sewgood

I agree with you. I would have expected at least one more or maybe 4 total. We just had a 13 night on the Westerdam and had 3 nights with the singing group Cantaré and also three nights of the one step dance company. Making six HAL shows in total. While these aren't production shows as such they were of a very high quality and we enjoyed the different approach.

Great capture from the car Leigh. Two nice mid sized ships. One a little bit more expensive than the other. 😁

They had them on the Westerdam last week every morning at breakfast in the Lido. They had brown/black markings on the skin but they were perfectly fine when you took the peel off.

Hi John and Hilary, Thanks for the enjoyable read this morning. My husband as well tried P&O for the first time this year and like your wife really liked the coffee from Charlie's cafe on the ground floor. We are just back from our first cruise on HAL and he didn't like the paid coffee at all, just as well the cruise called into Melbourne for two days so he could get his coffee fix. 😁 My favourite thing on our P&O cruise was the breakfast in the main dining room, they had a lot of contemporary selections on the menu like roasted sweet potato with green goddess dressing, super yummy!

We had hand lotion on the Coral earlier this year but it is now in a refillable pump dispenser not the single use tubes like it used to be. This was in a suite though.

😄

"The line said it plans to base the ship outside of the US Global Dream’s original target was to sail to Asia, Oceania including Australia and the US West Coast." Is this the line that you're referring to? If so it is not clearly written, they seem to be missing a coma after US. I read it as the original plan of the previous owners Genting Hong Kong was to sail to the Asia, Oceania including Australia but all Disney have so far said is that they will base it outside the US. This may or may not include Australia. But here's hoping for those Australian Disney fans.

Hi Les, We had friends on this cruise and it was your standard one to New Zealand, I think 13 nights. They said that hardly anyone was wearing masks at embarkation and by the time that they reached New Zealand they were told (I think officially by Princess) that 280 cases were onboard including 40 crew. Still the number of passengers wearing masks did not increase it was only after the Majestic incident that they were told they had to wear masks inside that people followed the mask directive. They were all given P2/N95 masks to wear for disembarkation.

Thanks for your great review, it read as very fair and balanced. We will be considering a winter cruise on Carnival or P&O so it was interesting to read that there was no longer any lunch served in the MDR. We will just have to get there at 11:45 to place our order before noon. 😁 The grilled salmon salad sounds lovely.

This sounds exactly what I need as well. I always have a few clothes that need a press after unpacking and I usually have to go to the laundry on Princess to use the iron for my husbands dress shirt on formal night and feel a little bit lost without free irons onboard. But the above replies fixes the problem. Thanks to everyone for your sugestions.

Thanks for the information 🙂, it looks like it might be a good idea to leave the linen clothes behind. Though $5.50 to get the packing wrinkles out of my favourite plain dress isn't too bad. Now that does sound good!

Sorry to butt in but we have our first cruise on HAL (The Westerdam) coming up next week and before I pack a linen dress (yes I know wrinkles galore) I was wondering if there are any irons for passenger use like on Princess to iron out any packing wrinkles?

Glad to read the good news. Have a wonderful evening enjoying all that the ship has to offer and all the best for the rest of the cruise.

Thanks, I wonder if there was any thing that happened to celebrate the occasion. It looks like a working port for timber like a few NZ ports from the photos so maybe not. Maybe a few glasses were raised at the pubs down in Akaroa to celebrate. 😁

Is this the first large cruise ship to call at Lyttelton since the earthquake?

We were there in Spring and the weather was lovely. In Tokyo I wore a t-shirt with a light jacket which I sometimes had to take off but about ten days earlier we were in Kagoshima on one of the southern islands and I mostly wore just the t-shirt all day. Most people did have light jackets on though but I'm from the cold part of Australia and anything over 18 degrees is warm to me. There was a wonderful send off for the Ship (Diamond Princess) in Kagoshima from the local teenagers. We saw lots of cherry blossoms which were wonderful but autumn trees are stunning too.

Great to hear, but I hope your sore throat feels better tomorrow and your back to feeling 100% very soon! 😃

Sorry to hear about your husband, we like you are very vigilant about mask wearing as well when cruising just goes to shows nothing is 100% in stopping this virus. I hope your husband doesn't get any worse.

All the best Julie, hopefully it is just a cold.

I found this as well on Carnival that there wasn't any variation in the day time activities offered by the entertainment staff. If we cruise on them again we know to pack the UNO cards and load up the kindle. I didn't like the buffet as there was not much variety for example on our cruise there were only the same three types of fruit on offer every day. If there is a next time I would buy fruit ashore to bring back to the ship. Having said this we enjoyed the dining room food as it was spicy and more exciting/different than our usual cruise line. We found that we could always easily find an inside seat next to a window, hard to do on our usual cruiseline at times and we enjoyed the comedy shows that were different to our other cruises. If you like plenty of daytime activities you should like Princess but don't expect active things such as flowrider or ice-skating. I've found that the lower priced lines like Carnival or P&O have to cut costs somewhere and offer in some areas less choice (or you have to pay for it) than Royal Carribean, HAL, Celebrity or Princess. But at the right price I will sail with them and usually doing three cruises a year we like a bit of variety.

Thanks Lyndarra, We'll will check it out next month. Sounds hopeful but you never know with all the cutbacks on the ships after covid.

No doubt on HAL it has already ended as well. I remember how popular it was on Princess and you had to get there very early to get a seat. Of course quite a few people would walk off with the drinks and save them for later. I would see empty bottles outside of cabin doors early the next day.

If they still have it that will be my husband's drinking time. 😁 Now if only they had that in the onboard shops. In our twenties I used to come back from the US with a suitcase full of CD's and clothes. I remember going to the outlet malls which we didn't have in Australia at the time (or not where I lived in any case). They were the good old days.

We're going in Novemeber and I've already jokingly told my husband if he reduces his onboard drinking I will reduce my onboard shopping. As we have already paid the onboard tips I don't think we will be coming home with much of a bill on this cruise given the terrible exchange rate, it will make us think about every purchase. We thought we'd try them out as we love going on new ships (new to us that is) and we aren't able to go on overseas trips at the moment. In 2019 we sailed Princess out of Southampton and it was of course in US dollars so HAL may give us another choice for overseas cruises and they have very good long itineraries.

A fellow cruiser told me on one of our early cruises you never know what is out there if you don't go and try them out. So we have slowly been working our way through the mass market cruise lines. We mainly cruise with our prefered line but once a year try to sail on another one. Later this year we are trying out Holland America for the first time. Who knows it may become our favourite line. We have enjoyed every cruise we have done and as yet have not found the 100% perfect ship but would love to take a little bit from this ship and a little bit from that one. 😄