colourbird

When we sailed on Celebrity Edge in Aqua class we had access to their Blu restaurant which offered healthier choices (along with regular meals). We had lots of smoothies with our meals and the food quality was very good. https://www.celebritycruises.com/blog/how-to-eat-healthy-on-a-cruise

What are they like in term of dietary requirements?

Celebrity catered for dietary needs very well in their restaurants and the buffet. (It's not adults only though, although it's not one of the lines lots of kids go on like RCI and Carnival). Steer clear of Norwegian though.

On our last few Aussie cruises (from 2022) we haven't needed to complete and hand in any incoming passenger forms.

Norwegian charged the higher upfront fare and daily grats separately.

They were making money by not paying any crew which they mentioned. They said our $20 to $25 daily gratuities was to pay staff. They did a roaring trade in the casino and the raffles. I'm sure they skimmed profits from the stores and speciality dining rooms that charged over US$100 per person. They took payments for return shuttle boats directly into the city at some ports at US$20 when the regular price was 4 euros. We even had to pay for shuttle buses to get out of wharves which you couldn't walk out of. The food was no frills which saved them money too, so over the life of the ship they wouldn't be losing money. This ship also had a large Haven section for passengers paying first class fares. We managed to get a discount during one of their promotions which saved us several thousand on the initial price we booked at. But the total cost was on par with a concerige class fare on Oceania for a similar length cruise which wouldn't have been no frills and would have included gratuities, some tours and thermal suite).

Our last two cruises (which we have just completed) on Norwegian Viva had 3,400 and 3,500 passengers on board so that's around half a million dollars profit per 3 days going by the above table. That's just one ship, and so they are raking it in.

These must be the balconies we always look down on!

I understand what you are saying, but it still doesn't make sense to me. If we want one of those cabins for the 11 nighter all they have to do is let us select one and it becomes unavailable for the shorter cruises.

Then why not let us select a cabin? It makes no sense that passengers on the shorter legs can book cabins, but we can't. It could even get to the stage where we end up having to change cabins during the cruise depending on which ones are sold to the passengers on the shorter cruises.

We tried the TA contacting Princess method, but with no luck. The class of cabin made no difference as we could have selected our own cabin if booking the shorter segments. Maybe Princess was hoping we'd book the two separate legs individually in order to get more money out of us.

We were trying to get balcony cabins near the front of the ship on one of the higher levels.

We booked two cabins when they went on sale, so by the time they are allocated we will probably end up with two reject cabins that are nowhere near each other.

We have a Princess cruise in February 2025. We weren't able to select a balcony cabin, however if we were doing a shorter leg of the cruise, we would have been able to select a cabin at the time of booking.

If that's true, why wouldn't they have mentioned it during last month's big publicity campaign for Voyager and Anthem? It would have made a greater impact if they had included all the ships being deployed in Australia for the season (assuming more are being deployed here).

With recent cruise cancellations on Radiance, I'm sure they are working on plans to replace her. It will likely take several years until replacements for that class are in service. I doubt they will want to keep her going for 30 years.

For the small amount of money you save, it's not worth the hassle getting your own visas. When we obtained visas onboard previously, the process was quick and simple.

We have a Japan cruise coming up in 2026 so this is very interesting. We were last there over 25 years ago on a land based tour. We used a lot of public transport (trains) then and are planning to do the same this time. We haven't thought about a hotel yet, but it will be near a station and we will most likely catch a train to the cruise port.

Going by previous years, the city will be absolutely packed with shoppers.

Doesn't explain why they aren't selling the repositioning cruise for Anthem then.

It's possible Anthem will stay in Sydney all year round in a couple of years time as her last scheduled cruise isn't the usual repositioning cruise, but a return to Sydney in April 2026.

Catch-22!

A lot of Aussies cruise, but many of us go to warmer climates in the northern hemisphere during our off season.

See you on the Diamond, I'll keep away till after breakfast though. We'll have to have a meet and greet.

I hated maths at school, but ended up studying statistics at university as part of a major. I couldn't see why I'd ever need statistics in real life and thought it was a waste of time, but I ended up collecting, compiling, analysing, comparing and reporting on statistics at work for over 30 years.