it is so easy to pinpoint an "outbreak" on a ship. 

 

Ships are so used to switching to staff served buffets when there is a noro outbreak I'm just surprised they didn't take that option for the restart.

 

Covid outbreaks on a ship may not phase hardened cruisers like us but the bad press will stop of lot of others from going, and that in turn stops cruising. The ships won't keep sailing if passengers aren't making bookings. I don't want to see that happen.

 

Half of this country still think covid was invented by the Diamond Princess!

 You are right in what you say re; the impression that the media stories are giving the general public. Finger crossed it doesn’t cancel cruising again 🤞

But I think that the service of passengers in the buffet on Coral could be due to the lack of staff and inexperience of the current crew. I truly thought the way they had laid out individual plates solved the problem of not yet having the staffing to provide personal service in a buffet section.

Hope that you enjoyed your cruise anyway and get to enjoy many more 😎
 

4 minutes ago, shireboi said:

 

Heard where ??  2GB ?   Sunrise ??   Curies ??!!!  

 

I'm booked on the 3 days from Brisbane to Sydney - 19 August.   Getting 4th booster today........ 

 

incredible that everyone is going OTT on the cruises from Brisbane - yet tonight there will be over 50,000 in the Covid Cauldron watching State of Origin.  

7 hours ago, mum and son said:

In saying that, I was astounded when I was on the Coral last month that there was a self serve buffet and no policing of masks anywhere onboard

Sorry, but I must disagree about the self serve buffet on Coral.

Yes …… there were a few self serve benches, but these were predominately hot foods.

Elsewhere, throughout the buffet there were individual bowls of salad, fruit salad, sandwiches, cheese, etc. Absolutely no reason why you couldn’t grab an untouched individual plate. If you wanted more choice, the MDR or other venues were available. 
And, the responsibility of making sure your hands were washed / sanitised before you ate is your own. 
Personally, I am over the need to have anything to do with Covid “Policed”. The crew are there to be of service, not to police personal choices.

High time that personal responsibility became a “thing”.

Talk about extremes of reporting, check out the Coral Princess buffet …… I sure missed this one in June 🙄

https://www.weeklytimesnow.com.au/breaking-news/coral-princess-cruise-ship-offers-refunds-to-passengers-stuck-on-covid-infected-ship/news-story/95644461734047ce0f091fbb6b36e683

Delete 😳

18 hours ago, vozzie said:

Are you all aware that there's around 5000 new Covid cases in QLD a day? Where do you think they are coming from...corn flakes packets? No...they are coming from people going to work, going to the shops, flying on aircraft, catching a train, getting pissed at the pub or going to the footy. Is the media asking us not to frequent those places? How does a few managed cases on a cruise ship attract so much attention?

50 minutes ago, arxcards said:

I have asked about ours, and final payment date through the travel agent is 18th July. Princess final payment date for this cruise currently shows as 22nd July

Our final payment for this cruise is the 6th August too.

We booked direct with Princess, where I see you used a TA? Perhaps that is the difference 🤔

Gosh, I wish 🥺

The Celebrity Solstice cruise was in Dec 2015 and didn't take that much notice of who provided what at the time, and the old library is very dusty these days - would take a real search to dig up those memories.

Like I said, the little boat at Queenstown was the TSS Earnshaw and the beautiful place we went to for lunch was the Walter Peak Farm. 
 

Im sure if you hit  Tripadvisor or Viator there will be tours available, just like we did from the ship.

Photo of the Farm because it was stunning, as was the lunch 😋

2 minutes ago, MMDown Under said:

The attachment doesn't give information on the cruise excursions mentioned.  

Didn’t check that, sorry  and it’s Tauranga to Auckland  😄

Description

Be sure to read the Special Notes further down this page for important requirements and restriction.

Day one

Whether you are a Hobbit fan or not, it's difficult not to lose yourself in the world of Middle Earth when you visit Hobbiton, a short drive after you disembark in Tauranga. It was this piece of land on the Alexander sheep farm in the heart of the Waikato, that location scouts chose to recreate The Shire. While filming is well and truly over, 44 intricate hobbit holes remain and it doesn't take much imagination to conjure up Bilbo Baggins and his fellow characters on their quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain.

