arxcards

Alcyone Apartments at the old cruise complex in Hamilton is a bit more upmarket than the others up on Kingsford Smith drive. Lots of food options, a bottle shop, small supermarket, theatre are also in the complex. They will pre-book a cab for you for a $35 trip to the cruise terminal.

Very similar, except the one with the three socket holes above each other has an Australian outlet instead. We had 2 x US, 2 x Euro, 1 x AU, and 2 x USB sockets.

I agree, If only I could get airfares for a couple of specialty dinners, I might be aboard now.

Unless they sell travel, it is fine to mention them here. Where is the drop-off point at the terminal? It seems to be very restricted for private car drop-off.

Comes with a free bottle of wine on embarkation night.

They have money in their coffers for the approved Newcastle Cruise terminal that got canned. That was supposed to be funded from the lease/sale of Newcastle Port.

She got my sympathy and support, but even blamed herself for bouncing across the seat like a 10 year old.

That restriction was one of the dumbest deals ever done, and while seen as anti-competitive, it has taken many years to get it to this status. I don't expect the Botany container terminal operators to roll over on that though, and this could take many more years to get sorted. Then Newcastle needs to setup the infrastructure to get it rolling.

The posts are tucked well enough out of the way that I still wonder how the heck she was able to come in contact with it.

That has generally been our experience too. It wasn't apparent to us on Majestic, but we didn't drink any water in the buffet.

They must be good! I couldn't get antivirals - under 70, with a partial risk factor, but I needed two valid ones to get them. I had all of those symptoms, but on top of each other. Add to that, for two days all of my teeth + jaw were aching, and throw in some fever and lingering sinus pain. All passed now, and I am getting a bit more energy back each day.

It looks like a beacon, and I think we would have noticed one if there were any on Majestic. I can't be sure though, as we didn't spend much time in the buffet. It looks like rather impressive water, but we mostly drank bottled water from part of the plus package. Also, the ship water in the dining rooms & specialty restaurants tasted really good.

No, I told Barb to take more care next time. Seeing it there, I was thinking surely someone else has bumped it, but only through carelessness. When I recall how many people fall down atrium stairs and how many slip on wet open decks, these ships need to be treated with respect. The bench seats are common in many of the dining areas, and are fixed to the walls.

Cool. I will keep an eye out on movements. I had mentioned early-on that I was only keen to track the big ones, but she is a ship I would love to be on one day.

Go for it. Just make sure you can get reasonable airfares to go with it.

Carnival Splendor ✔️ Majestic Princess ✔️ Celebrity Eclipse ✔️ Ovation of the Seas ✔️ Carnival Luminosa ✔️ Quantum of the Seas ✔️ Grand Princess ✔️ Queen Elizabeth ✔️ Westerdam ✔️ Noordam ✔️ arrived in Brisbane today, a day earlier than originally scheduled. Now a slow cruise down to Sydney for 12th November. Norwegian Spirit is still some time away, currently having a fun time cruising around Tahiti. Arrives in Sydney on 21st December. With a further six weeks till Spirit's arrival, it is fair to say our summer season is pretty much in full swing - my last update.

Welcome back!! Coral returned to Sydney as Tier 1, which is a considerable turnaround from a couple of weeks ago. When done correctly, it proves the protocols do work.

Correct, for now. They have said they were going to integrate the two sites, but it hasn't happened yet.

Our choice when in Burnie. They even had some on the upper shelves of Majestic Princess.

Fixed dining is indeed easier for a ship to organise than anytime, but sometimes your table companions just aren't your kind of people, or choose to dine in the buffet and leave empty seats at your table on most nights. We have been mostly lucky. Sun Princess was setup for fixed dining for Australia, whereas the overseas Princess ships had one fixed restaurant and anytime in the others. The app alert is a nice improvement for Carnival, although not much different to being given a buzzer as we have had with them and P&O in the past. The experience all depends on whether you only have to wait 10 minutes or 1/2 hour for the alert that a table is ready. We reserved our table/time for each night in Concerto or specialty restaurants, and on each occasion we were seated in less than 5 minutes from arriving outside the venue. I would consider it much more relaxing than arriving with 500 others awaiting the doors to open for fixed dining or open seating. Service at Wake View was ordinary, especially from the waiters, who seemed to be pre-occupied on keeping an all day table of smokers happy on deck 17. Other bars were much better on how they used their POS. The better bars did not use the "passive screen" when it was busy. Instead of having many faces to scroll, they only had to punch in your cabin number to bring up the faces for that cabin, then assign a drink to each for the package. When ordering your first drink, most bar staff/waiters asked for your cabin number - no real difference to when they used to write down your folio number to do the same. I haven't heard they are trying to improve the system itself, only the passenger app interface. The last change was mostly cosmetic. It works for us, and we will get to see how Carnival compares next year.

Can't help with a reef option. For a taste of rainforest, Mossman Gorge cultural centre is an easy excursion to do from Port Douglas. https://www.mossmangorge.com.au/ Most ships have a tour that go there, or you can book independently as well.

The RAT before disembarking MAY be required by Tassie authorities, and that is the same in every other state when there is elevated covid levels aboard. For Coral Princess in Burnie on Saturday, a negative RAT was required before disembarking, but the ship is at tier 2. Every Australian port visit by a tier 2 ship, to date has required a RAT before disembarking - even Sydney. Carnival Splendor is in Hobart today at tier 1, and I believe that no RATs were required prior to disembarking.

We are also doing the first 3 days of that cruise. No idea if/when they will be relaxed.

It comes with a generic lanyard, which works perfectly fine.

Medallion is intentionally designed not to work in the dining room, as they have dedicated junior waiters for each station and still do it all the old fashioned way. Same for all ships. Also designed not to work in the theatre on Coral, but didn't try on Majestic. We had a few random charges, but just used the crewchat feature to have them removed. We found ordering drinks on the open decks to be hit and miss (both Majestic and Coral), so went to those bars or grabbed a waiter to order. We beat the queues for our booked dining by showing up fashionably early. Reservations are set in 20 minute blocks, so there is always a fair number arriving at these common times. The reservation system did purge all of the bookings on one of the days, which opened those tables up again for everyone to book. Those who originally reserved and those that reserved during the day were both showing-up for the same tables, so it would indeed have been a mess. After our first taste of medallion on Coral, well when paired with the plus package, we returned home to book 3 more Princess cruises. Not perfect for sure, but an enhancement as far as we are concerned. More than happy with the new norm.