OzKiwiJJ

When you have a B2B the two cruises are treated as one by the Medallion App. You can see the full itinerary for both cruises and you can make dinner bookings for the whole B2B cruise.

I've heard $300 and, yes, top ups may be required as the cruise progresses.

When you look at each dish you think it's just airy-fairy art on a plate but when you taste everything it's just amazing and it's not as insubstantal as it looks. By the time we'd finished the full meal I was stuffed, and very thankful that we only had to stagger a few doors down to our room. Some of the flavour combinations sounded a bit strange on the menu but they worked so well together. It really is an exceptional restaurant.

Our travel costs to the BICT in June were around $250 for fuel and $105 for undercover parking (I booked Portside before they increased their prices), which covered two people. For our September cruises it will probably be around $30 each way for an Uber to the OPT.

Interesting you should say that. Coral Princess was built four years after Grand Princess. Coral and her sister ship, Island Princess, are Panamax Class ships, built specifically to fit through the original Panama Canal locks. She has all the features of the Grand Class ships but is a little smaller and narrower. She is ideally suited to the longer cruises we have during our off-season - 28 night Round Australia cruises, 35 night Hawaii/Tahiti cruises and the 107-110 night World Cruises. Perhaps you were thinking she was one of the older Sun Class ships? It will be interesting to compare the condition and maintenance of Grand Princess when we cruise on her next year.

BYO if you need chocolate at night, that way you're guaranteed to get the quality you like.

I think you've summed them up quite nicely. Princess v Celebrity is hard to judge. I did like the cabins and bathrooms on Celebrity Solstice but the cabin storage (wardrobes, drawers, nightstands) weren't as good as Princess. The Solstice Sky Lounge was terrific for sailway drinks at each port. And I did like having sommeliers serving the wine at dinner in the Celebrity MDRs. But IMHO Princess wins hands down on quality and variety of meals, music, entertainment, decent-sized lounges and bars (except on the newer Royal class ships), and good promenade decks on all by the Royal Class ships. Coral Princess has a particularly good promenade deck. Princess also has a much better and bigger cocktail list but their wine list is underwheming at present. Hopefully that will improve.

Don't forget no very ordinary American chocolate on your pillow at night, thank goodness. The last thing I need after indulging in delicious Princess desserts is poor quality chocolate. Some of those missing items may have been from supply problems. They are too trivial to worry about IMHO. One thing I forgot to mention in my earlier post was the excellent service on Coral Princess. We were on the first of the 7 day cruises in June - there had been 3 or 4 short cruises before ours, just enough for the crew to settle back into a routine. I'm really looking forward to being back onboard her in 23 days, for 19 days this time. 😊

"It is made and sold globally, as candy floss in the UK, Ireland, Egypt, India (also known as grandma's hair), New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and South Africa; as "girls hair" in United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia; and as fairy floss in Australia. Similar confections include Korean kkul-tarae and Persian pashmak." Oddly it doesn't mention Canada or the US.

We were very lucky when we stopped in Bateman's Bay last year to catch up with Les and enjoy the local river cruising. It was a last minute decision to take the coast road from Melbourne, there wasn't much accommodation available so we ended up at Quays. We were delighted to discover it had a restaurant of the calibre of Sandbar and were very lucky to be able to get a table there at short notice. It was a superb meal. Japanese- French is one of my favourite fusions. It was a lovely way to finish our trip.

The menu looks very nice but the service of the wines with the meal was appalling. I would have shown them exactly what I thought of their wine temperatures but requesting some ice. I've done that more than once in restaurants that served wines too warm. One cube is usually enough to bring the temperature down to a reasonable level and doesn't dilute the wine too much. As to the price, $160 for a four course meal with wine, plus a wine tasting beforehand, is quite reasonable these days. Very few restaurants would do four courses of that level for under $100 without wine.

To get the itineraries you want you'd have to fly to Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. There is plenty of choice from all of those ports. What sort of ship do you want to cruise on? Small ie less than 1000 passengers means one of the luxury lines. Mostly these do one way itineraries as they pass through our region. Medium ie up to 2500-3000 passengers. Quite a few of the mainstream cruise lines have ships around this size. Large ie 3000+ passengers. Some of the cruise lines newer ships fall into this category. What sort of ambience do you want? Traditional vibe - try Princess or Cunard, Holland America also I think. Modern vibe- Celebrity Family - Carnival, P&O Australia, Royal Caribbean BTW Coral Princess is a wonderful ship if you like a more laid-back traditional style. I've been on nine different Princess ships and Coral is my favourite. Just the right size, around 2000 passengers, plenty of public space, excellent food, and great music and entertainment - Princess is one of the few cruise lines that has its own show band rather than using recorded music for shows. What it doesn't have is flowriders, climbing walls, waterslides etc. Of course the Princess style of ship doesn't suit everyone but luckily there are plenty of choices. Celebrity might suit you better, it's on a par with Princess in my opinion. One thing to be aware of is that most of the cruise lines operate in USD onboard. The only three cruise lines that operate in AUD when operating in our region are Princess, Carnival and P&O Australia.

Usually we don't bother with the speciality restaurants on short cruises but do use them on longer cruises as a change from the MDR. However we wanted to try the ones on Coral as the Bayou was new to us and the menu had bern revamped at Sabatinis.

It comes with a little dish of melted butter, with lemon I think, to dip the lobster into.

Yes, that's what I think too. I'm surprised they structured the Bayou menu that way - essentially to "encourage" people to only have three courses. All the other speciality restaurant menus are a 4 or more course layout. Sabatinis works out at six courses - antipasto, appetiser, soup/salad, pasta, main and dessert. Thank goodness the servings are smaller now. I actually prefer to have several small courses when dining in certain types of restaurant. I like variety of tastes, not large platefuls of food. I love degustation menus and some Asian styles of dining like Japanese Kaiseki. Bayou does have more deluxe items on its menu than the old Sterling Steakhouses had. The lobster is exceptionally good, true Maine lobster apparently, and a decent size too.

I'm thinking of seeing if I can try it as a four course meal on our September cruise as there are a couple of appetisers I'd like to try and I'd like to give the black and blue onion soup another go to see if it was just a bad day for soup last time. I really loved the key lime pie dessert. Traditional key lime pie it ain't but it was amazing. Rolf had the cheesecake brulee which was clever but just cheesecake with a brulee top - I'm not a big fan of cheesecake but he loves it.

For Coral Princess the boarding groups have started at 11am so far, and progressed in half hour increments.

I'm sure Princess will have sussed out the visa situation in time to either proceed with that cruise or cancel it. Cruise ships don't go blindly sailing into ports without the necessary approvals unless, of course, the port pulls a last minute swifty.

Yes, and there was a bit too much of it as well. Normally the blue taste is quite subtle but on Coral it was very strong. Actually that may have been why the soup itself tasted a bit bland - the blue cheese was too overpowering so swamped my tastebuds.

I discovered the merlot on the current wine list goes exceptionally well with the Love Boat Dream dessert. I'm going to have to restrict myself on the next cruise or I'll be eating it every night! 🤣🤣🤣

Possibly gruyere in the MDR version but the Black and Blue onion soup is made with blue cheese. I didn't get to try the MDR version on Coral but hope to try it on our next cruises.

Nope, 12:00 to 1:30 according to the embarkation day Patter from our June cruise.

Yes, 4pm, as is the 26th Sept which is a Friday.

No, the cruise prior to Russell21's is a four day cruise.

Not all the Sydney boarding times. Our Sept 3rd cruise is the same as our recent Brisbane cruise.