Pushka

The Ruby Princess legacy has been astounding. It effectively brought Covid to Australia in mid March 2020 and caused 27 passenger deaths. Once that washed through Australia had no deaths until a leakage in the eastern states. And is a major reason why cruising in Australia has been fraught with difficulties on resumption. It will improve by this time next year. NZ has other issues compounding this. Hulls. Who'd have thought.

Likely. Trouble is that it was very short notice, Christmas break and personnel on leave. Bit of a cluster really. Tourism was more involved than Primary Industry.

And I got my information from the South Australian Government. In writing. It was not done in port because immigration couldn't process border control, to allow the ship to berth so it was moored off into international waters.

While whiling away the time for DV to open up for excursions, somewhat concerned as our cruise is the second part of a longer cruise so all those DV and above will open up, even before our PV passengers get their chance to book. So trying to prepare for several sold out excursions on our cruise being in a DV. So, before the time slots open for DV, can you see the message Sold Out in advance and if so, is this message on Page of excursions for that port, or you need to click on each individual excursion to see availability. Next week is time critical as those on the previous cruise where all their booking slots open up. But PV on our cruise won't have had the chance.

I’m very sorry you are having these issues. I know this is no consolation whatsoever but Australia and NZ only opened up to cruises post Covid just a couple of months ago. Clearly we’ve lost many skills sets in terms of managing cruises. It probably wasn’t the best time to come here but thought it wouldn’t be this difficult either. Just hope it improves rapidly.

Three cruise ships for Feb 6 according to CruiseMapper. 6 January, 2023 Friday Viking Mars 6 January, 2023 Friday Star Breeze 07:00 18:00 6 January, 2023 Friday Norwegian Spirit

Very Likely that your packaged items will be fine in Australia but you must declare them. Same with NZ but they are even more strict than Australia and will examine the ingredients carefully.

All this testing and masking is only happening on cruises in the Southern Hemisphere. Even super cautious Viking has ditched the masks for everyone including crew on their non Australian - NZ cruises. No more testing unless asked for. Isolation onboard for 5 days if positive. And this was the cruise line that had its own PCR labs onboard some 18 months ago and were the first cruise line to cancel cruises at the start. Yet there has not been reports of surges of infections nor a rise in emergency evacuations.

Yes. I've read his brilliant TR. Several times. He'll likely know traffic to his site has increased. 😁 The thing is, I think I'm a ship junkie. I love everything technical about them. Any kind of ship be it tanker or luxury cruise liner. We have our own little runabout which we love. And we live on the Marina at Port Adelaide which is just upstream from the hub for all South Australia's supply carriers and near our Submarine manufacturing plant for Australia. I blame it on my Dad who was in RAN on an aircraft carrrier for 12 years and through the Korean War.

Having had no symptoms whatsoever from a Covid infection I have given up three years of travel and am perfectly prepared to travel again as planned. I'd be fine isolating in a stateroom if positive.

Yes. I've organised private excursions for those that were booked out on the same cruise last year. This is a repositioning cruise - south to north hemisphere so only happens once a year.

You will get your included shore excursion. Check when onboard. What must be frustrating is for those who book a higher category cabin (eg PV) but those in a DV on the cruise before them, but their journey is linked with the next cruise, get full access well before higher end categories can book because their cruise is a 'double' journey.

So if im lucky we can tune to TV in to get announcements on particular days of interest. And will try hear the sound of the anchor weigh at 4am as a clue. Cabin on Deck 8.

We are transiting the Suez in a few weeks and we are both keen to hear everything that’s announced. Obviously safety announcements go through to each cabin but so many times I hear the announcements and dash to the corridor to hear some of them. The transit I gather starts around 4am. I thought I read you can configure all announcements to come into the cabin on such days? Any clues?

I believe people were told to go early and drive because the train public transport was closed for planned maintenance.

I heard Michael Carr-Greg tweeted angrily that his flight to NZ was cancelled and he'd heard nothing, blaming Qantas etc, like other non celebs do, to gain some kind of kudos. The replies suggested he should keep better track of the news. Fail.

Port changes happen frequently for a variety of reasons. It's in the contract.

Thanks for the info about Stores and provisioning. . All our ports on a 21 day cruise are in Muslim countries, including SA (And Israel but at the end) and I was rather wondering how they'd stock up on alcohol! 🤭😂. The ship spends two nights in Mumbai so expect that's the replenishment site.

I've always wanted as much detail as possible. I'm the travel organiser and feel it's part of being prepared. Not a new thing for me. People do things differently. Works for them.

Is the price of the Drappier Champagne by the glass stil $16 so now in the SSP or has that been raised? MVJ sample menus seem to be the old prices.

Adelaide didn't ban the ship but we just couldn't get our international border entry for passengers sorted with little notice. Adelaide is never the first arrival port for international arrivals.

This is becoming untenable for the cruise industry. But why Wellington stopped but other ports are ok? Makes no sense.

Never said it did! I agree. It's stupid. But it is what we have. Much of this stuff never made sense. 🤷‍♀️😂

That's because it didn't start in Australia. That's where the issue as we require testing of people before embarking on cruise ships here. No testing required on disembarkation here. Not a mystery. I expect this will be relaxed for next season. Unfortunately Ruby Princess back in March 2020 has scarred the cruise industry as that brought Covid whole scale into Australia, over 800 infected passengers and 27 deaths as our first mass entry of Covid and then people flew back home across the world. Prior to then we had very few infections. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-09-15/carnival-s-ruby-princess-cruise-ship-spread-coronavirus-around-the-world There's just a couple of months left for the Australia season now. NZ is much more stringent with its marine biosecurity. We have it too but NZ are enforcing it more. Wellington isn't an at risk place for that anyway, more like Milford Sounds and other protected areas in the south. If you are allowed to enter other ports then it isn't the hull thing. Just something to do with Wellington. NZ does get high winds and ports are often cancelled.

Agree. Qatar continued services into Adelaide three times a week when everyone else except SIA ignored us. Kept SA food exports and essential imports happening. That's why they deserve loyalty.