OzKiwiJJ

They did that on Westerdam. 🤔🙄😁

It's not just a Princess thing. It was the same on Holland America - masks were required when moving around inside the ship. The onboard environment is significantly different to every day life on land. The only equivalent would be a large conference or something where people are mostly confined to one place - hotel or resort - for a week or more. People think they don't need to wear a mask because they don't wear one in their day-to-day life but they don't consider that their day-to-day life isn't confined to just one, relatively small, area that contains thousands of people. In their day-to-day life they spend much of their time at home or in their workplace, some shopping, maybe a meal out or a night at the pub/club, exercise or sports etc. But most of these are in much more open spaces than the confines of a cruise ship and they probably come in contact with far fewer people.

True. I made some Easrer buns a couple of years ago but couldn't be bothered piping on the cross. They still tasted great!

Goop? 🤣🤣🤣

This is the NZ forum as well as the Australian forum.

NZ is even more oriented towards credit cards than Australia, in fact we saw some places that no longer accept cash.

Yes, I just found a photo I took of Rolf in one of the suites and you can just see the side of one of the TVs in that.

Wishing him all the best for recovery, both physical and emotional. 😘

The suites have the big screens too, as far as I can recall. I think all the TVs have been replaced by flat screens on Coral but since we rarely use cabin TVs I'm not 100% certain.

Ships dock at Port Chalmers for Dunedin, not Lyttelton. 🙄😀

I don't think it's the cruise that dictates that. The shuttle bus drop offs are probably agreed with the Wellington council and they try to have the stops where they are most required ie near Te Papa and near the Cable Car. At one stage they stopped using the Brandon St stop as there were road works in that area. They moved it to outside the Old Government Building but I don't think that was a popular stop. Good to see they've gone back to Brandon St.

Just wing it. It only takes a few minutes longer during check-in. I had three days between cruises last year and no way was the app going to wake up to the fact that I wasn't still onboard or something. The website version acknowledged me after two days so I could update a couple of things but the app just wouldn't work. I printed out the travel summary and waved that under the nose of anyone who wanted to see what my app said. Luckily we're Elite so that smoothed the path a little.

I know one stop is in Wakefield St, near the iSite information centre. That stop is only a few minutes walk from the Te Papa museum. I'm not sure where the other stop is these days.

Roughly here: You aren't allowed to walk off the wharf as it is a working wharf so a shuttle is provided to take you into the CBD, with two stops I think.

Medicare certainly hasn't kept up with increasing costs for GPs, especially in cities where property leases / rents havecincreased so much, let alone other costs such as salaries/wages, equipment and supplies.

In 2019 it was great weather! Who knows what it will be like this year. I'd add a light fleece or jumper, plus a warm hat, scarf and gloves. It can get chilly first thing in the morning doing the Fiordland scenic cruising and it's best to be outside for that.

I think you were very lucky with that $5 price. I'd been told $14/$7 onboard when I checked the prices but saw posts in a couple of places saying they'd paid $6.50 or $6.75. None as low as what you got.

That's what it was when I checked last year. It sounds like the new pricing is only coming in to play for cruises departing mid-Feb onwards.

Wow, so sorry to hear about Frank's son. That would have been a huge shock to him and his family.

The aft lifts were great. And you get plenty of exercise walking through to midships. 😁 We had an aft balcony cabin on Baja deck on one of our cruises and could see people standing at the balcony railing in the Caribe suites below but I don't think we could see them if they were sitting on the loungers. I did try the spa bath on one cruise - it was lovely but, yes, tricky to get out of if you're a plus size with wonky knees! I think Princess may have started adding more suites with the Grand Class ships. Coral is a Panamax Class, designed to fit through the original Panama Canal locks.

We tried both a Premium and a Vista Suite. They are identical, you just pay a lot more for the location of the Premium suites. We actually preferred the Vista suite location as it had a bigger, fully covered balcony - we were on Dolphin deck though. I think the Caribe balconies are as big but only partly covered. The suites are gorgeous. I didn't take photos but the ones on the Princess website are accurate. The sitting room and bedroom have a thick curtain between them. There is plenty of storage although the wardrobe is a bit odd - plenty of hanging space but awkward to get to some of it. The bathroom is in two parts with a door between - spa bath and separate shower on the bedroom side, toilet and handbasin on the other side. There is a sofa, chair, desk, and wet bar area with fridge in the sitting area. Comfy padded lounge chairs with footrests, plus two other chairs and a table on the balcony.

Yes, it was the same on Holland America. Sensible, I thought

Coral never had McWilliams wines. The ones you are thinking of are De Bortoli Willowglen wines. They are $53, as are the two Masterpeace wines. The 19 Crimes Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay are the cheapest at $52. I imagine the same wine lists are on Grand at the moment but hopefully things will change sometime next month. And even more hopefully for the better!

Bear in mind the wine list could change some time in February when the new Plus / Premier options come into play

Are you sure that is the onboard purchase price? If so it hasn't changed. I'd heard the online prepurchase price was now $20/$10 up from $14/$7 when I checked it during one of our cruises last year.