sewgood

It has already, I didn't know the history of the Broadway mall. My excuse is that I grew up in rural NSW but I am a little embarrassed that someone from Auckland knew this and I didn't.

Glad you had a great cruise. I'm sad I missed the Elvis entertainer and a cruise on my favourite of the Royal class ship.

This type of reception committee always gives the best welcomes. I bet there was a lot of tail wagging going on when you turned up.

Great news, I will enjoy reading it.

Thanks for that Julie, I've had a look at our account for the WC and there is $25 credit each listed under Guest Onboard Credit. I found this in the credits section on the Payments and Credits page. I wouldn't have known it was there if Oz Kiwii hadn't mentioned about it.

I received this email from Princess as well and at no time during my 20 day cruise was it added to my OBC. I read after I returned home you had to go to passenger services to have it added. If they send you an email saying you will receive it, it should automatically be added on, but in my experience it wasn't. My advice is to do what Arxcards mentions and go to passengers services and ask. The OBC should at least pay for a couple trips to Alfredo's or for some room service deliveries or other things that were included when you booked.

I'm getting on in Dover and I checked my account and all the excursions are still there beside from Key West which they never listed any for, anyway. My booked ones have not been cancelled, so I do believe it was just a glitch in the system when they had to redo the itinerary for those doing the full world cruise or the half world cruise from Down Under. If anyone on the WC needs prices of tours or the number of tickets left for particular tours on the second half just ask me on the roll call.

We had a move down offer that we had to take if we still wanted to go on the P&O cruise. The choice was move from a mini-suite to an oceanview and cruise for free or get your cruise fare refunded and don't cruise. Since we had already paid for a hotel in Sydney and our train fares to Sydney we took the first option and had a wonderful cruise on the Pacific Explorer. This was when cruising had just started up again and they had booked too many mini suites since we were suppose to cruise on the Adventure and they moved everyone to the Explorer and shortened our cruise from 11 days to 8 for which we received $500 OBC. Free cruise plus $500 OBC, plus shareholder credit, no wonder we had a good time. 😄 I really don't think we will ever get another offer like that again.

Short cruises of three or four days aren't worth my time or the cost of getting to Sydney/Melbourne for me. I interesting to see what happens if they redo the itineraries.

Good to hear that one of the mainstream cruise lines is actually designing a smaller ship than the last one they built. Well done RCI.

That's great I hope others were able to do this or can do this. My final payment is next month so I didn't mind paying now. With the new price coming this week I would have paid at least $300 more for my long cruise.

I'm not being serious with the following but... I feel like they have a target to reach with a certain percentage buying Plus and Premium, if they don't reach the target this month then they will just charge us standard fare people for something else. Who knows by the end of the year we could be paying for movies on the TV if you are on the standard fare. I'd better not give them any ideas.

I jumped in and purchased wifi for my next Princess cruise today before the price rise tomorrow. Since it is a long cruise it was worth prepaying.

No wonder these days I'm looking more at Azamara and Oceania for the next cruise I book.

Book the mini suite as the deluxe balcony has less drawers in it than ordinary balconies, due to the space that the lounge takes up. The mini suite will have a lot more storage room which will be needed for a family of four.

Reading the terms for cancellation, if you book another tour with them within 24 hours of cancelling the money will go towards the new tour. If you don't book a new tour within 24 hours the money goes back to you.

On the WC leaving from AUS/NZ, there won't be many children onboard as we do not have a long winter school break during that time down here and long Princess cruises tend to have a low number of children on board anyway. In saying that I was on a long relocation and the the small amount of children onboard were spoilt by both the crew and fellow passengers.

I love to go to Abbey's bookshop in Sydney. Lots of books there I don't find anywhere else in NSW's. And the Royal Botanic Garden is great to fill in time before a cruise if you have dropped off your bags.

After packing the suitcase and cleaning out the fridge even if I lived 15 minutes away from the cruise port I wouldn't be happy.

I would be fairly steaming if I had booked non-refundable pre-cruise accommodation and paid parking fees, that is if I were coming from a country town far from Sydney. Now if I was retired and living in Sydney, I would think great and take option 1 or 4. I think they should have made a voluntary offer to more people and first in get the offer, that way no one if forced off the cruise. If not enough guests respond than increase the offer ie 50% off your next cruise and a full refund for this cruise.

I've seen the fares for inside/window/balcony and mini suites from one of the big online cruise travel companies.

Thanks for that. I'm a happy little camper now. I found it and it is for 37 nights and includes port stops in Raiatea (maybe this replaces Bora Bora), Nuku'alofa and Norfolk Island.😄

And again no 35 day Hawaii and Tahiti round trip out of Brisbane or Sydney.

You would be better asking on the Australian/New Zealand board as there is a lot more activity there. Someone there would have obtained a visa for PNG.

Thanks John for the very balanced review that covers everything. I have had one cruise each on the Explorer and the Adventure since the restart but have not been on the Encounter which you wrote your review about. I agree with all your comments above as they certainly applied to the two cruises I went on. I had much the same experience but I will add that I did find that the lifts on the Explorer were painfully slow for anybody thinking about sailing on this ship. We did eat in the dining room for breakfast and on the Adventure the menu was very limited and exactly the same every day, there were of course a couple of eggs dishes which you had to pay for if you wanted something different. On our cruise on the Explorer a year earlier June 2022 the breakfast menu in the dining room was fantastic and we were disappointed a year later that the menu on the Adventure was totally different. We don't know if it was because of the different ships or more likely it was a change of menu across the board as a cost cutting exercise. In regards to entertainment my husband and I were very impressed with the production show called Seven and thought it was equivalent to Princess which we usually sail on. All in all we would sail with P&O again in our non cruise season if the price was right as we would not pay the same per day as a Princess cruise for example.