Voyager of the Seas Picture Review Dec 2012 Australia & New Zealand Cruise

[Iluvcruising2]

A note on the long queues at Wellington.

 

There was only one gangway being used. Cruisers asked why? During the Captain's corner and also in the daily movies made by the Cruise Director, we were told that while the Voyager had 2 gangways at Deck 1, she only had 1 gangway on Deck 2.

[Iluvcruising2]

Raffles Hotel is nice. But these days, the hip thing is to have lunch or dinner at one of the fancy restaurants on the Marina Bay Sands Skypark for the awesome views!

Singapore hosted the inaugural 2010 Youth Olympic Games. If you have 25 minutes to spare, it may be worth watching snippets from the opening & closing ceremonies.

Opening part 1.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJq8GaPOeEI

Opening part 2.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BUQyjNDdH8

Closing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjb5j3m_bo

[inar]

Is this the sailing in Apr 2013? Welcome to Singapore!

 

You know, it would be fun to meet up with cruise critic people when they come to Singapore but at this stage of my life, I do have to focus on my career. :)

 

There were 3 formal nights on our 14 night sailing.

 

Thanks for the info! Yes I will be sailing on the April 5th sailing on the Legend. You should join us on that cruise. Any recommendations you have to suggest are much appreciated. I know just because a restaurant is expensive, doesn't make it good. Any insider tips would be great!

[Zanny]

Thank you for all your replies wonderful helpful cruisers!

Thank you, thank you for taking the time and making such an effort to give us all such an enjoyable, interesting, and comprehensive review....I can't wait for your next installment as we will be travelling to NZ in January

Hi, I noticed that you are going on the same cruise as i am. Have you registered for the meet n mingle yet. also i noticed that you are from S.A. too is that correct? so are we.

Yes this has been the best review tof a cruise that i have ever read.

so much time and effort has been put into it. Every few hours i come on here to read the trest of this mans review.

Thanks Zanny:)

[Iluvcruising2]

Thanks for the info! Yes I will be sailing on the April 5th sailing on the Legend. You should join us on that cruise. Any recommendations you have to suggest are much appreciated. I know just because a restaurant is expensive, doesn't make it good. Any insider tips would be great!

 

Welcome to Singapore!

 

I can help all I can through here or via email, if you have any specific questions.

 

Would you be staying in Singapore pre-cruise? Which hotel and for how many days?

 

We can discuss further here, or if you wish, you can drop me an email at iluvcruisingsingapore@gmail.com and we can get a conversation going there.

 

As for joining the cruise, yeah, I wished I had the time and money! That's indeed something to work towards but all that said, I am nowhere near retirement.

 

The good news for my family is this though - we are going on a 7 nighter on the Legend of the Seas to Borneo in mid March! I'll do a comprehensive picture review of that cruise, if I have the time then. :)

Edited December 30, 2012 by Iluvcruising2

[Iluvcruising2]

Sailing into Tauranga port. This was 6:40am from our balcony. Low clouds.

[bjs5kids]

Oooh... I've got competition!

 

Joke.

 

I've seen that review that I agree it was fantastic.

 

I've thought about setting up a blog to host my reviews, but I didn't get down to doing it.

 

Anyway, for now, I'd prefer to post my reviews on cruise critic directly.

 

I hope you do... It's wonderful to see others points of view and I am just loving coming on here every day for an update...

[Iluvcruising2]

I hope you do... It's wonderful to see others points of view and I am just loving coming on here every day for an update...

 

Yeah, I tell myself I need to finish this review even though the uploading of pictures is tedious. Comments like yours spur me on!

[Iluvcruising2]

We had room service breakfast and then quickly made our way out of the ship, to look for our rental car. The plan was to get the car and drive to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal wonderland as our first stop. We had a geyser to catch.

[Iluvcruising2]

When we did our research, there were quite a number of car rentals to choose from but we ended up choosing this small company called ABC Car Rentals because they delivered their cars right to the dock. From this picture, the two mini-vans you see belonged to car rental companies (I think Pegasus and Thrifty). They would ferry the cruise ship passengers to their office.

 

I got to the Salisbury Road by 0740hrs but the people from ABC Car Rental were nowhere to be found. I asked the chap from Pegasus and he pointed me to their cars that were already parked nearby. He told me that they usually came at 8am. Oh well, so we waited.

