mr walker

Yes, not something that interested me _ I watched the footy 🙂

Our experience as well. Good system that suits us

Happy birthday for Tuesday Les from Tracey & I - it will be Tracey's birthday on Thursday! Enjoy your dinner with your family & take care mate. Hope to get down your way soon & catch up with you if you are up to it. Cheers

News reports today are that the two people in the incidents (medical & overboard) were unrelated and not known to each other. So, looks as if the Chinese whispers, famous onboard ships, strike again.

Oops - I see that I got that all mixed up! Getting old I guess 🙂 Of course nowadays a large pizza is the size of the old medium.

Like Pizzas these days! 😳

Luckily, only ever had belongings stolen when travelling once, many years ago from a motel on NSW Central Coast, where the thieves got in thru the breakfast door!! The thread has brought back some memories though: - I once returned home from a business trip without a pair of trousers - no idea whatever happened to them & DW had a few questions 🙂 - Left my i-Pad on a cruise once & got it back after the ship returned from the next cruise to Sth Pacific. - On a RC cruise back in 2014, there was a security expert onboard who had a couple of sessions on security on travelling - apparently, he works as a consultant for many travel companies. My mate & I were brought up on stage as part of a demonstration on how easy it is to have stuff stolen by 'pick-pockets". Even though we both knew what was going and & were particularly vigilant, as we left the stage he called us back. He had managed to remove a small leather case (for my hearing aids, which were in my ears) from my pocket & my mates watch from his wrist & we had no clue!!

Attended local Dawn Service this morning in Penrith with my son. Large crowd covering the full range of ages from littlies to oldies. Rain held off & a little warmer than usual. Wonderful service, well organised, and the respect demonstrated from those in attendance makes me feel so much pride in my community. Went back to RSL club for a drink in honour of the veterans, including my grandfather & Tracey's Dad. My one day of the year where I drink before breakfast 🙂 We enjoyed our gold coin donation brekkie. We will remember them. Lest We Forget.

This was my first thought. In a world of internet influencers & a commercial advantage in pushing your brand, coupled with a severe decline in critical thinking, who knows where this will take the world??

Agree Chili & others. Someone at RC is making these decisions ie just having the 'big' ships here & thus limiting options for us all. Guess they think they know what they're doing but I'm not sure about that. We enjoyed the Ovation cruise to NZ that you were on, but as I wrote in my review, we will be looking for Voyager of Radiance class moving forward. Fat chance now! We are booked on Brilliance for December - the Country Cruisin' cruise & we were expecting to do another one or two RC cruises in 24-25 season, but not so keen on going on Ovation or travelling to Anastasialand to go on the same ship with a different name. As I wrote elsewhere, lack of RC options for Feb/Mar '24 have sent us to Princess (Majestic) to Fiji in Feb '24. I'm sure we will enjoy, but we'll sure miss those D drinks - in fact the D+ drinks by then 😮 Really can't see the logic in not having 2 ships out of Sydney. Time for a crownie!!

yes, that's how I read the announcement

We don't feel cheated by itineraries offered by the cruiselines from Australia, just accepting that there is a limit to options for 'local' cruising. If we want 'new' ports we need to widen our scope on ports to sail, and that basically means from OS. At this stage we choose to sail only from Sydney & perhaps Brisbane, and so need to be realistic and accept that we will often go to ports we have already been too, many multiple times. Looking to fit a cruise in in Feb/Mar '24, there were limited options & we have elected to book with a cruiseline that is not our 'go-to' one ie Royal Caribbean, who's offering in that time window did not appeal. We have booked 13N to Sth Pacific Majestic Princess ex Sydney 10-Feb. Our PCP was able to book us DB (Deluxe Balcony) Baja Mid-Aft at an acceptable price with some OBC. To book an actual cabin was just $53 more than guarantee, so that's fine. We didn't upgrade to PLUS - offered at $65 pn. Hope we enjoy Majestic - our only previous Princess cruise was on the Sun round Aus in Mar '17, which we really enjoyed.

Can’t help re up north, but when your down here, there’s a Harry’s at the Panthers club in Penrith!!

That’s a meat lovers Barbie!! And not a single piece of eggplant in sight 😳

2-3 sea days to get anywhere warm, with similar on return leg, would make too many sea-days for most cruisers, and so limit the demand out of Melbourne.

General opinion (based mostly on RC cruisers postings) is that the Upgrade Fairy died & was replaced with the UpSell Fairy. RC have the 'Bid for a Better Cabin' system in place. which looks to have taken any free upgrade out.

