reeves35

The problem is The Rocks is just not a great area for turning around a large ship but it is all they've got at the moment. The roads are quite narrow, there is virtually no parking and the available space between the road and the water is really too small for the task. Already the area struggles when a large ship is being turned around. Having pax disembark and new pax embark in a more compressed time in the available space just seems like a recipe for disaster and that's before you consider the provisioning issues you raised. Were it not such an iconic location, most cruise lines would have "cracked" it with OPT by now and demanded an alternative.

That won't happen. The economics of the cruise lines means we are probably stuck with larger ships whether we like it or not. Within 5 years, the seasonal visitors we see from Princess, RCI etc will mostly be well over 140K tonnes and we'll see ships such as the Grand Class as being comparatively small and novel.

With the 4500+ pax ships now regularly using the OPT over the peak summer season, I think there would be serious issues trying to turn a ship around in under 7 hours and any sort of delay would be chaotic. I also doubt it is possible to bunker the fuel onboard a ship in such a short time.

Darwin has virtually no international flights except very limited flights from Singapore. It is much easier for cruise-lines to stage their SE Asian cruises from Singapore which is a massive aviation hub as well as having a well developed cruise terminal capable of accepting and turning around ships of any size.

Yes the cost of getting to Cairns can be prohibitive. I'm flying to Cairns to join the repositioning cruise to Auckland next month. Initially, I thought the airfares to Cairns and from Auckland were going to be more than the cruise fare but P&O, obviously struggling to fill the ship, gave us a credit of $400 per person for Qantas flights booked with them.

Travel to Cairns to join a cruise can realistically only be by plane. Even from Brisbane, it is nearly 2 days on a train each way and, if you want a sleeper, you'd basically be paying more for the 2 day train trip than a 10 day cruise assuming it was a P&O ship or similar. Darwin is further and even more expensive; Ghan daily fares are about the same you would pay on a Regent or Seabourn cruise per day. There is also the issue of time. Unless you have a lot of spare time, very few will want to use 4 days of their holidays sitting on a return train trip when you could do the same return trip in 4 hours on a 737. It is important to remember that a P&O cruise requires around 2000 passengers. There are not enough trains to transport those sort of volumes whereas it is very possible using existing domestic flights. Of course, you already have the independent option for those that choose to not fly but the numbers are always going to be very small.

P&O are actually running a very short season from Cairns right now on Dora. I believe it is only 2 cruises heading towards PNG basically. After that, there is a repositioning cruise from Cairns to Auckland towards the end of June. I think there is another short season scheduled again in 2024.

Of course, ABC listeners would want that. Apart from Garden Island, there are no other options in the Harbour. Given the size of modern ships, the new terminal has to be east of the Harbour Bridge. Garden Island would be expensive both to develop and to relocate the Navy but I'd assume it would be developed in such a way that it also included hotels and apartments on top of the terminal which, given Sydney real estate prices, would significantly offset the cost.

If nothing else, it is a pretty bay to tender at. I'd be interested to know how well the Australian Grand Class ships handle tendering a full-load of passengers. I've seen You Tubes of Princess ships with queues well over an hour for return to ship

As I posted upthread, Carnival Corp write down their fleet over 30 years with a 15% residual though many are sold off before that depending on fleet needs. Refurbs are depreciated over varying periods depending on how long Carnival think they will onto the ship. Any ship over 20 years would be classified as old. Typically, by 20 years, the ship would have been through at least 2 major refurbishments over its life but there are always things that give away the ship's age with cabin bathrooms being top of that list. Cruise lines typically just persist with this and either sell the itineraries at a comparative discount to the newer fleet members or operate the fleet out of lesser ports (eg Mobile AL) or with less important members of the corporation (eg P&O Aust) but , occasionally, they bite the bullet and do an even more thorough refurbishment that involves taking the cabins back to the metal and refreshing the ship bow to stern. NCL has just done this with Norwegian Spirit at a cost of USD100M. Spirit was 20 years old when refurbished (ironically, she is basically the same age and size as Carnival Spirit) and, given the extensive nature of her rebuild, she would be expected to operate for NCL for at least another decade. P&O Australia may do well to consider lobbying Carnival Corp to do a similar major refit with ships such as Coral Princess or Island Princess. New ships are all now well over 140K tonnes which is arguably too big for many South Pacific and Australian ports. A well-rebuilt circa-2000 build ship of around 90K tonnes with up-to-date amenities would be loved down here and able to successfully operate here until well into the 2030s.

Probably, but for most cruisers, they wouldn't know the difference or care.

Following the widening of the Panama Canal (opened in 2016) the old Panamax restrictions no longer apply with ships up to 160K tons now able to transit. This means both Grand Class and Royal Class ships are able to go through the new locks.