From the land of hobbits to the land of geothermal magic, after driving south we will spend the afternoon with a local Maori guide in Te Puia, part of the Te Whakarewarewa geothermal valley just outside of Rotorua. This is the home of Pohutu, the largest active geyser in the Southern Hemisphere. Meaning 'constant splashing' in English, Pohutu lives up to her name erupting once or twice every hour shooting up to 30 metres into the sky. The valley features many other geysers, cauldrons of bubbling mud pools, hot springs and silica formations as well as a kiwi enclosure and the New Zealand Maori Arts and Crafts Institute where craftspeople demonstrate traditional wood, stone and bone carving as well as flax weaving. 

The steam and heat has always been put to good use by Maori and we finish our visit with a traditional hangi, a feast of leaf wrapped meat and vegetables cooked over hot rocks beneath a blanket of soil.  

After lunch, you will have time to refresh at the hotel, 

Early evening, the foodie adventure continues with a gondola ride up to Mt Ngongotaha and a dinner of locally sourced cuisine with magnificent night-time views of Rotorua.

Day Two

From one natural spectacle to another, this morning we journey to Waitomo where in the late 1887 local Maori chief Tane Tinorau and surveyor Fred Mace made the first exploration of glow-worm studded Waitomo Caves. Two years later the caves were opened to tourists and when you visit today chances are you may well be guided by one of the direct descendants of Chief Tinorau. The caves are truly spectacular and offer everything from wheel chair access to boat journeys.

Back above the ground it's time to meet the locals with lunch at a nearby farm. True foodies, your hosts pride themselves on using only organic meat from local farms and produce the accompanying chutneys and sauces from their own fruit trees.

After lunch, we travel north to Auckland, New Zealand's largest city. Spanning two harbours it is known as the city of sails and is also the port where you will reboard your ship for the next adventure!

Special Notes:

Final hotel manifests must be provided well in advance of the tour, therefore we recommend passengers book overland options no later than 30 days prior to your voyage.

The order of sites visited may vary to avoid congestion. The timings and/or flights indicated are approximate. They are given here only for general reference purposes and are subject to change.

Your tour includes:
* Sightseeing and guide services as indicated and admission fees, as shown in the itinerary
* Transfers
* Hotel accommodations and meals as indicated

Your tour does not include:
* All meals not mentioned in itinerary above.
* Beverages at lunch
* All sightseeing not shown in the itinerary or mentioned as optional.
* Items of a personal nature e.g. room service, laundry, phone calls, etc.

On 7/8/2022 at 10:12 PM, Ozwoody said:

Actually since remembering the group that debarked in the sounds and re-joined the ship in Dunedin, then checking out the above, I'd be really interested to see if something similar is still available, as a possibility for our next NZ cruise.

I recon that would be fantastic side trip.

Think I will look further into it, see what's the practicality.

 

At Christmas, off a Majestic cruise, we are booked on a 48hr overnight from Dunedin to Auckland.

https://www.princess.com/cruise-excursions/tauranga-new-zealand-excursions/trilogy-of-the-north-overland-double-occupancy?portCode=TRG&portDate=12292022

Looking forward to it immensely - we did the one you are discussing from a Celebrity cruise a few years ago. Debarked onto a small boat at the end of Milford Sound then boarded a bus to Queenstown. While in Queenstown we went on a steam boat tour on Lake Wakatipu to the Walter Peak High Country sheep station for lunch and show, then to Arrowtown next morning- an old gold mining town and on to Dunedin to get back on the cruise. Highly recommend doing these overnighters 👍👍

58 minutes ago, SinbadThePorter said:

 

Only for cruises departing up to 30th September 2022.

Still think it would be worth asking the question of Princess, don’t you? What has the OP to lose?

7 hours ago, portcbob said:

Sorry my mistake, have been moved from our aft Emerald balcony to BOW balcony up higher which we won't take due to motion. 

NO, it's not an upgrade and yes wectold our T/A 18 months back when we selected our cabin, under NO circumstances we wanted no where near the bow.

Problem is this cruise has been booked out for months and nothing is available.🥵

Just to let you know - the current “Cruise with Confidence” from Princess means you can cancel any cruise and get FCC.

We have just cancelled our 29th July, 7 day on Coral, because of hubbys work and immediately received FCC for the booking, which was fully paid.

Perhaps this is your solution, cancel and find another that is more suitable?

https://www.princess.com/plan/cruise-with-confidence/

Not afternoon tea fans either, but had a go at the one on QM2 - it was after all Cunard. 
 

Devstated when I realised they used clotted cream on their scones (very English) instead of real whipped cream 🙄