OzKiwiJJ

Maybe but AU $30 is an over-the-top corkage fee. Only very top-end restaurants in Australia would charge that. It's based on US pricing converted to AUD whereas it should reflect local pricing like it used to. And HAL is also a Carnival Corp Line.

Is anyone planning to challenge this over the next few months? Since it's actually written in the Passage Contract that was sent with the original booking legally they would have to honour it as that contract becomes binding on both parties once the deposit is paid. Unfortunately we're not doing an Australian Princess cruise this season. Our next Princess cruise is out of Japan so we won't be trying to take wine onboard for that, and then we won't be on Princess again until the 2024 world cruise.

The Passage Contracts do vary by region, and sometimes the FAQs don't reflect what is in the Passage Contract. When in doubt refer to the Passage Contract.

On a full world cruise they'd probably end up in hospital in a diabetic coma half way through the cruise if they did have 2 of those disgusting things a day.

I'll let you know - we're doing a Japan cruise late next month so I'll get to compare the Northern Hemisphere list with our one. I haven't seen the wines by the glass list for that but they do have some very interesting wines by the bottle. I'm not expecting the wines by the glass to be great though, they tend to reflect US tastes even in the Med. On some cruises we did pre-Covid they used to offer the standard US wine list as well as a separate list of Australian wines on our local cruises.

But again we never bother ordering things outside of a bar, dining area or the Sanctuary, where we order through a waiter. We bought the Plus fare in good faith when we booked the world cruise so it only cost $40pp per day. It offered exactly what we wanted, internet and a basic drinks package. The first big disappointment was being ripped off with the poor selection and quality of the wines by the glass. Now we have to pay extra for things that have always been included in the past. Upgrading the package isn't feasable as we don't want all the other crap - I'm not a big ice cream eater, I didn't have more than about half a dozen single scoops on the whole Round Australia cruise and most of those were for/with dessert in the MDR. Instead we'll end up paying about $5000 above what we budgeted for wines by the bottle on the world cruise - at least we still get 25% discount on the price. But we could drink ourselves silly on cocktails each day and not pay an extra cent. That's just crazy!

Maybe they've already started doing that with the Velocity points deal.

We were quite happy with the cabin we ended up with so don't need to change it but it would be interesting to hear if anyone tries that. Yes, it's an odd way of allocating cabins. Some experienced cruisers, who prefer to select their cabins, may not bother trying Virgin because of that. Also the fares they quote are per cabin, not per person like all the other cruise lines. If you were just glancing at them you could mistake it for a per person fare and then it would seem very expensive.

Correct, it would cover the Ocean Now charge if you like to have room service (we don't), but not the casual dining charges and those are slightly more interesting to us on a long cruise.

Before finalizing the booking or after? You can try again for a different cabin by going back at the initial stage of booking. It seemed to bring up a different cabin each time although they were all aft. But when we went back to enter the access key we didn't end up with the cabin it showed that time, we ended up with the previous one it had allocated. It's a very awkward booking process.

That piddly $25 is fair enough for a short cruise but won't go far on next year's world cruise! 🤬

Virgin are weird! They number their cabins from aft forward, so the low numbers are aft. Plus they have the same cabin number both port and starboard but the port ones end in A and the starboard ones end in Z. I foresee a few people trying to get into the wrong cabin late at night after a few adult beverages! 🤣

Mine arrived this morning too, with the access key. Booking was a bit messy as the instructions tell you to enter your Sailor details then the access key. The first time I entered the access key it gave an error. So then I tried going further through the booking, which allowed me to enter our Sailor details but then I couldn't enter the access key. SO I went back by clicking on the arrow in the Sea Terrace. I entered the access key again and this time it worked as it had retained our Sailor details. BTW it allocates the cabins - there doesn't appear to be any way to select them but by restarting the booking you get a different cabin number each time. With all the messing around trying to figure out their booking system we "saw" four different cabins but luckily the one we got on our final try was the best - deck 10 aft. Woohoo!!!! We're booked! 4 nights, Sydney to Hobart, 11th February 😊

That never works. Here's the sequence in photos:

Had you clicked on "Explore Dining Options" when that happened?

On the app, go into Dine My Way, then "View or Book Individual Daily Reservations", Add Reservation, Speciality Dining, and then you should see the restaurants. If they're not showing they may be fully booked. If that happens try booking at the restaurant once onboard.

Platinum and Elite guests get early access to make Dine My Way reservations, otherwise they open up after final payment which is usually 90 days prior to embarkation.

You have to be a bit careful comparing prices. I've noticed the bottle size offered onboard can be bigger than retail bottle sizes ie 1 litre against 750ml. Also sometimes they have very good deals when you buy two of something - last year we picked up two 1L bottles of Baileys for around the same price as a 700ml bottle at Dan Murphys. We just bought them from the duty free section of one of the onboard shops on Coral.

Probably in another couple of months. The timing of the itinerary releases seems to have changed a bit since the pandemic so I'm not completely sure.

When we were there in 2019 there was a small bar that had clamshell shades, each with two loungers, that you could hire. It was on a lovely part of the beach with a few coral formations just off the beach if you wanted to do some easy snorkeling. There was a lovely little market as well. The shuttles ran to and from the ship all day. We went over fairly early and returned to the ship early afternoon so there wasn't much of a queue to get back. That was on Ruby.

It won't be available for purchase. The ship has to visit an international destination, which includes the famous Wiilis Island sail-by before it can sell duty free on a particular cruise.

I may be wrong but I think banks now charge a fee for commercial customers to deposit cash. But this credit card surcharge has gone on too long. It was brought in when the travel industry whinged because people were booking their expensive holidays on credit cards. Now it's filtered through too many places. It's the only fee/tax that isn't included in the price (and, of course it can't be) but it makes a mockery of our all inclusive pricing. Plus with cash going out of fashion since the pandemic retailers, restaurants, hotels, cruise lines and so on just need to factor it in as a cost of doing business and adjust their pricing accordingly.

Yes but only about $50.

Yes, some people do that but we just do our normal shopping, travel, household purchases. We even bought our car by credit card! That was really hilarious!

The way I look at it is that it's the groceries and other things I buy that I spend the money on. The points are a freebie!