OzKiwiJJ

So far they haven't reversed the extra charge! 🤬

Around $34 a bottle.

The problem with driving on Kangaroo Island is that the island namesakes have no road sense!

Heaps of cocktails available under the Plus limit. Ring Princess about seeing if you can just get the Plus package for you.

It's an easy walk from the tender dock to the Penneshaw township and there is usually a market there. Kangaroo Island is huge so it does take a long time to get between the main attractions. We spent a whole day driving down from Kingscote to Seal Bay and on to the Flinders Chase National Park, and back. It was definitely worth it. Seal Bay has a relatively easy walk down to near the beach with plenty of seats along the way. Admiral's Arch has more stairs but, again, plenty of seats to rest along the way.

We're having another wine war with Princess!🙄 The MDR wine list shows the Henschke "Henry's Seven" GSM as $29 per glass, $139 per bottle. The MedallionApp shows it as: I'll let you know tomorrow if we got the app price! The Restaurant Manager claimed the app prices was in USD. We (relatively) politely pointed out this was an AUD cruise so ...

Souffles on Princess aren't what they used to be:

We saw them on Coral Princess last year. They were hilarious! They sang that song then, very, very funny!

We just did one of the best Princess shore excursions ever - A Taste of Port Lincoln. We started by a detailed drive though the marina learning about the local fishing industry, then went up to the lookout. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating at that point so visibility was poor. Our final stop was at Boston Bay Winery where we shown how to cut up a whole kingfish and what each part of it was good for by Chef Tony, who is a hilarious raconteur as well. We had very generous serves of all their wines to taste (so generous they had to pour most of us back on the bus) and enjoyed a delicious seafood lunch.

I agree - nicer than Golden and Ruby but not as nice as Diamond. The bathroom/closet area is a bit different to the other Grand Class ships we've been on - instead of a long hanging space down one side, cupboard at the end and bathroom entrance on the other side, on Grand the hanging space is much smaller as the bathroom is across the back of that area. The airconditioning is great. It's actually effective and I'm able to get our cabin cold enough at night to sleep without using my fan. Plus it gives me the white noise effect when on full cold whereas on other ships I can barely hear it at night.

I think it's mostly the port staff at Melbourne. I Sydney Carnival used to stick to fixed time slots long before Covid, and when we embarked the Round Australia cruise last year in Sydney the OPT had group lanes set up (like Carnival used to do) but were letting Elites, Platinums and Suites through. One thing Princess did very well was handing out free bottles of water as people arrived near the terminal. Much appreciated!

No, and by the time the queue started moving it had snaked back through the carpark to the pier gates. When we arrived there was a truck loadin luggage but when Rolf went over to check they said they weren't taking any more and anyway it was only for special people - which presumably meant those with mobility issues. We had to maneuver our bags along the footpath the whole length of the carpark. Luckily most of it was smooth but there were a couple of tricky spots. Then it started raining so we had to deal with umbrellas as well.

Many years ago, when I still lived in NZ, I was in Denver for a day or so before heading for the skifields. I was very impressed when the cab driver worked out that "no, that's not an Australian accent, are you from NZ". 😊 Lately people have been asking me which part of the UK am I from. I blame that on having an English-born mother and a confused Australian/Kiwi accent ie Australians pick up my Kiwi accent but my Kiwi friends claim I've now got an Australian accent! I give up! 🤣

Thanks, Leigh. Luckily they had already decided embarkation wasn't going to start until 2:30pm for that cruise - we had Group A at that time - but a lot of the people near us in the queue didn't even know what Arrival Groups were. However one couple near us was complaining loudly that they weren't enforcing the times - their time was 3:30pm and we joined the queue at 2:10pm so they were there over an hour early! Go figure! 🤔🙄🤣

The package included fare is higher because the Plus package was only $40pp when they released the 2024 WC. Now it's $65pp.

No worries, Les. Sorry to hear things are a bit rugged for you at the moment. Take care. {{{{{Hugs}}}}} 😘

The tenders go to Rhyll. I'm not sure if they'll have shuttle buses to Cowes. I hope they will as there isn't much at Rhyll.

If they didn't clear the ship until after 1pm then I think we were lucky to get onboard by 4pm. It was hard to tell exactly from where we were in the queue but I think they may not have even been allowing incoming passengers through the gates at Station Pier until around 3pm, which was a real pain when it started raining. Once the queue started moving it moved quickly and check-in was very efficient.

Actually they are slightly cheaper than the 2024 world cruise.

We copped to run-on effect from it - a totally shambolic embarkation. No attempt to board people by arrival group but they did at least have an Elite queue once you reached the cruise terminal. Still, kudos to Grand for the rescue. Princess is very good like that. Some years ago when we were on Sun Princess she went out of her way in Vanuatu to do a rescue overnight.

The link works OK for me. Plus I've been able to access OneSource for a couple of years now - I have it bookmarked. I'm definitely not a TA.

And not one of the regular Grand Class ships, Crown is one of the expanded Grands with over 3000 passengers instead of 2750.

Diamond is repositioning back up to Japan in 2025, 22 nights from Sydney, a bit longer from Brisbane because she goes down to Sydney first.

If they keep scheduling Diamond for Japan itineraries during our winter then they will keep Izumi.

I think similar to Golden. It's not one of the ships that has the extra deck, thank goodness. I think those are Ruby, Emerald, Crown and Caribbean.