 

Edited December 30, 2012 by Iluvcruising2

[Iluvcruising2]

This was our rental car, a 1998 Nissan Pathfinder. It had 347,000+ km on the odometer. It worked just fine though. It must have been very well maintained.

[Iluvcruising2]

I noticed these 2 limos and also small buses. Looks like other cruisers had also pre-booked some private tours. This picture was 7.46am.

[Iluvcruising2]

The staff from ABC Rental arrived at 8am. Taking over our rental vehicle was almost hassle free as they had pre-filled all the possible information required in the paperwork which my wife had emailed to them before the trip. They just took my credit card details and drivers’ licence information. Thankfully, they also had the GPS which we had pre-booked! It was a TomTom model that was very easy to use.

 

Now, this is where the drive got interesting. When I did my route planning, I wanted to drive along the State Highway to get to Rotorua via the town of Te Puke.

 

The route would look like this. Total distance was 104km.

 

[Iluvcruising2]

However, I followed the route suggested by the GPS and I soon realised that I wasn’t driving the route that I had envisaged. It turned out that the GPS brought me to Rotorua using another route, via the Tauranga Direct Road. This is the route the GPS used with a total distance of 97km.

[Iluvcruising2]

The drive through Tauranga Direct Road was fairly scenic, but challenging and sometimes even scary. At times, the roads were winding. We had to drive through a couple of gorges; the posted speed limit was just 35km/h! On the plus side, the scenery was beautiful, though the driving could get stressful if you weren’t used to it. I was very glad that I was still fresh! The rental car performed admirably with all the cornering, though I would say that I was certainly not driving fast.

In a couple of places, it became only a single-lane crossing! See this picture which I got from Google maps street view.

[Iluvcruising2]

Well, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. When faced with some difficult, just rise up to the challenge, and you’ll usually push through. Winding drive at some spots, but I actually started to enjoy it. Soon enough, we got to the end of the Tauranga Direct road, drove past Rotorua and quickly made our way to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland.

 

This was the entrance. The geyser would be set off at 1015 every day, so there was time pressure. I recall we started at 8:15am and only got to the Thermal Wonderland Visitor Centre ticketing booth at about 9:45am – a full 1.5 hours of non-stop driving.

 

[Iluvcruising2]

Note that it is NOT WALKABLE from the Visitor Centre to the geyser. You have to drive to the geyser, after you purchase tickets at the visitor centre. To speed things up, I would drop my wife off at the main entrance so that she can go get tickets while I go look for parking.

Thankfully we got the tickets quite quickly, took a quick toilet break, and make our way to the geyser (a short 3 minute drive). There were guides stationed at points to guide us and also the sign-posting was sufficient.

[Iluvcruising2]

We got to the geyser area slightly past 10am. The seats were already filling up quickly. We saw quite a number of visitors from the cruise ship – cruise organized tours.

[Iluvcruising2]

There she was, the Lady Knox Geyser. There she is. Looking a little quaint. What’s the big deal? Just wait…..

 

[Iluvcruising2]

At 10:15am, a staff came out and started giving us a talk (which I shan’t go into the details) and then put some soap into the geyser to cause her eruption! Talk about waking up the lady. Here we go….

Alright, I shan’t post any more pictures of the Lady Knox. Go there to witness her for yourself!

[Iluvcruising2]

After taking enough photos and a couple of video clips, we made our way back to the rental car (parked just outside) and drove back to the Visitor centre. I dropped my wife and kids off before going to look for parking (which is a short walk away). It made a lot of sense to drop them off first because they were first in line for the café. Evidently, most people thought the same as us – time to get a quick bite before exploring the Thermal Wonderland.

The café was aptly named – Geyser Café. Time was 10:35am

[Iluvcruising2]

Here is a map of Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. Note they had 3 walking routes, 1 (Red), 1+2 (Red + Orange), 1+2+3 (Red + Orange + Yellow). We had read wonderful reviews of this place so I decided we should just go for it – walk it all! According to the map, total distance would be 3km, time required 75 min.

[Iluvcruising2]

Walking around in the thermal wonderland, I can’t tell we’re on Earth. Perhaps I just haven’t seen enough of this planet.

[Iluvcruising2]

The craters. The place was fairly crowded on the day we went, far more crowded than Zealandia in Wellington!

[Iluvcruising2]

Stay within the marked paths – you have been warned.