OzKiwiJJ

Oh dear, you won't like the Plus or Premier chardonnays on Princess. They are a bit too oaky in my opinion.

We left Sydney once in mid-August going to London. It was warmer in Sydney! 🤣

Yes, the former but if the drinks price was showing as $12 you might find the cruise fares are also showing in USD. This has happened a few times on the Princess website in the last few months. I think logging into Princess shows the correct fares/prices.

Much better with a Grüner Veltliner.

I think I upset him so he's taking a break from us. I got a bit annoyed at some of the unsubstantiated, and somewhat unfair (to me) comments he was making about Princess so I called him out on it.

But from about 2017 Aust to Asia was AUD and no extra grats. We did a repositioning cruise to Japan in 2018 with AUD onboard. The previous repositioning cruise we did, on Golden in 2016 was still USD.

That is correct as long as you have booked through an Australasian booking site which, of course, includes directly with Princess. As I mentioned earlier, for us the easy way to remember is AUD onboard = no extra gratuities, USD onboard = gratuities are extra.

I think the rule of thumb with Princess is if the onboard costs are USD then you pay grats unless they are included as a perk. If the onboard costs are AUD and you book through an Australia or NZ booking you don't pay additional grats but people booking overseas do. I'm not sure what the Royal Caribbean situation is, especially from Singapore. My guess is the grats would be extra.

The portions are quite small which is one reason I go to the MDR not the buffet. They have better portion control than I do. I enjoy variety so small portions of several dishes is my favourite way of dining if I'm not cooking.

At least not out of Brisbane, and Sydney isn't much better! Coral really has quite a limited season out of Brisbane as she's busy the rest of the year doing the big cruises. Princess really needs a second permanent ship here, like they used to have a few years ago, that could do winter cruising out of Brisbane, Sydney and Fremantle. Top End cruises across then back, Queensland, New Caledonia/Vanuatu/Fiji plus the alternative big cruises - Circle Pacific and the Indian Ocean one. Surely the popularity of the restart cruises, apart from the butchered 22nd Aug cruises, indicate how popular winter cruising is here. I don't think it was just people wanting to cruise after 2.5 years of nothing, people just want to cruise!

What about just before Christmas?

If the hotel room included a full breakfast for two, a three course lunch for two, a good four course dinner for two, quality entertainment in multiple venues to suit most tastes, and all the other amenities of a cruise ship then yes. But most hotels don't which is why we enjoy cruising, which has one extra advantage over a hotel - the scenery changes daily.

I just spotted an evening session while looking up sonething else on the app calendar. 8:30pm to 10pm. I'll check the Patters when we're onboard in case anything changes.

They probably will in school holidays.

For those of you staying on for the 3rd Sept cruise don't forget to drop into the roll call: https://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/forum/209-coral-princess-roll-calls/ We're having a short Meet and Greet at 11:30am 4th Sept in the Wheelhouse Bar if you want to meet some of the regulars here.

It could be that, or perhaps because there aren't many kids booked on that cruise, or possibly something Covid-related. I was a bit surprised at the short hours though.

The times for the 3rd Sept cruise are showing on the app calendar: Morning 9am - 10:30am Afternoon 3:30pm -5pm I think it's sea days only, I didn't check right through the calendar as it's a pain!

Speciality dining booked pre-cruise is always charged in advance these days. It deters people who used to book for multiple days then not show up to most of them, thus denying other passengers the chance to book. It's the same with excursions although with those you can use OBC. I don't think there is any way around the dining charge issue other than cancelling and waiting until you board to book. I'm not sure what happens re refunds if you cancel though.

Have a wonderful trip. Enjoy and stay safe!

There are no paper boarding passes for Princess cruises any more. You just need to enter all your details into the Medallion app and select your boarding group once your cruise is 59 days or less away. The app shpuld go to Green Lane and show QR code. That is your boarding pass. If you have problems with the Medallion app you can enter most things through the web version in the Personalizer. Take a paper copy of your vaccination certificate though, it's easier.

Us too! We have to slum it in an ordinary mini- suite for the first sector of our upcoming B2B cruise! 🤣🤣🤣 But we used to happily do some cruises in inside cabins and others in balcony cabins depending on itinerary and booking perks. But I want a minimum of a balcony cabin these days even if it means we have to cruise less often.

But I suspect Princess would stick to the same rules as on USD ships for anyone who hadn't booked locally and thus had to pay the auto-grats. Illogical yes, but possible and hard to check actually what happens in that case.

No worries but in case you still want to use the bus here's the timetable. https://www.metroinfo.co.nz/timetables/28-casebrook-lyttelton/

Some people, like me, find that having the afternoon sun streaming onto the cabin windows can make the cabin uncomfortably warm for several hours and the next-to-useless cabin air-con on some ships takes ages to cool it down again. Closing curtains helps but not enough.

Are you sure? I know on Princess ships operating in USD that if you removed the auto-grats then any cash tips given to crew had to be handed in. They were only allowed to keep them if you hadn't removed the auto-grats.