Relaxing Robbies

No idea what the Celebrity excursion includes, but we enjoyed our visit to Lone Pine in February with some English friends visiting Australia. There were lots of koalas available for close up viewing. You could wander through the kangaroo enclosure and feed them special food pellets purchased onsite. Lots of other Aussie animals and birds to see, including platypus and Tasmanian devils. I think you could pay to cuddle a koala, but we did not bother with that.

That is correct. Bring a test kit with you and do the test within 24 hours before embarking.

The packages can be purchased via the waiter in the MDR or at the Cherry On Top lolly shop onboard. There is a list of the included wines at the shop. I took this photo, but missed the bottom of the dearer package list. We were given a piece of paper that included 5 tear-off coupons that we handed over when we redeemed each bottle. The wine can be consumed anywhere on the ship. If you have some left in the bottle at the end of a meal you can ask the waiters to store it for you for the next night or take the bottle with you and either drink elsewhere or bring it with you the next day.

This is very sad news because we found it a very attractive town with interesting history. We really enjoyed our tour around the museum and seeing the old courthouse. That amazing old banyan tree provided very impressive shade cover. We also feel so sad for the locals who have lost their homes and businesses, and some their lives in this horrible wildfire.

We disembarked Splendor yesterday after a 10 night cruise to North Queensland. We enjoyed our cruise, but do prefer the Princess product. We like to share tables in the MDR and had many enjoyable meals with others on tables seating 6, 8, or even 10 people (10 is too large for whole table conversation). We had anytime dining and when we were ready to eat we checked in on the app and indicated that we would like to share a table. Normally we tend to eat around the same time each evening, so we were often seated with people we had dined with previously. We met some great friendly people (including some of the 400 or so Americans onboard) and generally enjoyed our dinners. Unfortunately the weather was not great and we could not tender to Port Douglas. The captain then decided that we would not bother travelling to Willis Island, but would head down to Bundaberg so that the ship could have her bum scraped in preparation for lrips to New Zealand later this year. Unfortunately the divers who came out to the ship decided that it was too rough to do this work safely so that task was not even commenced. I am very sceptical that the attempted bum scraping was a last minute booking and had not been booked and planned from the outset, but who really knows? Wine prices were much cheaper than the prices Princess charge for the same wines and started at about $36 per bottle. We purchased a 5 bottle package that cost $180 and included a choice of 26 wines. There was also a premium package available - 5 bottles for $260. We enjoyed the production shows in the theatre, avoided the comedy, took part in a couple of sports and general trivia competitions, and listened to some music around the ship, read a book and just relaxed. The Sports Bar on Splendor is too small for Australia and was packed way beyond capacity during AFL, NRL and the Womens World Cup games. No sports channel was available on the tiny tv in the cabins. Carnival finally gave in to the many requests and made a last minute decision to show the Australia v Denmark game on the large screen by the pool. I think that after the cancelled port stop and the aborted Bundaberg hull clean they were afraid of a passenger uprising if they didn’t agree to show the game. Our cabin steward was friendly and efficient, and made great towel animals which all survived until the last day of the cruise when they had a huge party on our bed! The crew seemed very happy and service was mostly good, although could have been faster occasionally in the MDR. We have another Carnival cruise in October and will see how we like Luminosa. After that it is back to Princess for our next few cruises we have booked.

Have a look at RACV travel insurance. They have a basic international policy that covers medical and very limited other things, and can also include cruising.

$30 per bottle is rather steep! For my next few cruises I will be taking along a copy of my Passage Contract I received at the time of booking those cruises which specifies that the corkage is AUD $15. They had better not try to charge me more than specified in my contract. For any future cruises I book I guess I will have to reconsider my beverage choices. I agree with Julie that Princess has horrible wine choices, so I will not be paying their inflated prices for cheap cask wine.

I have had to show my photo of negative test twice, despite uploading to the app.

Good food and comes with friendly service too.

This policy has changed recently in Australia. You can now take 1 bottle per person carried in your hand luggage.