Strewth, sorry to hear about you getting COVID mate. I did suspect that there were people who boarded with, at least symptoms, & maybe not doing the RAT test as per the rules, who just ploughed on on THEIR holiday. Hope you are feeling better. I did wear Panther gear a number of times, but it seems we weren't in the same place at the same time. We spent a lot of time in Schooner Bar. I hope you didn't get into too much trouble with the Penrith ladies 🙂 Yes, did enjoy Ovation but prefer Radiance & Voyager classes & Rhapsody as our first ship will always be our first love 🙂 Now see that we got double points for the cruise. I had forgotten that when we booked it was a bonus of 2X points. Very close now to adding a + to our D's!! Take care!!!! Cheers, Neil

Back a week or so from our 12N Ovation OTS NZ cruise 11-23 Mar Sydney roundtrip. It was our first cruise since COVID & seemed to go very quickly. I make some points: - Embarking was very fast & we were soon on ship after shuttle drop-off. Got to say hello to Graham @ gbenjo as we boarded (and a quick good-bye in the terminal as we left also). - Ship was huge (largest we have ever been on). Apart from seeing physical size, a real indicator was when we headed aft for sail-away & it just was so far to get there 😀 - Ship was very nice and all staff encountered were very pleasant and very enthusiastic to please. - Our cabin lady & waiters in dining room (MTD) were very good – nothing was too much trouble. - Always easy to get a drink or something to eat around the ship. - We did brunch in the dining room on a few sea days which was a good way to avoid the Windjammer at times, and also helped with portion control 😉 - We thought the food overall was not as good as previously, but we always found something to eat & never had to cook or clean up once. I really enjoyed the soup offerings and it was always a challenge to choose from the many delicious desserts. New menus are due shortly. - We made all 5 ports in NZ as scheduled. The CD announced on the final night that our cruise was the first one all season to do so. We didn’t do any tours, just took the time this time to visit the local ports areas which we enjoyed. Milford Sound was again spectacular & BOI beautiful. - We never did catch up with Chiliburn @ Chiliburn, even though I did keep a lookout for him. I’m sure he had a good time. - We did many trivias etc (even managed to win one!) & enjoyed our time. - There were some medical issues on board with people in isolation and a degree of coughing etc, which we did our best to avoid. Mask wearing was maybe 15- 20%, including staff, but as the numbers grew there were more masks and all staff were masked for last day or so. I did come down with a respiratory thingy towards then end – negative to C! - We did have a 'man overboard' call one evening, and so everyone had to get scanned at Muster station, but it turned out a false report & we carried on as usual. - Likely we will stick to smaller ships – we have a Brilliance OTS booked for Dec – from now on as we just don’t use all the bells & whistles that Ovation offers. - Disembarking worked well & we were soon back on land 😮 - Very pleasant cruise after waiting so long and we were sad it all ended so quickly. Cheers Neil

As others have posted Les, sorry to read this. Take care mate & all the best.

Keep on plugging on mate. I'll have a drink to your health on our cruise departing tomorrow. Maybe with Chilli who will also be on board. Our friends we are cruising with just got back from visiting their daughter down at Merimbula - she works at the airport down there. Hope to get down the coast after Easter and maybe catch up. Cheers, Neil & Tracey

100% right. Many years ago I knew a Scotsman who one night was at the Panthers club as a rep for Fosters, supplying free samples to encourage people to drink Fosters. He approached us & we all said no way would we drink Fosters - he said "it's free". We all replied that we wouldn't drink Fosters if you paid us 🙂 Everyone I've ever met in USA thinks everyone in Australia drinks Fosters! One guy took me to a bar specially because they served Fosters & couldn't believe that it was not a beer that Aussies drink!

Sorry to hear about your Dad. Yes, maybe a Black in his honour would be good. My Dad, who passed in 2016, was an Old drinker, and that passed onto me, but I only like a draught Black, not so much the bottled variety. So a crownie for me when drinking at home 🙂

and a queue for the single bathroom 🙂

I think you can walk to OPT quicker than a taxi will take you, as the taxi will need to take a roundabout route with one-way streets, and likely delays with traffic, including entering the OPT. The walk would be easy with no uphill sections & you'll likely be able to see the ship all along your walk. That said, I can't imagine the fare would be more than $10-15 - check with the hotel concierge.

I would work on 30 minutes (depends on traffic) & the fare in a range A$60-80