OzKiwiJJ

Yes, I've been on Diamond before and we're booked on her next month in Japan, and in 2025 Brisbane to Sydney. Unfortunately when Princess does operate the smaller ships here they are homeported in either Melbourne or Brisbane, not Sydney. 😪

On Coral or Grand?

Welcome back, Lyle.

Then I know exactly why bazzaw isn't happy! A regular Grand Class ship fully loaded is bearable but I won't cruise on any of the Princess extended Grand Class ships - Crown, Ruby, Emerald and Caribbean - every again, and I doubt I'll ever cruise P&O. I'm going to run out of Princess ships to cruise on soon. I don't like the Royal Class ships either.

Encounter is a Grand Class ship, correct? So not that big by today's standards unless P&O have a higher percentage of 3 and 4 berth cabins than Princess did then, based on our experience of a very full Ruby Princess in 2019, it would be awful when full to the max.

All the cruise ships have a 220-240v circuit. It usually has a Euro socket but to change it to AU they probably only have to change the face plate - a very quick job. However on Coral it looks like they put in a whole new unit as those had the USB ports in them. Grand had USB ports in the bedlamps.

We had one excursion cancelled by Princess on our upcoming Japan cruise and that was refunded to our credit card. However it may depend on whether you have used OBC as full or part payment for excursions. If so, they may refund it as OBC.

28 Degrees hasn't changed the no foreign transaction fee thingy. We use it all the time and all the overseas charges on oyr current statement clearly state "Txn inc 0.00 International Transaction Fee".

I highly recommend taking the ferry to Waiheke Island for the day when in Auckland. You can get local buses once on the island to go to various points of interest, including some great wineries. Try to make it to Onetangi Beach for lunch at the Ki Maha Restaurant. Amazing food, especially the local oysters, and an excellent wine list. We have friends that live nearby and went to this restaurant with them in December. It was amazing!

Yes, I'd rather have just the original, basic Plus fare. Even though it was almost too much of a good deal when it was first released I feel like I've been forced to pay extra for things I will never have, like those revolting looking desserts.

I thought Royal Princess was here last season too, homeporting in Sydney. I might be wrong but I recall not wanting to cruise out of Sydney earlier in the year because I don't like the Royal class ships so we flew to Melbourne to cruise on Grand. We cruised on Royal in 2017 in the Med. Although we enjoyed our cruise there were certain things we didn't like about that ship - no promenade deck, tiny bars, Princess Live, small theatre, to name a few.

Yes but where? Despite the size of Australia there are very few useful ports, all the ports in NZ are regularly used, there are issues with some South Pacific ports and also not many other viable places there, and it's too far from anywhere else.

Grand Princess isn't new to Australia, she was here last season homeporting in Melbourne. We cruised on her last March - Melbourne to Sydney via South Australia. We'll be trying Resilient Lady in February thanks to the Velocity points offer. 😊

We're very familiar with unfinished bottles as we like to match the wine we're drinking with what we're eating, which means we could have 2-3 bottles on the go at one time, especially if we're both eating different mains. Typically they are still wines though, we've never tried it with sparkling wines on a cruise although we have done so at home with a good champagne stopper. I'm not sure I'd do it with Dom Perignon though!

We bought the Plus package for our Japan cruise last month before the last lot of changes but I received an email the other day clarifying that we would get the new inclusions. Note: I'm in Australia so the pricing is in AUD.

Book now, then you'll have better choices of cabin. Monitor the prices and if they go down before final payment phone Princess and get them to refare it. BTW choose the option to pick your own cabin. It looks like it costs more but all they've done is remove the lowest cabin category from the selection so, for example, you only see BA to BE categories not BA to BF categories for balcony cabins.

Most of our Virgin Points have come from credit card spending and a lot of that has been all the cruises we've done. Qantas no.longer allowed points transfers from out credit cards but Virgin did. Now were reaping the benefit from that. Thanks Qantas, you did us a favour after all by that move. 🤣

Yes, Portside isn't cheap but they do offer true undercover parking and run a very efficient shuttle service. It's the shuttle costs that makes the cost so dear. We were lucky when we used it - we booked before they put the price up. But it's not double what Wilson's charge for the P1 parking.

We used Portside last year and they were great. We liked having the car fully undercover while we were on the ship.

Yes, it sounds like that is the problem. I wish they'd make sure their online booking system works properly with vouchers instead of having to fork up the cost upfront then get it refunded as OBC. In the main the Princess website is one of the better ones but it has it's quirks unfortunately, especially in our region.

Just to add to the confusion I checked one of my bookings, 2025, Queensland, and got this: The T&Cs showed AU$23. Jeez, I wish Princess would fix their online software!

Quite probably. That bug has been in the Princess online software for years.

That's the one we're on!

And you're certainly allowed to be piffed! I really don't think Princess thought through the ramifications of these changes. Very poor planning.

I must admit I've been tempted to order cocktails and coffees then either drink the ones I want or just leave them.