We visited Brisbane on Coral Princess in March. We did not take the shuttle, but this shuttle was available at a cost of AUD $39.95.

I have seen ads for a music charter cruise on Luminosa from October 16 to 23 2024 that departs Sydney. I have also heard rumours of other charter cruises before the ship transfers to its normal homeport in Brisbane in November.

Thanks so much for this information. I have just logged in and booked some tours using onboard credits.

Personally, I don’t mind if they keep the current protocols, because those current compensation promises suit me. For the 5 cruises I have done in the last year I have been happy to rely on an annual travel insurance policy that was cheap because the only covid coverage it included was covid medical, not cancellation etc. If the protocols and compensation change then I will need to purchase more expensive insurance for my future cruises.

In Australia we have previously not been able to prebook any Carnival shore excursions etc until we are onboard. This changed recently and now you can book shore excursions etc in advance. Unfortunately Carnival did not enable the use of onboard credit to pay for these excursions. It is really frustrating. We have large onboard credits on our cruises booked for July and October. I chose some excursions to use the credits, but need to wait until onboard to book them. Meanwhile some of the popular excursions are already showing as sold out. Who knows what will still be available onboard. We may have to spend our credits in the casino or something.

I found these pictures of interconnecting cabins in a 2018 brochure. The link to the brochure is https://www.pht.com.au/files/17675_pacific_explorer_accommodation_guide_guest_version_feb19.pdf

The Future Cruise Credits always had “Book by” and “Sail by” dates. When cruising in Australia took a long time to restart those dates were extended several times. The information was always available on the Carnival Australia website, and there were many posts on facebook by travel agents warning people to make bookings or lose their onboard credit offers and future cruise credits. I kept good records of all my covid cancellations and credits to be used, and made sure that I noted the expiry dates. We have 2 cruises booked with Carnival for this year using ours and had no trouble with them being honoured and the $900 onboard credit applied. The expiry period to book a cruise and get the $900 onboard credit is long gone. You still have time to book a cruise and use the actual future cruise credit, so check out the available cruises, choose one that sails by the required date, and enjoy your cruise.

My husband did the full day excursion that goes to Admirals Arch, Remarkable Rocks and Seal Bay in January. It is expensive and is a long day due to the travel distances involved, but he did really enjoy it. I have previously done the same excursion through P&O UK and also enjoyed it.

We had an aft cabin on port side and did not hear the noise in our cabin. It was very loud near the aft lifts on the starboard side.

Western Australia is open. We visited Fremantle, Geraldton and Broome in March. Ships have also visited Albany, Busselton and Exmouth.

Just checked the list of cruises from Melbourne, hoping that they would have some good cruises to cover the poor Princess selection. Not much going on except very short cruises. We are really missing out down here.

How many of the ports on the World Cruise require face to face contact with immigration officials? In 2017 we did 2 sectors of a Circle Pacific on the old Golden Princess. A few ports required face to face immigration formalities and it was no easy task with all those passengers aboard. Sometimes passengers were processed by deck levels, and it was very stressful if you had an independent tour arranged and your deck was one of the later groups to be processed. It really cut into the available time at those ports. It would be even worse with the extra passengers on the Crown Princess.

We docked at Geraldton on Coral Princess in March. It is a working port so free shuttles are provided into town. Paid shuttles around town were available from the free shuttle drop off point, but we did not use them.

There are no cruise departures from Melbourne in our cruising “off season”. The last departure is late March and cruising does not restart from Melbourne until October. The winter weather here can be very rough in Bass Strait, which is south of Melbourne when you exit Port Philip Bay. In our off season Princess only has 1 ship based in Australia (currently Coral Princess), but it normally does a few round trip Hawaii cruises and a world cruise during the winter period. Carnival do have Carnival Splendor sailing from Sydney, and P &O Australia have Pacific Adventure sailing from Sydney, Pacific Encounter from Brisbane, and Pacific Explorer from various other ports during winter.

On our visit to Brisbane on Coral Princess on 31st March the only shuttles available were set times as shown in the picture below. Cost was $39.95 per person return. Port visit times were 7am to 5pm.