arxcards

I will have to keep an ear out for it. Pacific Explorer did have this, and I think it was 24hrs, so if it was otherwise quiet as you made your way around the ship, it was noticeable. It would otherwise fade into the background noise. My main objection was that it was all "cover" music, not original, perhaps to save paying royalties on something nobody was listening to.

But, did they otherwise have a great time? 😂

Yes, but at least Southern cross could apply more generically to our constellation that the plane was named after. I don't think we could ever cancel the Southern Cross, or could we (it might be offensive to those in the north or those that don't believe in the cross). 😉

Presently here, the cruise lines don't have a choice. While transmissions are still up, our states aren't going to drop any of their imposed protocols for cruises departing East Coast ports, let alone think what will apply to any WA ports. The media from the past couple of weeks backs that up, and currently a domestic cruise of 10 days going to plan is something of a miracle. We have yet to have an international arrival or departure, or even a longer cruise to test numbers. The cruise lines will drop pre-boarding testing as soon as they practically can, but I can't see the co-operative east coast state protocols shifting between now & Christmas. The non-vaccinated are no more likely to spread this than the vaxxed, who are continuing to catch and spread this, but without much severe illness. The unvaxxed are apparently excluded from cruising at present because the ships have minimal capacity to treat serious disease.

You betcha!!

Oh dear, read some reviews. Pretty much as I expected. A 5 dot glowing appraisal, but a whole lot of issues listed within the review. A 3 dot overall, with a 3 dot for dining and 4 or 5 dots for every other category (obviously, food was critical). A passenger on the recent split south and north cruises with so many staff in isolation. And only one review from an ID spotted on this board since resumption. I did learn that if you are over 60, there might be a problem with medallion. I did learn not to order room service on a cruise they are already delivering to isolation cabins. Not a big fan of limited menu room service anyway. I did learn that service standards might not be up to scratch when 15% of the crew are in isolation, and to reconsider the refund offer should this happen again. Still, an average eggs benny beats the two slices of toast I had this morning. 23 days to go!!

Here I was thinking cancel culture was against Smithy and they decided to rename the drive.

No idea on what Celebrity or Royal have in mind here, as far as I can tell, they haven't announced any variation for cruises here. P&O Australia and Princess are indeed the only lines that are doing these winter cruises. They are complying with what our Eastern state governments require, which includes as a minimum, a self administered RAT. The governments don't require these to be supervised. Supervised PCR and RAT traveller tests can be done at pathology sites and most of the larger chemists for a fee, and similar to US requirements, the result is certified and set to you.

There are some wormholes available from this site, and first I had noticed that Sitmar was a nice abbreviation of Società Italiana Trasporti Marittimi. http://www.theshipslist.com/ships/lines/sitmar.shtml A nice photo of a passenger list from 1979 (no, I wouldn't buy it at that price, even if I was on it) https://www.ebay.com/itm/114911993607 Sadly, no sign of the old Fairstar passenger site, which I think may have moved over to a free platform such as FB, then slowly withered. Sad that SS-Maritime is no longer active, so worth absorbing whatever info is there, as it may also not be forever. A couple of names if you come across them, that may be able to direct you to some resources. Rob Henderson (P&O archivist/historian) Peter Plowman (a couple of books from the later end of the Sitmar era) Peter Knego (was active in ship keepsakes, and had a bit of Fairstar info, although maybe from her final days) I have just spotted a book on my shelf - "The Sitmar Liners Past and Present", by Peter Plowman, 2004. A bit of a quick browse, I didn't spot any reference to passenger lists.

I have only seen Vision of the Seas having some port entries for 24/25, but that could mean anything.