As has been said, you will clear customs and immigration on arrival in Sydney (T1) and your domestic (probably with Virgin as they partner with Hawaiian) flight will be from T2 with much less restrictive security controls than international or what is normal in USA. The international terminal and the domestic terminals are on opposite sides of the airport but are connected by a free bus as well as a train but the train has a cost. There are plenty of hotels near the airport and most will provide a free shuttle from the international terminal (T1) and again to the domestic terminal the following morning. The Rydges Hotel is just a short walk from the international terminal and on the domestic side there is a wide range of hotels that will happily shuttle you to T2. These include the Stamford, Pullman, Holiday Inn and Ibis. Obviously some are fancier and more expensive than others. As you have a 6AM departure, you would need to be at T2 by about 5:15AM at the latest. If you chose an airline other than Hawaiian, there are non-stop options from the USA to Melbourne. Qantas fly non-stop from both LA and Dallas whilst United fly non-stop from both San Francisco and LA. There are also good connections to Melbourne without long layovers on Air New Zealand from Houston or LA via Auckland.

Thanks for all your info. I know it'd be here somewhere but can you remind me what the typical allowable range is between too high and too low? Obviously the average level may not be particularly meaningful though a seasonal average, if available, would be good. When the river is too high, is the issue just bridge clearance or is the river flowing fast and does this affect the riverships?

The only thing that turned out to be true was it would be too big for AU. The newbuild originally allocated to P&O AU that ended up going to P&O UK is now the Arvia. At 180K tonnes, it is hard to see how it could be used down here and achieve anything approaching good loads year-round.

Yes, like me, you tend to see Dora being replaced by something around 90K tonnes rather the larger and, by then, quite aged Grand Princess. Given P&O Australia could theoretically draw a new fleet member from across the wider Carnival Corp fleet, there are quite a number of early 2000's vessels that may be available to them. This could include Carnival Spirit class, Princess Coral class, HAL Vista class which also includes things like P&O UK Arcadia and Costa's Luminosa class which is really a subset of the Spirit class. What is almost certain is Dora won't be replaced by a newbuild. No one, except the premium lines, are building sub 100K ships anymore and P&O Australia never gets newbuilds anyway.

It is likely both the Grand Princess and Pacific Explorer have very low book values in the Carnival accounts. Carnival Corp has a policy of depreciating ships over 30 years with a 15% residual and any improvements are depreciated at a variable rate depending on the age of the ship so an older ship has its modifications amortised much faster than a new ship. In addition, Carnival did review the value of their fleet during the pandemic and further wrote down ships whose value was judged to be less than book value.

Carnival Australia is interesting in that both brands operate under the corporate body Carnival Australia Pty Ltd. In operations the structure splits with Jan Swartz, (Head of Holland America Group) being responsible for P&O Australia as well as HAL, Princess and Seabourn. Marguerite Fitzgerald reports to Swartz and oversees the Australian shared services for Princess, Carnival and P&O. Operationally, the 2 Carnival Australia ships are not managed by Swartz however with them being managed under the control of Christine Duffy, the global head of Carnival Cruises.

You are correct. Given its age, it is not particularly surprising that Pacific Explorer will be retired from the P&O fleet in the next 3 to 4 year but it would make no sense to replace it with a ship that is only one year younger. Realistically, with the inexorable growth in the size of their ships, you would expect that Princess will look to jettison Coral Princess or Island Princess in the next few years and these would make a more logical replacement for Pacific Explorer.

Does that mean the scraping will not occur and, if so, what does that mean for the upcoming Pacific Explorer NZ season commencing at the end of June?

One advantage of starboard is you'll get the Opera House outside your balcony as you depart. Port side will have the better view whilst you are docked at OPT

Here is the Travelmarvel pricelist for laundry. I asked them for our cruise in August and they sent me an email with it.

What would Anthem bring that its Quantum Class siblings do not already? The Oasis class was not designed for tendering so it is hard to see how it could be used in our region. So many of our ports are just unable to successfully dock a ship of that size. Where would it go?

I don't think it is correct to say cruising is unsuccessful in Australia. In fact CLIA announced this week that the cruising recovery in Australia is amongst the strongest in the world https://www.cruising.org.au/ccms.r?Pageid=6022&tenid=CLIA&DispMode=goto|10514 Of course, there are limiting issues but they are really down to 3 things: Even when combined Australia and NZ have a fairly small population. Our ~30M is a long way short of North America's ~370M or western Europe's ~200M. This means bank for buck, it is easier for the cruiselines to make money with new large ships in the Caribbean or the Med. We are a long way from just about everywhere. For a foreigner to come to this region involves a long and expensive flight. Europeans can get to the Caribbean or New Yorkers to the Med in less time than it takes a Singaporean to get to Sydney. Even our shortest 7 night South Pacific cruises from Sydney require 4 seadays. Our small population and remote location means we have very few year round cruising options. It is basically New Caledonia/Vanuatu or North Queensland. Anything else is seasonal or too far away. Most of us will have seen Youtubes of the English all-year P&O ships doing cold weather cruising to Germany and The Netherlands and it looks miserable even on a huge ship like Iona or Britannia. I'm pretty sure we don't want to copy that.

Looking forward to hearing about your experience on Travelmarvel. We are doing Amsterdam to Budapest with Travelmarvel in August.