OzKiwiJJ

Just be aware that once you reach the Hobbiton Tour Start, The Shire's Rest, you will change to the Hobbiton tour buses so your small group will probably be combined with other groups or individuals for the actual Hobbiton tour. I hope you get to go there. It is a fascinating place to visit and very beautiful.

You are asked to verbally confirm you have a negative RAT. Then they do random checks on the proofs. I haven't heard anything about what happens if someone can't produce the required proof on request though.

When I had Covid on Coral Princess last year my husband had to test every day and report the negative result to the Medical Centre. He could then leave the cabin if he wished but had to return to the cabin for meals and drinks. He could get stuff from the buffet and bring it back to the cabin.

The other thing to consider is that if too many people are wandering around the ship who are infectious (and remember people can be infectious before they develop symptoms) then there is a higher risk of crew catching it. If too many crew catch it then services get affected. If too many senior crew catch it there is a risk the cruise would have to make for the nearest port and stay there until there are sufficient healthy senior crew to man the ship again. Coral Princess reached the services affected stage on the Round Australia cruise last year.

But you can't sit and eat in any of the dining areas nor sit and have a drink at any of the bars. You can get food from the buffet and take it back to your cabin.

Clean air? Then what was that brownish murk I saw a few times last year as the sun was getting low late afternoons.

We often cruised in inside cabins pre-pandemic but after 35 nights on the Hawaii/Tahiti cruise in 2019 I decided enough was enough. Luckily we had a minisuite when I got Covid on the Round Australia cruise - I would have been stir crazy if I'd been in an inside cabin for six days. It's balcony cabins or better for us now.

Look at it from the other side - how would you feel if you caught Covid from someone who would previously been required to isolate? Oh, silly me, there are already plenty of those people wandering around the ships already. They are the ones who don't report their symptoms and who insist 'it's just a cold"!

I just checked the Princess website. The only cruise they are offering departs on January 5th! I'm not sure who else cruises out of Singapore.

I'd call that a post-cruise stopover.

It helped that Coral is one of the nicest ships we've been on. Cosy yet spacious enough not to feel crowded most of the time.

Singapore isn't really big enough to do much land travel, other than day trips to various parts, and the MRT pretty well covers the whole island now. Unless, of course, you're thinking of going up into Malaysia for your land travel.

Yes, it was kinda funny, especially when we booked the last Coral one, the Round Australia cruise. We were sitting up in the Sanctuary enjoying the warmth as we cruised back to soggy Sydney. I was crunching numbers in a spreadsheet on my phone and they worked. Then we just looked at each other, said "shall we do it?", and raced down to the Future Cruise Sales office and booked it. After all, we were just making up for lost time! 🤣🤣😪

Welcome back. We went a bit crazy after the restart last year so have done 7 cruises since then (oops!) and have five more booked.

It's not the first. A friend was on an Australia to Singapore cruise on one of the luxury lines late last year that stopped at Komodo Island.

Because that's the peak tourist season when there are lots of overseas tourists cruising here. Back when Princess had a second ship wintering over here they did Top End cruises and PNG cruises right through our winter.

The luxury lines often include gratuities, internet, drinks, even excursions in their fares but, of course, you pay a lot more on those lines. Some mass market cruise lines offer fares with various combinations of gratuities, drinks, internet, sometimes some speciality dining and sometimes some excursions: - Princess Plus and Premier fares cover drinks, internet, and gratuities on US cruises (but not if booked in Australia by the looks of it - our upcoming Japan cruise offers the option of prepaying the gratuities so it looks like it isn't covered by the package). - HAL had a package that had all those plus two speciality dinners and $200pp excursion credits. - Celebrity have deals where gratuities are included. It used to be "Pick your Perk(s)" where you could choose gratuities and/or drinks package and/or internet and/or OBC. I'm not sure what they offer these days It certainly does make it easier with the overseas trips. No more stressing out over what the exchange rate is doing.

I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "boondock" but looking at the context I'm guessing it it what's called Freedom Camping here. It is permitted in many places in NZ as long as your campervan is fully self-contained however you should do some research as to where it is permitted.

February and March for NZ, both land travel and cruising. The weather tends to be more settled then and school holidays are over.

Most of the mainstream lines pretty much follow the same South Island itineraries during the peak season, with minor variations. Look at the itineraries, see what appeals to you and come back here if you need more advice or details. As others have said - the ideal is if you can do a one way cruise and spend some time doing some land travel in NZ, especially in the South Island travelling down through the middle of the island and back up the West Coast, then you'll see the parts that cruising won't cover.

If the timing is right in Auckland you might be able to fit in a trip to Tiritiri Matangi, an island wildlife sanctuary with some lovely walking trails. You'd have to book this in advance, through Fullers ferries I think. I went there many, many years ago. There are some very rare NZ birds there.

Napier is a famous Art Deco city as the town was mostly destroyed in an earthquake in 1932 and was rebuilt in the prevailing Art Deco style. You can pick up a self-guided walking tour map at the Information Centre where the shuttle buses stop. On cruise ship days you'll often see vintage cars around the town and locals dressed in 1930's outfits.

We've been to most of the Australia/NZ ports a number of times so sometimes just stay on the ship during a port day although we haven't done that for every port on a cruise ... yet! We came close on one of the Queensland cruises we did last year but decided to go off the ship for lunch in Cairns.

I remember having lunch at Gusto's once, on a cruise ship day, and the restaurant didn't face out over the wharf. I'm fairly certain the side facing the wharf was a solid wall. If they'd put a cruise terminal between Macquarie St and the water's edge there wouldn't have been any room for restaurants. It's about the same width as the OPT side between the access road past the terminal building and the water's edge. I think the toaster was build about 25 years ago, around the same time as Sun Princess was built. Would anyone back then have imagined that cruise ships would become as large as they are now?

That small leather bag may have been an original portmanteau which is often described as "being made of stiff leather".