I will have a dig later this afternoon. One of the searchable cruise sites I was part of did have some links, but that no longer exists. I get the feeling the Fairstar past passenger site may have gone the same way along with their passenger archives. For now, the best I can find is the SS Maritime page for Fairstar. Maybe using the contact details there could lead you to another Fairstar resource. http://ssmaritime.com/fair1.htm

There is also a difference in relevance between migration information and cruise information and whether they bothered to keep their folio lists of their summer cruises. Princess/P&O Australia don't have ready access to those either. Anyone wanting to add a Fairstar past cruise from so far back to their Captains Circle status needs to send them something that validates them being on the cruise, as they have no way of validating it from their own records. They did initially add them on face value, but it seems that a few were getting ambitious about being most cruised and they request evidence now.

We are supposedly masking up to prevent transmission too. Summer cruising is an advantage.

I hope the numbers of the 7 night sailing average are also coming down too. They did say late July for a peak, so I hope they are right. Still a lot of ground between the peak and insignificant numbers though.

$6.10 in our local Woolies in the Hunter tonight. I picked up the last one of today's rations.

Ooh, boom boom. I hope that isn't the tip of the iceberg?

A cottage pie is so much better than a cottage cheese pie.

I haven't seen any significant resources for that. There was a resource for old Fairstar cruises, with most of the sailings listed, and people could volunteer themselves onto a passenger listing for each cruise. Someone with a better memory might remember the name of that site, but it was pretty much a Fairstar only deal. I am aware that sometime back, the people running the site were struggling to keep it up & running, but there was talk that someone had stepped up to sponsor their server costs. I haven't heard anything about it for ages though. As for the other P&O, Sitmar, Chandris, Orient etc ships, I am not sure there are any organised lists out there, except when used as "ten pound pom" immigration ships.

I haven't noticed so much a ball drop, but a slightly lower standard all-round. We have generally felt that the seasonally based Princess ships had a slightly better standard of service when operating here than the full time Australian based ones. As much as I am glad we don't have that AWS (auto wage subsidy) on our ships, the visiting $US ships still had it for a while, and it seemed that the staff worked their butts off for the extra tips and to keep the US passengers happy. We are more laid back anyway, so most of us are just glad to be on a holiday, and our more relaxed mood also transfers to the staff. In most ways, that is great. I am seeing more and more, let me call them "entitled cruiselings" on Australian cruises, with bigger voices and insistence that everything be perfect. All the power to them, but I think their expectations are skewed by the everything is awesome spiel that regurgitates from those social media influencers. Only 2 months ago, I was thinking how awesome is this to be on a ship again, catching up with old friends, eating and drinking too much. At the same time, there is always someone saying their cruise sucked because they had to pay for a hamburger.

P&O instructions when connecting to their internet/onboard content tell you to go into flight mode to connect. I suspect it is the same with the Princess medallion app/internet too. There is the option of disconnecting and turning off flight mode in port if you need to.

I am glad you raised it. Always nice to see how the other half live.

I have always found the review section largely takes the "critic" part to heart, and lots that say most things were great in one line, and follow with 5 paragraphs of detailed items that weren't. "We had a great time, but ....." I haven't read one for ages, as they are not as interactive as live threads or general discussion here. Expectations met vs not met are everything, and I have no idea what they were expecting if they aren't part of the regular discussion. I will have to make a point of reading some.

Stu, add Cruise mapper to your arsenal, as they have satellite AIS tracking of the cruise ships. A bit less detail, but you do get to see the whole journey. She is out of terrestrial range again, but has cleared Indonesia and is now coming into the Arafura Sea, around 150 nautical miles north of our Melville Island. They should be picking up the reef pilot around this time on Thursday near Thursday Island. They picked the right day this time.

A significant number of the passengers have it included in their "plus" fare. I just hope they are making up for lost time and too busy having fun.

Apart from extra time on the ship, I don't see much gain in doing a B2B northbound/southbound when there is so much to see in the middle up in Denali. Prices on Noordam are pretty similar, at least for twin share, so it is possible to do 21 days northbound, Denali/Anchorage, southbound. That would be worth going back for.