paulvdb1

3 hours ago, Vict0riann said:

 

Same here - but Noordam in my case. I'm assuming dressup nights for Christmas eve and NYE but not sure beyond that. 

6 hours ago, Btimmer said:

We're experiencing an increased amount of motion from the ocean since this morning.  

It quite often seems to be a bit wavier coming into Sydney from a cruise but huge winds for the last two days are probably making things even more spectacular. 46knots in Sydney Harbour today

when is earliest you can get off ship?

Do the walk-off yourself if you can As Early As Possible. We were just about the last group off and we had too much luggage to take off easily ourselves. The waiting time in disembarkation and waiting for a taxi was disgusting. I also hadn't known about the special tip-porters who take you to the fast exit line.

I must say that I read all reviews but only to see whether there are any trends of things to take note of. The hard mattress issue was real but if we had asked for a topper I would have been too hot - I find that the foam topper traps in body heat. I think that the service was much better than I had read but noted that people were comparing it to a few years ago. The individual people were great but looked VERY busy.

As an Aussie I particularly noted that US interests were different (belly flops are more exciting than a show apparently) so it's easy to see then why different people could see the cruise in a different way.

If you are a bit of an extrovert you will have no problems at all making friends on the ship. My youngest daughter was slow to get started (didn't go to any of the activities) but by about day 4 she had a whole collection of friends from all over the world.

We tried Breakfast in the MDR and it was OK. The best bits by far were making your own fruit salad. The buffet options in the MDR ranged from really basic to merely OK - same as a basic 3 star hotel. The breakfast options in the Windjammer were not great either but you could pick some items to make an OK breakfast. We also tried breakfast delivered to our rooms and probably the best option for many people.

We're only just back from the US trip yesterday so I'll try and write a better review in the next few days.

It's really freaky given that I was on that ship last week and the question certainly came up in our behind-the-scenes tour. A number of fellow tourers asked the question of the captain and checked out the infrared camera system - which is not automatic - ie there's no alarm. Essentially if the man wasn't noticed straightaway then his chances are around zero. With the ship pushing 20knots, even a very quick turn is going to see the ship a few miles away.

Where on the internet did you pre-book please?:)

If you are going to Port Vila, we found Atmosphere Tours to be quite good. We had two families in a minibus and went around the island to a range of places for fairly OK-ish $ (We had the Round Island Tour) http://www.atmosphere-vanuatu.com

If you're going to Noumea then you can pick from the tours available at the information centre - certainly wouldn't book these from the Ship.

For the smaller islands I'm not sure if it's worth doing anything too complicated. I'm going to Isle of Pines this time and am still unsure whether to do a tour or just snorkel. On Lifou we just walked to the snorkelling area on the other side of the island.

The frustration I have now, is trying to find out about on-shore excursions. Should we go through the independant tourist groups on the islands or Carnival Spirit? Which way did you guys do it? Thanks again for your advice. :thumbup:

Independent certainly saves money and there are less people slowing you down. We noticed on our last trip that at Vanuatu, Carnival deliberately tried to make it impossible for the passengers to get to their independent driver by not telling anyone the driver was there - and not letting anyone out of the gate to find their driver. I'm hoping this has now been fixed.