OzKiwiJJ

Or Rhapsody of the Seas, but with the Princess vibe. I'm currently sitting in Crooners which is the best place to get coffee. The International Cafe is always crowded and the coffee never tastes as good from there as they are too busy to clean the machines during the day - they can only do it at night when things quieten down. They've been using the One5 bar for the PES drinks. That's a lovely space but under-utilized as is Skywalkers on some of the other Grand Class ships. They close the bar once the PES session is over then, presumably, reopen it later as the nightclub.

Or the baggage tag got torn off.

Why didn't they cross-pack? We always split our clothes over our two bags plus taking a change of clothes in our carry-ons in case our bags don't show up before we want to go to dinner. We've done for all travel long before we started cruising. Rolf was on a multi-country business trip once and I met him in Hong Kong for a few days. His suitcase went to Bangkok. He had to borrow a pair of my knickers - luckily a boy-style that was popular back then - until we could get to the local Marks and Spencer store. Luckily M&S were in HK, that made it much easier. It would be hard for us to replace clothing in some countries, and possibly onboard some cruise lines. We are both plus sized people these days.

Grand is very nice. Better than the bigger ships like Royal in my opinion even if it is a lot older. The cabins are very quiet unless someone talks loudly right outside your door. No noise from adjacent cabins.

Grand has been very reasonable on this cruise. Comparable with Diamond and Golden. I agree, nothing of interest in the 24/25 release plus the only ship I'd want to go on would be Diamond.

Crown is one of the four Grand Class ships that they built with an extra deck of cabins but with no extra public space. The others are Ruby, Emerald, and Caribbean. We went on Ruby in 2019. Never again! I would be interested to hear exactly what Princess thinks makes Crown better than all the other ships that have cruised this region. Bigger isn't always better IMHO!

HAL is a bit inconsistent with their wine by the glass pricing. It can vary from venue to venue, sometimes tipping over the package limit. At dinner one night the wine we wanted was listed as one of the recommended wines on the menu at $12 a glass, so over the limit, yet in the wine list it was $11 a glass. The waiters have to note the price so we made sure we showed them the lower price! However you can get drinks above the limit and only pay the difference now, like on Princess. If you buy a bottle of wine you get $11 discount - I reckon it should have been $22 as two people were drinking it!🤣

Princess and Holland America are the same. Both have had excellent prices on one way international flights in the past. Unfortunately we never got to actually fly on the Princess ones as Covid got in the way, but we flew to NZ in December on a Latam flight codeshared with Qantas at just over half the price Qantas quoted, booked through HAL.

1. Yes 2. Yes 3. Sorry, I don't know

Yummy as usual but there was just not enough of it.

Yes, tonight at dinner!

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! 🤔🙄🤣