_kevin

It would depend on the ship, if you have a balcony, and if you like want to be on your own or up on the deck with lots of other people.

The ship makes a difference - for example Voyager is reversed in, so the PORT side is against the terminal. The Starboard side has the Opera House View. With a Voyager Balcony, you might like to be on your Balcony and see the Opera house and the view that goes with it.

But on the Port Side, as you leave you can see the Harbour Bridge.

In Dec 2013, even though we had a Balcony, we decided to be on the helipad so we could look either way. We left about 9pm - it was lovely.

On the Radiance, it is docked the opposite way, so the cabins and view are all reversed. They reverse out, point the aft towards the bridge, then swing the bow around and head out.

On other ships like P & O I don't think you can get all the way forward, so that rules out being in the similar spot to the RCI helipads.

So I guess it depends on what you want to see, and what ship you will be on!

Hi,

When we last went the time you could see the ICE show performance was based on the letters/numbers on our sea pass card. Something to do with ODD / EVEN numbers from memory. The cruise director made it pretty clear on the TV channel that he was on. If your other guests have a different muster station (and different number of their card) they might be allocated a different show time.

There isn't much of a sail away party with RCI, unlike P&O who tend to do something special leaving Sydney. But still don't miss it.

Some pics of our last trip are here http://www.kevgriffiths.com/pics/hobart/

Shows the Ice Show, some of the ship and the cabin.

we just bought a $20 sim at the supermarket in Dunedin( it was the 1st port). Card worked great even on board during the night.

 

Di

I did similar when we went to NZ on Radiance in January - In the first port I grabbed a telstra SIM for $20 NZ I think it was. It was only for my iPad and I got 500meg of data but I'm sure if I put it in a phone I would have got $10 or $20 worth of calls as well. But we had email and web access all day in Port; and for a fair bit of the evening too.

I was still sort of at work while onboard so I could send the odd email and keep the wheels ticking back home over while at sea.

But even during the shore tours while we were on the bus we could send the odd email and pictures home and let everyone know we were OK etc.

So it was worth every cent of the Australian $15 !!