Relaxing Robbies

I agree completely. What were Princess thinking when they decided to have Diamond Princess in Melbourne doing cruises to New Zealand in early October and November when the seas and weather are likely to be bad, and then moving it to Brisbane to do Northern Queensland cruises from mid December just when it is becoming unbearably hot and humid up north? It would have been much better the other way round. If sales of the Diamond cruises from Melbourne have been okay, it is not because people are happy with the itineraries, but just that we have so few choices and we are desperate. Personally I have resisted and am hanging out for some bargains, or will just do some land based travel later this year.

We were booked on the 37 night Hawaii loop cruise and are devastated that it has been cancelled. We already have a Freo to Sydney northern route cruise booked for next May, so we are not interested in the replacement Round Australia offering with $250 obc. After spending hours yesterday considering our options, we have opted for the Crown Princess Sydney to Singapore cruise prior to her drydock. It is getting harder for us Victorians to find suitable cruises. Costs of travelling to Sydney or Brisbane to board soon add up, and make shorter cruises uneconomic. My preference would be cruises to Queensland and the South Pacific in the April to October period when it is cold in Melbourne. I am not interested in cruising to Cairns during the hot humid wet season, and worry about cyclones impacting my cruise. No wonder the cruise lines are having trouble selling their cruises from Brisbane.

Royal Princess. Same charge for the same wine at dinner tonight.

Definitely a limit of $22 per drink for those of us still on the old plus package. We ordered Katnook Cab Sav last night at dinner. Cost on menu was $23 per glass. Charge to our account was $1 per glass. Most cocktails are still covered. Just had a 24K Gold Margarita.

We are also in wet Sydney, having caught the train up from Melbourne yesterday. Went to the Australian Museum to see the Ramses and Egyptian Gold exhibition today. At least it was dry in there, even if it was very crowded. Good exhibition. Spent the late afternoon at the Orient Hotel near the OPT meeting fellow cruisers who are also boarding the Royal Princess tomorrow. Hopefully the rain will have stopped in time for us to drop off dry suitcases tomorrow morning.

I certainly remember the car stopping and inspections coming into Victoria when I was young. Obviously they have given up now. I was surprised to find out that fruit fly is in Melbourne. I spent last week destroying a very abundant crop of mandarins because each ripe mandarin I peeled had several worms crawling through it. Hours of work harvesting fruit and microwaving kilo after kilo of mandarins to kill the little buggers. Now I know that I need to be vigilant next year and use fly traps and netting etc.😢

Congratulations. Enjoy that extra cabin space and the bath giving you a larger showering zone.

I bought my shares through an Australian broker called Stake. I can login and print out a monthly shareholdings report. I receive an email each year encouraging me to vote, but I have never bothered to do so.

Are they Blue Banner pickled onions? They are my favourites and we used to purchase them every time we visited Tassie.

It is a shame you missed trying the food there. The small prawn skewers and chicken ones were great.

The Classic Soda package does not include coffee or hot chocolate. They do sell a Zero Alcohol package that also includes coffees but that is ridiculously expensive.

I meant Zero as in non alcoholic. Not sure about anything non sugar.

Mocktails like Zero Pina Colada and Zero Mohitos cost $10.50.

We boarded Resilient Lady today and so far we are very happy. Boarding in Melbourne was our easiest boarding at this port ever. The staff actually strictly enforced the boarding times, so boarding was very smooth. Had 3 free glasses of bubbly at the sailaway party and it was actually drinkable! We ate at The Wake tonight and were very impressed with the food and service. Saw a show tonight that was so full of energy it was great. Only downside was that we had to stand for the whole hour performance because there was only very limited seating provided and it was only on the upper level. We did purchase our cruise with Velocity points and it was a real bargain.

I phoned my Princess cruise planner on Monday morning to add wifi and she had not heard anything about the price increases. She thought I had read incorrect information, but I did manage to convince her that I needed to organise it right then before prices went through the roof. She seemed genuinely blindsided and wanted to know where I found out about the increase.