Therk

This thread needs more pictures of menus/the ship :)

Best places for snorkeling within the reef: Fruits of Rarotonga hands down, Black Rock if you are not a confident swimmer and Aroa Beach for a decent snorkelling/swimming combo. If you go to the correct places you will see fish up to a meter long along with schools of hundreds of fish in as little as 1 meter depth. The snorkelling in Raro is truly incredible and is one of the main reasons I keep going back. Within the reef the water is up to 3, maybe 4 meters deep depending on tide, outside the reef the water drops to 4.5km deep. Stay away from the edge of the reef unless you are doing professional diving or similar.

Best Place for swimming (i.e. no rocks): Muri - don't swim if it has been raining a lot as there is a lot of runoff off the island, also Aroa Beach as above.

Do not go to Raro without reef shoes - Stonefish in the water will kill you if you step on them barefoot (rare but does happen, seen one). and the coral will cut you up. If you hit coral put antiseptic on the wound within one hour - salt water will not help and the wound will get infected.

Do not swim near the inlets, its incredibly dangerous.

Otherwise raro is a super safe and amazing place to snorkel.

Be a bit cheeky and leave your car in one of the inner suburbs with free parking like Grey Lynn or Mt Eden and then uber the last leg for ~$8

Thought it might be a good idea to put all of our cruise reviews in one thread so its easy for everyone to see. You can structure it however you like but here is my (short) example below:

Ship and Line: Carnival Spirit

Sailing Date: July 2017, 10 days

Cabin: 8/10

Deck 8 Balcony forward.

Good spacious cabin, surprisingly not too much up and down considering cabin location. Plenty of storage and all furniture/amenities working and in good nick. Decor (i.e. "look") is slightly dated.

Food: 7.5/10

Solid food overall, much better than P&O Australia. Highlights included Nouveau restaurant and Guy's Burgers, the latter of which we had daily. Very good pizza too. Loses some points in the buffet for sometimes bland food which rarely changes and inconsistency in the mdr (from really average to very good).

Service/Staff: 8/10

Overall very good with a couple of staff looking a bit overworked/stressed out. Great staff in redfrog pub - the bartender was amazing and did some great tricks. Eli is a great cruise director, always involved and I really enjoyed his Q&A near the end of the cruise.

Entertainment/Activities: 7.5/10

From average (Musicals) to excellent (Miss Houdini) the shows were overall good. I also really enjoyed the Marriage game which was a good laugh. The Trivia was OK however sometimes packed with nowhere to sit as the designated areas were too small. A few too many activities involved selling - a bit more enrichment would have been good.

Itinerary: 8.5/10

Great itinerary with Lifou (excellent snorkelling in Jinek Bay), Mare (Amazing beach), Mystery Island (Beach + Snorkelling!) and Noumea (Average and overpriced).

Overall: 8/10

Great holiday on an awesome ship - would go Carnival again any day of the week! While there were small issues and things that could be improved overall it was a great holiday and fantastic for the money for what is considered an entry level mainstream line.

Really bad situation with Carnival looking pretty bad after.

However the most worrying part for me is the inability and general ineptitude of security to handle a bunch of drunk bogans.

Its just a matter of time until the terrorist types click and say hmmm, a 3000 person vessel with a dozen unarmed, untrained security guards in the middle of nowhere. Hazard waiting to happen, I just hope I'm not on that ship.

For NZers from Auckland..

Pacific Jewel J824 Vanuatu Discovery 10 nights from $770 NZD twin

Pacific Jewel J822 Fiji Encounter 8 nights Balcony $937 NZD twin, Mini Suite $1145 NZD twin

..on cruisesalefinder.