The_Big_M

As above, I think the design concentrates people to more specific flows, so some may perceive that it's more crowded. There are certainly very quest areas on the ship. However, I think traffic is more consolidated than it is on other ships, so if you go to certain spaces/locations it may appear crowded if you're looking for things to be unhappy with.

You don't think the bean counters are doing well enough, eh.

I agree.. but it's far from the first. Even where they focus on refurbishing the ship, but it's really about increasing cabins by ~15% such as on Voyager class where they just focussed on adding Waverider in their PR, quite a few changes 'decrease the cruise experience for the majority of its customers.' So while I agree with you, they don't care. You just need to assess whether the degraded experience is worth the increased cost (as happens each year) at that time. It's pretty much a given that any change they make is calculated to increase revenue for them, and hence likely to degrade the experience for some group of other passengers.

First thing you need to check is which terminal you're returning to. Brisbane has two terminals, with different access and distance from the airport, so suggestions will differ depending on the terminal.

Agree with everything you've written. This comes across as the new owners more wanting to increase the yield on their product, instead of spending anything giving freebies away. As with you, when I've visited I've always been the only one, or just one other, so don't buy that it's due to excessive demand. Certainly if that were the reason, they could just put capacity limitations (if they don't already), just like any other booking. But given they were 'free' and they're not trying to keep that market, they don't really care about communications to that market, hence the lack of notice.

The demand has always been there. But where there's an opportunity to cut costs, Celebrity is on it.

Easily!

Yes, perhaps I should have added "to" between "getting" and "the" to help clarity.

Think those have been gone for a while. This is... "Modern Luxury." tm

I wasn't meaning to drive. I meant for the passenger to get from the ship to the car rental outlet, queue, check out the vehicle, , get familiar, then do the drive. When they're giving the estimate it's from the perspective of you being ready to drive from that location. In this case, there's overhead in getting ready to drive as well which adds to the time.

If only things were that linear. What about the past 10 years, where they haven't spent money innovating, but have still been getting higher prices on older ships?

Aluminium is pretty much infinitely able to be recycled into itself. Plastic on the other hand in many cases can only be recycled into other forms e.g. industrial furniture and is not as efficient. Costs come into it, but aluminium is a more efficient material to recycle.

And also with the hand washers being installed as part of the buffet entrance. And Eden being a copy of 270. With these reviews, it does sound more and more like it appeared that Edge is based off Quantum class.

I'd take the train ahead of driving. You still have to get to the rental place, and even their website says 1 hour "from outer Sydney" which the cruise terminal isn't. I'd say it'd be easily 2 hours from getting the car to get there. By contrast, Gosford is a major station and assuming you're at OPT, Circular quay is right at your doorstep. Train is much easier and total travel time should be similar. Cost is likely similar.

Should be all major Australian bank ATMs. Plus is the ATM network affiliated with Visa, which all the major banks are. If there was any specific location you were concerned about you can use this tool to check. https://www.visa.com/atmlocator/