OzKiwiJJ

It was a Saturday.

The Bordeaux MDR on deck 5, which has Club Class in one corner.

There was a high bolt on our mini-suite balcony door.

The actual width of the sofabed mattress is 1.13 metres. That's just a few cms bigger than a king single.

We have one of the Club Class minisuites on Caribe deck, on the corner of the bump-out. The downside is the balcony is tiny, barely enough room for two chairs and a table. We have footstools but I'm not sure where we can fit them. The upside is that our balcony has views straight out and aft although the curve does make it smaller.

We're onboard as well. We arrived at the OOT around 11:15am for Group B boarding. There was a Platinum/Elite lane before you entered the terminal and another one in the check-in area. It's a two-stage check-in, scan the QR code and verify drivers licence and vaccination cert, plus attest to negative RAT. then pick up your medallion - this waas a bit slow for us as we had a last minute cabin change. The people previously booked in our cabin must have ordered some of the fancy medallion stuff so they searched that before getting our medallions. The next slow point was security. They decided they had to check our Aldi powerboard on the ship. You'd think they'd recognise those ones by now. I hope we get it back but we have a Plan B double adaptor just in case. Finally we were on the ship, around 11:45am. We dropped our carry-ons in our cabin then went up to the Sanctuary to book our sea day afternoons (weather permitting). Then back to our cabin to watch the safety briefing, down to Sabatinis which is our muster station, and then to the MDR for lunch. We were delighted to find the MDR hostess and the Club Class waiters remembered us from the June cruise. We had a delicious lunch and chatted with the couple sitting near us. After lunch it was back to our cabin to unpack. We swapped our mini-bar for bottled water as we drink a lot of that at night but rarely drink minibar stuff. Then we were given two half bottles of wine and a bottle of sparkling wine. I think they're determined to get us drinking in cabin.🤣 I haven't heard any formal announcements yet but we might be overnighting at Circular Quay and starting the run north tomorrow to avoide some nasty seas. We'll miss Brisbane which doesn't bother us as we were just going to stay on the ship that day.

I think it might have been. Quite a few of the other passengers decided not to go ashore. We went ashore with a small group of friends and had a short wander around then went back to the ship.

Not that wonderful. 😒

It didn't feel spooky, just boring. There was none of the "colour" that locals bring to a town. No vignettes of daily life. I didn't actually figure out why until we were back on the ship.

The ship is there waiting for us. The weather isn't the greatest for embarkation though.

When we did a San Francisco to New York Panama Canal cruise we loved the stops in Mexico, Guatamala and Costa Rica but Nicaragua was a bit weird. We stopped at San Juan del Sur which was a beautiful spot but it felt like the place had been sanitised. The only locals we saw were operating the bars, shops, souvenir stalls or taxis, the streets were empty.

No, we're only doing the first two but I thought it would be good to include all the September itineraries. After those I think Coral goes straight into the Round Australia cruise.

Are they all under the same group now - Passport Control (ie Border Control) and Duty Free / Biosecurity. I guess it makes sense.

Let me know if they still have the great little jewellery stand inside the Darwin cruise terminal. They used to have some great stuff at very cheap prices. Often old stock from places like Swarovski. Since I don't care if it's in fashion or not it's great to get nice stuff at a bargain price.

No, we stuffed everything in our usual suitcases. It's only a few layers for both of us and one warmer pair of jeans for me. Regardless of where we are going we always pack a rain jacket and a light fleece - we were caught out a couple of times many years ago so come prepared for all weathers now. I'm planning a very lazy day on the changeover day. Hopefully we won't even have to leave the ship but if we do we'll just wander up the Rocks for a coffee.

Well, we've cleared the first hurdle - the battle of the suitcases. I won after a bit of a tussle! 🤣 We're doing the first two B2B - north first so hopefully warm, the south which could still be cold, especially Melbourne which has thrown a few freezing days at me in the past even in mid-summer.

I thought I'd start new live reporting thread for the next round of cruises: 3rd Sept - 10 nights Queensland 13th Sept - 9 nights South Australia 22nd Sept - 4 nights NSW Hunter and Sapphire Coast 26th Sept - 12 nights Queensland & Conflict Islands Hopefully a few other "reporters" will add their comments to mine.

Are you one of those people who sleeps through anything? I wouldn't get any sleep at all in one of those cabins. We had an aft-facing cabin on Carnival Legend once and it was quite noisy when the ship was running at full tilt which it did one night after a med-evac

We did the 35 nights in an inside cabin. Never again! Maybe for very short cruises in the future but not for long ones.

That's customs then, not border security. I know there was a customs check when we disembarked in Brisbane early July after a Willis Island visit but I think the B2Bers stayed onboard then. Oh well, I'll find out for myself in eleven more days.

The Grüner Veltliner was on the Princess wine list in 2019 so it should be on Majestic. We drank several bottles of it during the 35 night cruise we did on Sea Princess that year.

Maybe they're doing more port stops around Europe and the Baltics. The 2024 world cruise is three days longer than usual but I'm not sure how that cruise compares to others on number of ports stops. Princess does seem to vary the itineraries year to year so another "right turn" may be on an itinerary some year soon.

Yes, the real world will hit again in March for us.🤣🤣🤣 Still, this has been a wonderful opportunity to try the best the ship can offer cabin-wise. We used to cruise quite a bit in inside cabins but these days I want a balcony, just in case. Being unwell when you're in an inside cabin is pretty depressing.

It's wonderful. I can't wait to get back onboard for some more great Club Class dining on Saturday. Because we booked this cruise after the 22nd August cruise was stuffed up we could only get a regular mini-suite. I asked my PVP to waitlist us for a Club Class one. Late Tuesday afternoon I got an email "Waitlistmatch...". We're very happy about that! 😊

Bummer! Did Dora go to an overseas port? If not border authorities usually aren't involved. We're doing B2B on Coral Princess, boarding the first one on Saturday. It will be interesting to see what happens at the end of that cruise. In Brisbane the B2Bers were allowed to stay onboard. If NSW is different it's probably NSW Health being too officious after their balls up in 2020.